Do you feel like you’re not progressing in your goals or lacking life balance? Or even felt like you’re living aimlessly, feeling a lack of fulfillment?
Living in automatic mode, forgetting the meaning, losing the perspective of your aims, feeling lost… No matter the reason, self-doubt and inner crisis are part of our journey in this world. However, it does not mean we have to accept them, not at all.
Essentially, there are 7 areas of your life that, when in harmony, can manifest a significant enhancement on your energy and overall happiness.
The first thing that comes to mind when talking about “goal setting” is meeting work deadlines. But honestly, you can apply this method to any area of your life in order to promote your wellbeing.
What are the 7 Areas of Life?
To live a full life, you must first understand the seven areas it can be divided into.
According to acknowledged writers and coaches, there are 6 to 12 areas to empower you. However, here I focus only on 7 areas of life to set goals and master the well-dreamt life balance.
Defined by the well-known writer John Demartini, these areas are:
- Career
Since jobs compose one-third of one’s life, you should, at least, spend all this time doing something that pleases you.
Understanding where you are and how you picture your future self on your career path is fundamental to define where you want to grow as a professional.
- Financial
In the world we live in, money is a great deal. I don’t mean to say that you should make it the center of your life, but understand that being financially safe and having resources can relieve much of your stress.
Besides, having financial freedom also involves being able to afford some luxury that makes you happier — such as experiencing new things, trying different foods here and there, going somewhere new…
- Physical
In order to be a better being, you need to make the effort to improve yourself, and that includes also your exterior.
In other words: without physical health, it will be thousands times harder to ripen yourself up in other areas.
- Social
It refers mainly to how you see yourself in the world, how your interactions with others affect you and them. It’s important to understand how we can respect ourselves and keep empathy up.
- Personal growth
What was the last time you invested on some skill? We should always look to progress in our lives, and it also includes updating our knowledge over subjects we already know. Learning is never too much.
- Romantic
The urge for love and care is typical for human beings, finding a forever mate to enjoy life together is a necessity. But more important than that, is knowing how to maintain a good relationship.
Looking for ways to improve your bonding and keeping things fresh are essentials to maintain a long-term relationship with someone. Besides, understanding who you are and recognizing your own individuality in a life of two is as important as loving the other person.
- Spiritual
You may not be a religious person, and that’s okay. Spirituality refers not only to our relationship with cosmic entities or so, it can refer to our emotions and sense of purpose.
Taking care of your mind is absolutely imperative. Acknowledging your feelings, taking time for inner reflections, understanding your inspirations, working on your passions…It doesn’t seem simple, does it?
7 Life Areas to Set Goals
If you’re willing to learn more about how to change your entire life for the best, stick with this article. In this section, we’re going to help you to master every area of your life by setting achievable goals.
Career – Define Your Professional Purpose
Career is a critical part of life that we have to focus on; after all, work takes us at least 8 hours per day in a week — at least we need to feel pleased about the labor and our progress in the industry.
Setting career goals should address both your current position and long-term goals. “But what should I define as a career goal?”. I would rather answer with another question: what would benefit you in the short and long term in your work life?
When considering wishes — no matter a promotion, better relationship with colleagues and boss, going to a better enterprise, or even just getting a new project going on —, you must work SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based.
- Finding the ideal job
First, I recommend you to ask yourself if where you are today is where you really want to be. Are you happy doing what you do?
If the answer is anything but a “yes”, I highly recommend you to look for understanding your passions.
To achieve your dream life, go for a worksheet to identify which labor suits you the best. That’s a great option if you no longer identify how far you’ve come, your potential and weak spots.
- Create specific goals
When you start setting goals, at first you may be a little lost. However, there’s one thing you should never write down: generic objectives.
Creating milestones include making them as clear as possible, so you will understand exactly what you can/cannot do.
Ask yourself: what exactly do you want to achieve? Instead of “getting promoted”, specify which position you want to be, where you wanna go, and how long you plan to take until there.
- Measure your progress
As important as defining measurable and specific milestones, is to recognize your progress over your tasks. So take pride in all the changes in your life and make it accountable somehow, this will help you to stay motivated on your journey.
Set activities that will enhance or learn new skills that assist you to grow. No matter practicing or studying, always aim for progressing your knowledge.
- Set a due date
Let’s be honest: you cannot be stuck with a task for the rest of your days. Setting a timetable to achieve a certain goal keeps your motivated and on-schedule. To make a plan also includes setting realistic and achievable milestones to it.
And if you don’t accomplish it within the time, maybe you’ll need to reroute — or consider the concepts of achievable and realistic.
- Feedback and support
Sometimes you may be so into your work that you just can’t distinguish progress and regress. In those hard times, go for other’s opinions, seek for feedback over your projects.
Try to prioritize having constructive inputs and being receptive over them might cause you some interesting insights and renovate the perspective over things.
Financial – Take Control of Your Money
In the world we live in, capital plays a huge role in access to spaces, belongings, and status. Financial goals refers to how we manage money, how we work towards a better quality of life.
Having an emergency fund is primordial for you not to get in trouble afterwards. Surely, we don’t want to picture the worst scenarios, but we need to set savings for all situations — since we don’t know if they will or won’t happen.
Financially planning means not only planning for the monthly bills, but also for the future: trips, insurances, leisure, self-care… Sometimes, to love ourselves we need a bit more planning and feeling secure about your financial stability definitely enriches the inner peace.
Physical – Improve Your Health & Wellness
You know what they say: mens sana in corpore sano.
Better investment than financial is taking care of your physical health. Practicing some sport that you like, going to the gym, or even having appointments with a nutritionist; those are some good practices that you can include to the routine that will make you feel better.
It may sound simple and easy, but it requires a consistency and willpower that many people struggle practicing. But understand: that’s completely normal. However, it is important to not let yourself down, remember: small steps lead to big victories also. So here I prepared some tips on the topic:
- Create your fitness goals. Understand the true reason behind the workout, is it for better resistance? To enhance physical performance? To lose weight? To maintain a healthy lifestyle?
- Reevaluate what your diet plan is. I don’t refer to restrictive diets, not at all. Just consider that we are what we eat, so in order to have a healthy body and mind, it is good for us to have all macronutrients covered up — protein, carbs, vitamins…
- Go for new experiences. Tired of regular gym? Well, there are plenty of sports you can try on! Give a chance to new experiences. Workout doesn’t need to be a punishment, get your life some color and fun. From a zumba class to a swimming session, move your body as freely as it was born to be.
I attach here some affiliate links to workout plans that I particularly enjoy doing, they are fun and so lively… and the best part: they are entirely free and beginner friendly!
- Chloe Ting
- PopSugar Workout
- Marshall Fitness
https://www.youtube.com/@TheFitnessMarshall/playlists
Of course I wouldn’t let the chance to share some of my favorite recipes escape! So stay tuned for the top 3 healthy recipes links to enrich your days and taste buds!
- Tasty
https://tasty.co/article/michelleno/easy-healthy-dinner-recipes
- Jamie Oliver
https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/category/healthy-recipes/
- Eat Well
Social – Nurture Your Relationships
https://www.eatwell101.com/low-effort-healthy-dinners-recipes
To live fully, we also need to set goals around the people we interact with, since relations are also part of your life.
As human beings, interacting and bonding are part of who we are; and achieving balance also includes healthy and active connections. No matter if it’s romantic or not, find time to spend with your cherished ones. Worship their company, celebrate life together, and have some quality time with the ones who appreciate your company and vice versa.
Don’t know how to strengthen bonds? Here are some tips!
- Check-in on the people you care about. Let they know you care about their well-being and feelings, embrace their best and worst days.
- Be fully present. Don’t show up only on good times, loving people requires you to be by their side in any situation, that will make them feel valuable for you.
- Be a supportive person. If they achieve good things, celebrate it; if they seem quite skeptical about themselves, cheer them up; if they fail, be there for them and be supportive.
- Communicate honestly and openly. Don’t be afraid to expose your feelings and thoughts; to have a strong bond with someone, you’ve got to be honest with them. Don’t lie to them to please them or hide your true feelings because you’re hesitant about their reaction.
Believe, they won’t leave just because you are setting your boundaries and showing your true self. And just like that, they will also likely feel more and more comfortable to trust you their inner selves too.
Personal Growth – Never Stop Learning
The fact is we never stop learning, it is a lifelong journey. Acquiring new skills, and hobbies, expanding knowledge, going for other areas that catch your attention… Having a full life also includes knowing the world and all it has to offer.
You don’t have to wait for the need to start learning something. Embrace challenges and create opportunities for growth and cultivate them, be as curious as humans can be.
Romantic – Build a Supportive Partnership
Choosing a partner for life implies not only intimacy but also mutual respect and trust. When in a relationship, it’s important to be fully aligned, mainly in your objectives and wishes.
The truth is most problems arise from miscommunication and emotional discharge due to daily routine stress.
Understanding your own feelings and learning how to manage them to not address frustrations towards your loved one is the first and main step.
Afterwards, build a peaceful and nonviolent marriage. Practice calm communication, fighting the problem and not each other, being open about feelings and respecting one’s time; those good practices already solve a great part of household problems.
Treat your fiancé as if every day is a honeymoon. Do you still remember the first month together? When everything used to be new and the declarations were constant?
It’s regular that, with time, all these butterflies settle down and things get more ordinary; however, the same fire you have at the beginning you need to have throughout the whole relationship. When was the last time you presented your loved one? Have you both tried new things recently? Create a list of things to try together, present each other, go on dates, have a special dinner; and truly enjoy yourselves.
But know that change won’t come if you don’t acknowledge your individuality and respect it inside a relationship. Being together is awesome, yes; but you must know to value time for yourself and your own projects to not lose yourself and your essence.
Spiritual – Feed Your Soul
Deepening your connection to your inner self and something greater than yourself is the essence of this topic. Good spiritual practices that allow introversion and reflective moments are the way to go.
Meditation, prayer, mindfulness, and even journaling, all those are practices for you to explore and cultivate inner peace and clarity. If you have or are willing to have some belief, engage in spiritual activities that resonate with your beliefs and values.
Even if you’re not religious, making small decisions such as meditating or clarifying your mind will foster a sense of purpose and fulfillment that surely will benefit you. Reading spiritual books, and trying to understand other life perspectives and what comes after it will be, at least, interesting for spiritual growth.
Goal-Setting Worksheets & Templates
To create a life full of balance, with mental and physical health on its peak, you must make some changes to your ordinary lifestyle.
For decluttering your ideas and making your objectives as tangible as they can be, I separated some downloadable PDF templates and worksheets. All these resources are to provide you with structured frameworks and prompts to track your progress, objectives, and even evaluate your decisions so far.
Use them as a tool for empowerment and transformation to improve your life!
- Pinterest: Printable goal-setting motivation
- Krieger Jhu: SMART Goals setting
- Canva: Goal setting and tracking
https://www.canva.com/templates/s/goals/
- Smart Sheet: Goal tracking
https://www.smartsheet.com/goal-tracking-setting-templates
Final Thoughts on Important Areas of Life – Living a Balanced Life
It is not an easy journey to master the 7 areas of our lives, it takes time and work to cultivate goals around the main areas of life.
However, you should start with small, short-term goals for keeping you motivated with the results. By taking intentional action, you create a life that reflects your values, passions, aspirations, and overall health.
Be your better version, not just for the ones you love, but mainly for yourself. Within the next year, I dare you: set goals in all areas of life, work with the tools that you have and build good habits. Your personal development relies only on you, will you let this opportunity pass by?
**FAQ’s:**
Q. What are The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and what do they mean?
The 7 habits of highly effective people are:
- Proactivity: taking responsibility for yourself
- Begin with the end in mind: define goals and purpose as guides to your decisions
- Put first things first: prioritize your time and energy on the essentials
- Think win-win: look for mutual benefit interactions and relationships
- Understand before being understood: be emphatic over others feelings and perspectives
- Synergize: work collaboratively to have outcomes more significant than if you were working alone
- Sharpen the saw: take time to renew and improve yourself
Q. What are the 5 A’s of personal development?
Mental, social, spiritual, emotional, and physical.
Q. What are the areas of life of Tony Robbins?
According to Tony Robbins, the areas of life are: physical body, emotions and meaning, relationships, time, career, finances, and contribution and spirituality.
Q. Goal setting is a key element in building and growing a successful business, but did you know that setting goals can help you in so many other aspects of your life?
No matter what your goal ideas are, setting objectives is a life changer.
According to Edwin A. Locke, goals that are clear, specific, and challenging are more motivating than vague or easy aims. Staying motivated by tracking your progress will guarantee your success. So make sure to apply SMART to important areas.
Q. Struggling to Achieve Your Goals?
It’s normal for the enthusiasm to fade over time, no matter long or short term goals. But beware, you may be failing due to other reasons:
- Giving up too soon due to impatience and anxiety
- Taking criticism in a personal way instead of using it to improve yourself
- No consistency or commitment to your own schedules and goals
- Being too generic when setting goals and not having a solid plan
Q. What are the seven areas of life mastery?
Health, vocation, finances, relationships, personal development, social.
