Categories
Personal Growth Map

Aligning Your Life Areas

Aligning your life areas

If I was to ask you:

What are the biggest challenges to life balance?

What would be the first reasons that come to mind?

It’s OK, you can take a minute or two to think about this…

What’s holding YOU back from leading a balanced life?

I’m willing to bet good (Monopoly) money that “lack of time” and “lack of money” made an appearance on your list, if not a prominent one.

But there’s an important obstacle to life balance that we tend to overlook and, therefore, don’t overcome.

And that obstacle is… friction.

Before we look at ways to remove friction from our lives, let’s consider why friction arises in the first place.

Why Do We Experience Friction?

Friction occurs when our life areas aren’t properly aligned with each other, or the activities we do within a single life area don’t serve a common purpose.

To make progress in life, you need to define what success means in each life area, and what it means for your life, in general.

If your goals clash, or you’re not acting in ways to reach your goals, then you will experience friction.

Suppose, for example, you hold the Spiritual belief that money is the root of all evil, yet success in your Professional life area means that you make money to support the lifestyle you want. Your Spiritual belief will either stop you from reaching your Professional goal, or you’ll experience guilt for the success you achieve in your Professional life area.

That’s friction.

You’re unable to enjoy and build on your Professional success because you’re making Spiritual compromises.

Every step forward in your Professional life area brings you a step (or two) back in your Spiritual life area.

While your financial wealth grows, your soul shrinks.

Not because money is evil, but because you believe it’s evil, and the contradiction between how you define success in your Spiritual and Professional life areas causes friction that undermines your overall well-being and your ability to experience life balance.

This is a common conflict many people experience, and there are many more common and uncommon ways in which we experience conflict and, therefore, friction in our lives.

Do you find it difficult to make sense of your Spiritual beliefs, because you hold many Intellectual objections to them?

That’s friction.

Do your Recreational activities involve eating junk food in front of the TV, yet you want to lose weight and achieve Physical health, at the same time?

That’s friction.

Do you recognize your Psychological needs to care for yourself and your emotional well-being, yet ignore these needs and make continuous compromises to strengthen Social ties?

That’s friction.

You can experience friction between all your life areas (and within them), and it’s this friction that can greatly undermine your efforts to lead a balanced life.

So…

How Can We Align Our Life Areas?

I’m glad I asked!

Below are 3 simple tips you can use to align your life areas, and remove the friction that’s holding you back.

1- Explicitly define your goals:

What do you consider “success” in each life area?

To know where your life areas clash, you need to explicitly define what your goals are for each life area. You might be able to notice obvious contradictions, as soon as you write your goals down.

It helps to visualize success in each life area. If you were Spiritually successful, what would your life look like? If you were Intellectually successful, how would you behave? Go through all the life areas, and spell out what would make them successful.

Remember, you want to consider all life areas: Spiritual, Intellectual, Psychological, Social, Professional, Recreational, and Physical.

You will also need to define what life success is, and what it looks like. That is, what would make your entire life successful? What do you want your life to look like, and what would you like to accomplish in your lifetime?

Look out for ways your life goals clash with your goals in each life area, and possible ways your goals within each life area may clash.

Once you have your goals defined, you can think of ways to adjust your goals (or completely drop some of them) so that you would no longer live with contradictions between your goals.

I find it insanely difficult to sit at my desk and jot down a list of my goals, which is why I prefer to visualize what I’d like my life to look like. Holding an image in my mind, then describing that image is much easier for me than to come up with a list of goals. This approach might work better for you, as well.

2- Listen to your emotions:

The best indicators of friction are your emotions. While you might be able to overlook contradictions on an intellectual/conscious level, your emotions tend to point out that there’s something wrong in your system (even if they can’t figure out what the problem is).

This is why intuition can play an important role in your life.

By listening to your emotions, and being aware of any feelings of discomfort that can be attributed to inner conflicts, you’ll be able to acknowledge the existence of friction, and use your emotions as a guide to where the friction might exist.

You can ask yourself: How do I feel about this goal/activity? Why do I feel this way about it?

You’d be surprised by what you can uncover with this approach!

3- Figure out what’s holding you back:

While procrastination is commonly blamed on the fear of failure, the issue is a bit more complicated than that.

I can’t go through all the reasons for why we resort to procrastination, but one of the strongest reasons is friction.

If you don’t believe a task you want to do (e.g. putting ads on your site) is right, then you’ll put it off to avoid acting against your own values. The solution might not be to remove the task from your agenda, but to dig deeper to find out whether it is the right thing to do or not. Not just professionally, but morally, as well.

You don’t have to follow popular Professional practices. You need to check in with your own Spiritual principles, and make sure the practices don’t conflict with the principles. Either the practice is wrong, or your principle is wrong (or wrongly applied).

You might think that ads on your site are annoying to your readers when, in fact, your readers might appreciate knowing about products and services they would not have found out about.

Whenever you don’t feel inclined to get a task done, a likely reason can be that there’s a goal that is tugging you in a different direction.

Ask yourself: What’s holding me back from doing this? What do I think about it? Do I feel comfortable doing this?

You can discover areas of friction by being aware of the issues you don’t feel comfortable facing, or when you get “stuck” and don’t know what’s holding you back.

Personal Growth Advice Can Be Simple, But Not Necessarily Easy

I went through a time in my life where I ignored my emotions so much, to the extent that I became numb to them. I wouldn’t be able to answer “how do you feel?” with any depth. You might experience some difficulty with these tips, but I believe they are useful guidelines to work with, and they encourage you to learn important life skills.

Give them a try, even if they prove to be difficult at first. Removing friction in your life is a worthwhile investment you shouldn’t overlook.

If you have any tips to add, or questions to raise, the comments section is at your disposal!

Photo credit: –Mike–

Categories
Relationships

Is The Rise In The Divorce Rate A Problem?

Separation Sculpture One of the trends that’s regularly used to prove that we’re living in dark and dangerous times, and that the situation is only getting darker, is the rising divorce rate.

But is it really a problem?

I can think of 3 positive developments that have contributed to the rise in divorces:

1- Women’s empowerment: Women haven’t always had a say in who to marry, let alone choosing to leave their husbands. That a wife can now exercise her right to leave a marriage is a very healthy development.

2- Exercising choice: Admitting that we’ve made a mistake is hard enough. Doing something about it is even harder. A divorce can be an acknowledgement that things aren’t working out, and the couple want to call it quits. People are realizing that they have a choice in how to lead their lives, and what they can do about past decisions.

3- Happiness matters: When couples break up because they’re unhappy, it means they value their happiness. In my book, that makes divorce a good sign.

So is divorce a problem or not?

My answer would be: It’s not even the issue!

Our obsession with the divorce rate is making us overlook the real problem we should be addressing. The rise in the divorce rate is only a symptom, which we can do nothing about, without tackling the problem that’s causing it.

Divorce isn’t the problem.

The real problem is: dysfunctional relationships.

People aren’t taking the divorce route to go somewhere, but to leave something. And that “thing” is a dysfunctional relationship.

Sadly, we’re being encouraged to get married, whether to start a family, settle down, avoid committing sins, etc., without being taught what a relationship involves and how to make marriage a home for happiness and not a prison of problems.

When I was 20 years old – and single – a religious scholar told me that I was already 4 years late to getting married!

Talk of marriage and its importance is very common. But advice on how to treat a spouse, what to expect from a relationship, and how to positively engage with problems are commonly overlooked.

Besides, “happiness” isn’t usually included in the marriage formula. It’s something you abandon during your initiation rites into married life. (That’s why guys throw bachelor parties!)

But happiness does matter, and we need to bring it back into the marriage formula.

One way of doing that is to look at the signs of a dysfunctional relationship – i.e. a relationship where one or both partners don’t see the relationship contributing positively to their life experience – and see how we can avoid the thoughts and behaviors that get in the way of a healthy relationship.

But Think of the Children!

When a parent contemplates a divorce, they’re often asked to think of their children before making a decision.

But as we’ve seen, divorce isn’t the problem. The dysfunctional relationship is. Divorce is just the (unfortunate?) result of a problem that isn’t being effectively addressed.

Children will be better off not living within a dysfunctional relationship, rather than have their parents set a negative example for them to follow when they grow older.

So don’t blame the divorce, and look at what can be done to fix dysfunctional relationships.

Your Thoughts

I’ll be writing a post on some of the signs of dysfunctional relationships, and would like to know what your thoughts are about this issue.

What have you noticed in your own relationship, or in other people’s relationships, that compromise happiness, rather than foster it?

And what do you believe can be done to improve relationships, so they can contribute positively to people’s lives?

Photo credit: Daquella Manera

Categories
Coaching Personal Growth

Why “Self-Help” is Misleading

Misleading_Traffic_Signal

The principle at the core of all personal growth (a.k.a. “self-help”) literature is:

Your life is your responsibility.

Your thoughts, your emotions, and your actions are under your control.

If you wish to grow as an individual, you must take responsibility for your success, and do what’s in your power to accomplish your goals.

This is a very liberating idea.

Rather than see yourself as the victim of circumstance and other people’s decisions, you can focus on your own abilities and the opportunities open to you to achieve happiness. People and circumstances can’t dictate how you feel. That’s a choice for you to make.

“Self-help” literature is intended to equip you with the beliefs and practices that make your life journey easier and more enjoyable.

However, it can also make things much more difficult for you.

“Self-Help” is Misleading

I’m not talking about the harms of bad advice, dangerous practices, or an unhealthy obsession with self-help books. These, and many more, are potential harms that we need to be aware of.

But what I’m talking about here is our understanding of what self-help means, and how to go about improving our lives.

The reason why self-help is misleading is that it gives the impression that you have to approach personal growth – and your life problems – on your own.

After all, you’re helping yourself out and taking responsibility for your own life, so why rely on others to do that for you?

For many years, this was an impression that was firmly ingrained in my subconscious, even though I would consciously reject it. One of my earliest posts here was about the value of coaching, but I’ve always refused to get a coach because I thought that I can – and have to – do things on my own.

It’s in the name: self-help!

But recently, I discovered what I’ve been missing out on all this time, and how getting a life coach can be a life-changing experience.

Life Coach or Magician?

Blogger and life coach Tim Brownson recently offered free life coaching for the winner of a contest he was running, and ended up picking six winners to try out his coaching at no charge.

I was one of the winners.

So far, I’ve had only 2 sessions with Tim.

They consisted of friendly chats over Skype. About how I was feeling overwhelmed with all the ideas I had for this blog (and other projects), and what I can do about being overwhelmed. Most of what we talked about I already knew, but Tim picked out a few tips for me to try out.

The result?

I hadn’t written a blog post for over 3 weeks before my first session with Tim. During the week after my first session, I wrote 3 posts!

After my second session, I wrote 2 posts and managed to complete a guide that I’ve been struggling with for over 2 months… in a week!

Since the first session, I feel much more relaxed about my work and can focus much more easily.

I still can’t quite put my finger on what Tim did, but it worked!

Interaction with a fellow human being, especially one who can understand what you’re going through and direct your awareness to the solutions you can use, is a powerful approach to self-help.

If you feel like talking to someone or getting a life coach, don’t let the name fool you: Self-help isn’t about doing things on your own.

It’s about figuring out what’s best for you and pursuing the things that can bring your life forward.

Even if it’s to ask others for help.

Have you ever felt the need to do things on your own, and ashamed to ask others for help?

Do you have any life coaching experience you’d like to share?

If so, then please leave a comment below!

Photo credit: caesararum

Categories
Parenting

Why Are Kids So Damn Annoying?

Angry ChildLet’s face it. You try to be a good, patient parent, but there comes a time (usually called “day time” or “night time”) when your kids drive you insane, and you can’t make sense of why they treat you the way they do, when you’re only trying to be nice to them.

You try to control their behavior (so they wouldn’t be so annoying and can grow up to be responsible adults), but that never seems to work. They’re committed to testing your patience, and usually succeed in seeing you crack.

So why are kids so damn annoying, and what can you do, as a parent, to correct this?

Luckily for you, I have 2 tips to help you “deal” with your pesky children:

1) Your kids aren’t the problem:

When it comes to parenting, and almost any situation in life where your patience is tested, it’s not the situation that’s the problem, but your fear that you won’t be able to handle the situation effectively.

You’re afraid of making a mistake. You’re afraid of not knowing what to do, or not having enough personal strength and resilience to manage yourself in that situation. You feel that you’ll be judged by others for not being a good parent (or a good human being).

At times you’re struggling with another issue that’s making you feel anxious and worried, and your children aren’t giving you enough space to think your problem through, so you see them as the problem, without realizing that you’re only taking out your frustration at them.

But because your children aren’t to blame, there’s no reason to take your frustration out at them.

Be aware of the issues that annoy you, and look for ways to deal with these issues, rather than suppress your feelings about them.

Don’t be harsh on yourself, or harsh on your children.

2) Your kids are kids:

We tend to feel frustrated when we want things to be different than what they are. We expect a dial-up Internet connection to behave like a broadband line, and get frustrated when our expectations aren’t met. We snap when we drop a glass vase and it shatters into a million pieces because we don’t want a glass vase to break. We fume when our children don’t behave the way we want them to, because we expect them to behave like mature adults, and not as children.

But kids are kids, and will behave as kids. They’re not fully mature, so they don’t know how to handle every situation effectively, and don’t have proper control over their emotions, or a sound understanding of how the world (and social customs) work. How many adults do you know that act maturely in every situation? So why do we expect children to behave impeccably?

It’s important to treat children as children, and not to take any shortcuts in their upbringing by condemning them for not behaving as adults, or expecting them to follow our instructions, without giving them room to think for themselves.

It’s wonderful to see children behave as children (which is not always apparent, given other life challenges we face!), and the natural phase of human development they’re going through. How they discover things for the first time. How they try to voice their opinions and express their feelings. How they meet new challenges: what they have the courage to face, and what they’re too afraid to confront. How they try to mimic your behavior and what expressions they learn to use. How they develop their likes and dislikes.

Whenever you find yourself getting annoyed by your children, remember that they are children, and you shouldn’t be expecting any more from them than they are able to do at this part of their development.

See the world through their eyes, and you might appreciate what they’re going through. 🙂

Photo credit: mindaugasdanys

Categories
Intellectual Parenting

Why It’s Wrong To Obsess Over The Right Answer

wrong_turn

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
~ Mark Twain

Parents and teachers often have the greatest of intentions and genuine concern for their children’s well-being and education, but it is all too common for educators to take the wrong approach to education, which impedes learning rather than facilitate it.

Many of us carry psychological scars as a result of our schooling, which continue to our adulthood, without us ever consciously addressing these scars. We have come to accept that learning is difficult and is taxing on the brain, without realizing why that is.

One of the worst mistakes educators commit is obsessing over the right answer, rather than encourage independent thinking.

This isn’t to say that any answer is equally valid to any other, or that we all have unique answers based on unique perspectives. In many issues, there is a right answer and a heap of wrong answers.

But that’s not the point.

The point is, as human beings, we need to know how to use our brains for thinking, in the same way we learn how to use our legs for walking.

Being told to memorize answers, without knowing why they’re true, bypasses the thinking process, and sees the human brain as a storage house, with no cognitive apparatus that acts on and analyzes the information it stores.

But the human brain is a marvelous computer, not a hard drive.

It is crucial that we feel comfortable thinking for ourselves, without being afraid of making mistakes every now and then. And the more we refine our thinking, the fewer mistakes we are likely to make. In the same way an infant struggles to walk at first, and constantly falters during his initial attempts, then walks more and more steadily as he learns how to use his legs and body, we need to go through a similar learning process when it comes to the use of our rational faculty.

This learning should have come at an early age, but well-meaning educators were too concerned with filling our brains with information rather than encourage us to develop our own thinking.

It is impossible to develop understanding without knowing how to think. We can memorize information without too much mental processing. But understanding involves connecting bits of information together, and looking for consistency between them to form a bigger picture from all the smaller pieces. That involves thinking.

Understanding is an essential component to healthy living. It helps us make sense of daily events and allows us to reach conclusions based on the knowledge we already possess, thereby expanding our knowledge through mental effort. Trying to hold disconnected factoids about the world in our brains can become too taxing for our memory recall. Understanding helps us make our way from one piece of information to another, based on the connections that link them together and the context they share.

I usually don’t ask my students for the right answer. I ask them for an answer (any answer that conveys their understanding), and base my explanation on what they already understand (or what they have misunderstood). That way I respect their own thinking, but offer them guidance on where they went wrong and how they can reach the right answer. Some students feel too embarrassed to reveal their ignorance, or to give a wrong answer (a sign of bad education), and opt for a shrug of the shoulders or a blank: “I don’t know.”

Learning involves a great deal of mistakes, and there’s no reason to feel guilty or bad about making intellectual errors. We don’t learn by hiding our ignorance. We learn by revealing what we know, and being open to opportunities to improve our thinking. We should also encourage our children to think for themselves, rather than snap at them whenever they say something nonsensical.

For example, if your child came to you and said: “Pigs can fly!”

It’s not wise to reply: “You idiot! What made you think they can fly? Pigs can’t fly!”

A better approach would be to encourage your child to think for himself by asking thought-provoking questions and offering facts for him to consider: “How can pigs fly? They don’t have wings.”

If your child says: “They can use a rocket!” then his initial statement was right, and there’s no need to undermine his creative thinking process. That’s a mark of intelligence, not wild imagination, because he considered an alternative way to flying that doesn’t involve wings!

It’s this kind of thinking that should be encouraged by educators, and exercised by children and adults alike.

Photo credit: jurvetson