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Visioning & Self-Assessment Tool

Friday, April 24th, 2009

Sometimes you know that something’s wrong – you feel just blah, but you’re not sure what’s wrong or what to do about it. One of my favorite tools is a self-assessment pie, which I first saw in Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. The idea is to rate your fulfillment in several categories to see what areas of your life need addressing. This is not a remedy for depression, of course. For that you should seek professional help. But it can help if you’re just out of sorts. For instance, here’s an assessment I made on a rather down day:

assessment

 

The smallest circle represents unfulfillment, while the area of the outside circle represents complete fulfillment. As you can see, I feel pretty good about the relationship with my son, and with my work, and I feel I’ve been living in my life mission. I’m feeling rather low when it comes to my friends, fun & adventure, and my spirituality.

A note on the categories: These are the categories that are most important to me. You might choose other categories to look at, such as finances or extended family (Cameron’s includes play and romance).

So what do you do with this information? For each item that needs improvement, come up with two or three things that could help. In my example, I could be more fulfilled with friends if I called friends to talk, or invited them to coffee or lunch. For fun and adventure, I might go dancing with my wife or do something I’ve never done before. For spirituality, I wrote down meditate and walk in nature. The first thing I decided to do was call friends and invite them to go for a walk with me in the woods, at a trail I’d never been to before, thus taking care of all three areas, plus self-care, at the same time. As it turns out, the four friends I called were all busy that day, but I did go for a walk in the woods and felt better in the end.

Life Pie for Visioning Your Life
The pie can also be used in the long-term, to vision the life you want and to see where you need to spend time creating balance. Before spending time visioning each area, be sure to go through the mission discovery process. Then, with your life mission in hand, you can spend time visioning each area of your life. For instance in the area of self-care, I vision myself as healthy with an able body and mind into my nineties. At this point don’t spend too much time on the actions needed to fulfill this vision. The vision for the area should not go counter to your life mission, and when you get all the various visions down, you may find some areas that require compromise. For instance, a vision of a lawyer making partner in a firm may run counter to a vision of spending lots of time with family. That’s one of the main points of this exercise, to highlight conflicts, get clear on your values and priorities, and make a clear and conscious choice about the whole life that you will create for yourself. 

After getting the vision down in each area, you can work on general action steps needed to fulfill the vision, and break that down further into short-term steps you’re going to take.

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Re-Scheduling for Balance and Joy

Friday, April 24th, 2009

Most people whose life is out of balance are so busy, they can’t figure out how to get in the activities that they really want. Usually the remedy is to cut out activities that don’t give you a wonderful present or future, and substitute activities that do give you a wonderful present or future. But what do you cut? Here’s one idea:

  1. Make a calendar for every day of the week with space for every hour of each day (days in columns, time in rows).
  2. For the next week, record how you spend your time, and next to each activity, rate your pleasure and/or accomplishment using a 5 point scale, 5 being highest. Be sure to include sleep, eating, and work. For example, if you went for a walk in the woods and felt very good, you might rate that a P5 for high pleasure. Getting your bills all paid might be a A4 for a somewhat high feeling of accomplishment. Watching a TV reality show might give you a P1, because you realize by the end that you feel pretty bad having watched it.
  3. Meanwhile, come up with a list of activities you’d like to include in your life, whether it is pleasurable or moves you towards your goals. See 10 Habits above for some pleasure ideas, see my Pleasure List, and see other areas on this site for goal oriented tasks.
  4. At the end of the week, make a new calendar in which you schedule your week, cutting out your low P and A activities, and substituting activities from your new list. Leave some open spaces, and when the time comes, consider doing another item from your new list. If you find that your job or your spouse are not bringing you joy, I am not recommending cutting them out of your life. You could look at the other sections of this site for help with life mission, career, or relationships, and you could talk with your coach.
  5. Spend another week doing your scheduled activities, and again rate the activities as you do them for pleasure and accomplishment.
  6. At the end of the week, ask yourself if your feel better about how you are spending your time now. Do you feel better? Is there something different you want to do? If you experience resistance to cutting activities or doing your new activities, consider discussing with your coach. Revise the process as needed.

Let me know how it goes, or if you have other ideas.

 

Visit Creating Balance on Steve’s website.

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Your 10 Habits for Feeling Great

Friday, April 24th, 2009

We all know there are some activities we do that make us feel great. Perhaps it is going dancing or singing. Unfortunately, we often get so busy, that we forget to do those activities that give us so much pleasure and satisfaction. To make sure you include these activities in your life, come up with your own top-10 habits. For example, here is my list:

  1. Bless myself and honor the seven directions, pray, or meditate.
  2. Make a to-do list, prioritize it, and keep it short.
  3. Bless others or help someone grow.
  4. Connect with someone besides my wife and son.
  5. Exercise or cook or take vitamins. Drink plenty of water.
  6. Spend time outside.
  7. Create art, journal, or write.
  8. Sing or play an instrument.
  9. Spend quality time with my wife and/or my son.
  10. Check-in with my feelings in my journal, give thanks, and find something positive about others, the world, and my day.

I can’t do all of these every day, but I can do some of them every day, some weekly, and some every two weeks. Also notice, that I’ve given myself some options. For instance, I might sing one day, and play an instrument another day. To make your own list, follow these steps:

  1. Brainstorm on all the possible things that bring you joy. Do this quickly and be open to whatever comes. Consider things you’ve done in the past and haven’t done for a long time. For additional ideas, see my Pleasure List.
  2. Rate your list with a 5 or 10 point scale to determine which items will bring you the most pleasure or satisfaction. Eliminate anything that you think you “should” do. For instance, exercise might be a “should” for you rather than a “want.” While I do advocate getting exercise, even when you don’t feel like doing it, don’t put it on your top-10 list. You can work on exercise as a separate project.
  3. Narrow your list to the things that you expect will consistently bring you joy or satisfaction. Keep it positive. Instead of “drink less coffee,” write, “drink plenty of healthy drinks.” Allow yourself the option of having a top-9 or top-11.
  4. Commit to how often you want to do each item – daily, three times a week, etc.
  5. Practice your new habits, and note which ones brought you the joy and satisfaction you wanted, and which ones you resisted doing. Items you resisted might have been “shoulds.” Consider replacing these items with something else. If you’re sure that you’re resisting a want, then you might want to take a look at that resistance with your coach.
I’d love to hear about your habits and your success story!
Visit the Creating Balance page on Steve’s website.

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