Determine where you are now
Designing and building a rich, full and meaningful life can only start from where you are now.
Just as a ship can only start from the port where it is, designing and building a rich, full and meaningful life can only start from where you are now. You cannot start your life design journey from where you hoped you would be or where you would like to be. But even if your starting point isn’t really what you want, you can still design and build a well-designed life from there.
You need to know where you are before you can decide which direction to go. That’s why you are now going to determine where you are in four major areas of life: physical health, emotional health, work and relationships.
Note: Your life purpose and personal values are your personal compass that guides your actions, words and decisions. See the ‘Related life design blog posts’ section if you need help determining this.
Life areas
The four life areas include the following aspects.
👉 Physical health
This life area is about the well-being of your body and its various systems and functions. Your physical health is an essential pillar of your overall well-being as it affects every aspect of your life. You only have one body, which supports everything you do, so you better take good care of it. If your physical health is not optimal, then probably other life areas are also not running optimally.
👉 Emotional health
This area of life is about your ability to accept your feelings and control your reactions to those feelings. Emotional health is also referred to as mental health or psychological well-being. It can include spirituality, the belief in something bigger than yourself. This life area is also an essential pillar of your overall well-being, as your level of emotional health affects all other life areas.
👉 Work
This life area involves activities that require physical or mental effort. This concerns both paid and unpaid work. Most people deal with more than one form of work at the same time. Examples: salaried employment, charity work, volunteer work, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, childcare, grocery shopping, and taking care of family members. This life area encompasses your professional development.
👉 Relationships
This life area is about your sense of connection with others: partner, children, parents, brothers, sisters, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and everyone else with whom you feel connected. It also includes your sense of connection with your pets, nature, your home, the environment, the world, and things like art and music. Having a few meaningful relationships is important for your emotional health.
👉 Additional life area
If there is a life area that you want to include because it is very important to you, by all means do so. You may want to add a life area such as family, spirituality, leisure, finances, or personal growth.
⚒️ Determine how it is going now
Determine how it is going now by completing the following steps.
1️⃣ Create a table for each life area
To determine how it is going, grab a pen and paper, or open an electronic document. For each life area, draw or electronically create a table similar to the one below: for physical health, emotional health, work, relationships and, if applicable, your additional life area. Leave enough space in each table to allow you to enter multiple entries.
2️⃣ Identify what is going well and what could be improved
For each of the life areas, describe in key points what is going well in your life and what could be improved. The purpose of this step is to take stock of how things are going, not to change anything right now.
Some hints & tips before you start
· By nature, we tend to pay more attention to negative things than positive things (see the References section if you want to learn more about this). To get a balanced view of a life area, it is important to not only pay attention to what can be improved, but also to the most important things that are going well.
· Only include things that you can do something about, that you can influence. Accept things beyond your control as circumstances, as facts.
· Be curious and look at yourself and your life objectively from a distance, as if you were an impartial scientist closely monitoring your life situation. Be honest with yourself, and see reality as it is.
· Don't judge yourself negatively about what could be improved. Your life is imperfect and that's okay because perfect lives don’t exist. Don't praise yourself for what goes right. Just look objectively and honestly at your life situation.
· Where possible, note the reason why something is not going well enough yet. What do you think is the reason why this is not going well enough?
Fill in each life area table based on your perception of how things are going. On the left side of each table, write down the main things or activities that are going well for you, that energise you, that make you happy, or that align with your personal values or life purpose. On the right side of each table, write down the main things or activities that could be improved, that drain your energy, that don't make you happy, or that don't align with your personal values or life purpose.
👉 Complete the physical health table
In this life area you can think of aspects such as sleep, rest, exercise, sports, nutrition, hydration, breathing, blood pressure, body weight, waist-to-hip ratio, cholesterol levels, heart rate, tobacco smoking, vaping, alcohol and drug use, fatigue, muscle strength and endurance, aerobic endurance, flexibility, mobility, regular medical checkups.
👉 Complete the emotional health table
This is about your emotional health in general, not about how you feel today. In the ‘What could be better’ column, only list things that significantly hinder your daily functioning. For example, things that prevent you from doing what you think is important, or things that you waste a lot of mental energy on.
In this life area you can think of aspects such as recognising and understanding your feelings, mentally accepting difficult thoughts and feelings, dealing with life’s challenges in a healthy way, dealing with stress, expressing your feelings in appropriate ways, mentally accepting yourself and your life situation, the way you talk to yourself about yourself, prioritising self-care activities, seeking emotional support when needed, having a sense of life purpose, taking responsibility for your life and your actions, being able to focus your attention, and having a growth mindset.
👉 Complete the work table
As noted earlier, this area includes both paid and unpaid work and your professional development. It's not so much about what you do (paid or unpaid), but why you do it, so answer for yourself questions like: Why am I actually working? What motivates me to go to work? What makes work worthwhile for me?
In this life area you can think of aspects such as how your work aligns with your life purpose and personal values, activities that give energy and activities that cost energy, activities that make you feel fulfilled and activities that make you feel unfulfilled, job satisfaction, job security, compensation, work-life balance, flexibility, sense of belonging, feeling involved in your work, health and safety, autonomy, recognition, fulfilment, workload, service to others, and opportunities for professional.
👉 Complete the relationships table
In this life area you can think of aspects like the quality of your relationships with the people that are important to you, your number of true friends, having a life partner, active listening, expressing thoughts and feelings honestly and openly, resolving conflicts constructively, dealing effectively with criticism, keeping commitments, mutual respect, empathy, offering and receiving emotional support, setting and respecting boundaries, shared personal values and goals, independence, adaptability to change and growth within relationships, honesty, transparency, expressing appreciation and gratitude, and feeling connected to nature, art, music, or pets.
👉 If applicable, complete the table for your additional life area.
3️⃣ Validate and refine your table entries
Check the data you entered in the tables using the hints & tips under point 2 and change data if necessary. At the end of each day for a few days, review the data in each table and add or remove data based on your insights and experiences for that day.
Take your time. It’s important to determine where you really are right now in each of these life areas so you can properly decide which area needs improvement the most.
4️⃣ Rate the life areas
Draw or electronically create a table similar to the table below. If applicable, add your additional life area.
Some hints & tips before you rate each life area from 1 to 10
· Just before rating a life area, read the entries in the table describing what is going well and what can be improved.
· Don't overthink the rating. This is your subjective assessment of how things are going right now. Only you know what is or isn’t going well enough for you at the moment. Only you can determine your score for each life area.
· Be honest with yourself, acknowledge reality as it is now.
· Don't judge yourself for low scores. All scores are okay. Don’t waste mental energy internally resisting your life situation, but use your energy to create the life you want. You can design and build a well-designed life from any starting point.
· Think of the scores as gauges on a car's dashboard. Your scores tell you something about the state of your life areas. Sometimes a score warns you that urgent action is required, much like a red warning light on a car's dashboard.
For each life area, indicate how you are doing right now by rating the area on a scale of 1 (terrible) to 10 (perfect). For each area of life, write a one-sentence statement explaining why you gave it this score. To this end, you may want to consider what needs, desires, or personal values are or are not being met.
5️⃣ Keep your results
Keep everything you wrote down, as this information is needed for the next steps in the life design process and for future reference.
🎉👏🎈
You now have determined for important areas in your life how things are going right now. The next step in the life design process is to determine where you want to go:
https://www.a3lifedesign.com/blog-english/determine-where-you-want-to-go
References
Designing Your Life, by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
Related life design blog posts
How to figure out your personal values, A3 Life Design, by Adrie Kuil,
https://www.a3lifedesign.com/blog-english/how-to-figure-out-your-personal-values
How to figure out what to do with your life, A3 Life Design, by Adrie Kuil,
https://www.a3lifedesign.com/blog-english/how-to-figure-out-what-to-do-with-your-life
Determine where you want to go, A3 Life Design, by Adrie Kuil,
https://www.a3lifedesign.com/blog-english/determine-where-you-want-to-go
Determine a path to where you want to go, A3 Life Design, by Adrie Kuil,
https://www.a3lifedesign.com/blog-english/determine-a-path-to-where-you-want-to-go