What are Aspects of Life?

We identify so strongly with some people in our lives such as mentors, parents, children, spouses that they sometimes become our whole world or we only see ourselves through them. It is no wonder we become lost or our whole world collapses when we lose someone so significant.

It is a healthy,rewarding and a very simple exercise to map out your Aspects of Life and understand how you are dividing your life. You may even decide that it is time to spend more time in another area.

Here are the major areas of those Aspects of Life and I have included a couple of topics that fall under those major areas just to get you going.  You can make up your own lists.

• Relationships – Family, friends, colleagues, mentors
• Health – fitness, medical, well-being
• Spiritual – religion, culture, beliefs, meditation, personal development
• Recreation – hobbies, sports, activities, travel, charity, interests
• Financial – income, investment, budget
• Work – career, jobs
• Education – study, school, learning, personal development
• Home – living, house, location, property,renovations,building

Step-by-Step Guide

(there are examples at the end of this guide)

1. make notes about yourself under each topic. Write as much as you like. Do a complete brain dump or just write down what you did today under each topic.
2. prioritise each topic  by it’s importance to you (“1” being most important).
3. time – this is optional but you might want to see just how much “quality” time you allocate to certain areas. Time is not necessarily a deciding factor because I spend 13hours away from home each day for the purpose of work and I spend 1.5hrs per day for health yet health is a number one priority on my list. However,  it can help you put some things into perspective such as these examples: You might watch TV for 2 hrs and  study for 30mins. You see how  that could highlight an area that needs changing or walk the dog for an hour and spend 10mins with your child and no time with your spouse.
4. if you choose to, you might want to make up some graphs so you can visualise these  aspects and recognise what’s dominant and what’s not. You can draw them freehand or use software. Excel has a  basic graphing tool. I included one below just to demonstrate the visual effect.

THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF A TYPICAL WEEK:

description (priority- area) time slice of 100%

• Normal work week ( 3 – work)  40%
• Went for Bushwalk with family( 2- family & 4- recreation) 10% & 10%
• Went to Yoga Meditation (6 – spiritual) 5%
• did 4 gym classes (1 – Health) 10%
• paid bills and trading (7 – Finance) 5%
• 2 Japanese classes and night classes for media (5 -Eductation) 10%
• Cleaned out linen cupboard, weeded back garden(8 – house) 10%

Simple pie chart based on time slice.

You can visually see the balance of your life in this graph based on time which is not relative to priority but it highlights areas where you may want to spend more or less time. Do this exercise from time to time as your life will go through shifts every so often. Remember the objective here is to take a look at your life and how you are spending it, managing it and identify if you are neglecting things that are special to you. Take control of it before someone else does. Try and spread yourself across all aspects of life to give yourself variety and to ensure no one thing dominates your life.