Do you know how when you work for a company or someone else, you’re often given a performance review? Perhaps one each year or one every 6 months?
How often have you done a performance review on your life up till now?
Well, 5 years ago, I did a performance review of my life. I was in the process of getting a new certification for my work as a life coach, which led me to really get into a deep analysis of my own life. I saw patterns of when I was feeling my best, completely in the zone, and when I was feeling my worst, when everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong.
When I was feeling my best, was when I often made choices that seemingly went against what was popular at the time, but felt right to me. For example, choosing a career path that felt so authentic to me, but questionable to others. Or opening up to other options of becoming a mom (like adoption) when we weren’t getting pregnant, while others felt it was a bad choice. Or choosing a partner who did not have a college degree, when others felt it was a mistake.
And on the flip side, I discovered my dark times were a direct result of one of 4 things, or any combination of the 4:
1. Not taking care of some aspect of my whole health. Either my mental state was not in a good place (we call this getting in your own head), my emotional state was out of control, my physical state was lagging, or my soulful state felt crushed. Something was off.
2. I felt alone. My relationships with the people in my life felt like a big void. There seemed to be no one I could talk to about anything hard I was going through. Everyone was busy with their own lives and no one seemed to care about mine.
3. I felt stuck. Things were not working, even though I was trying so hard to make them work. Things were not going my way, and sometimes completely out of my control. I’m not one to give up easily, but everything I tried seemed to fail. I felt exhausted, depleted and hopeless. My life was not evolving in the way I wanted it to.
4. I was stuck in a daily grind, doing the same things and spending 1/3 of my time doing them, more out of obligation and sometimes just for the dollar payoff, but not really feeling like this was what I was meant to do … for the rest of my life.
So the big revelation came to me as I pondered all of these situations, from the most daunting times to the best of times, that there are 4 areas of life, or 4 gateways I like to call them, that if we just focused on mastering our methods and madness around these 4 gateways, then you’d be opening up yourself to enter through these gateways and stepping onto a path to a better, more fulfilling life.
They are:
1. Your whole health (your gateway to a long and vibrant existence)
2. Your relationships (your gateway to everything)
3. Your personal growth (your gateway to success)
4. Your purpose (your gateway to meaning)
Some of you may already be working on some or maybe all of these 4, and that’s fantastic!
So now let’s think for a moment… notice how I didn’t mention wealth or money?
You may be thinking, well, these 4 gateways are nice and all, but I need to focus on making money, paying the bills. And yes, of course you do.
But if all you’ve been doing is working to pay the bills and you’ve never given much attention to these other 4 areas of your life, then what do you think will happen over time? You’ll still be working to pay the bills. That’s what. And… in the process you may damage your whole health, end up in an unhealthy relationship, burn out on the work you’re doing because 1) you don’t even like it and/or 2) you’re tired of not getting ahead financially for as hard as you work.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are also plenty of wealthy people in this world who are in poor health, bad relationships, walk around with huge egos masking their inner wounded child or just plain unhappy because they still don’t feel fulfillment in their lives, even with all the money they have.
So now that you know about these 4 gateways to a much better quality of life, which ones do you think you could use help and support in?
I'd love to hear in the comments.
Sending you love and light.
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