The Four Areas of Your Life

            How is your life going? Are some areas good and others… not so much? Did you know there are really four aspects of life that you must master to have a truly incredible life? Right now you’re thinking, “Sure. Sounds too simple.” Indeed it is simple to have an incredible life. It’s not easy, but it’s not complicated either. Here are the four areas of life that you must acknowledge and control to truly have an incredible life.

Mental Life— The mental part of your life relates to your belief systems and the way you make meaning of the world. Your mental life is the philosophy you have about life, business, family and everything else. The mental world is how we all make meaning of what happens and how we determine what to do. The easiest way to identify your mental world is to think about the thoughts you produce daily. “He hates me.” “She thinks I’m ugly.” “I’m so smart.” “Everyday above ground is a good day.” All of these thoughts reflect what’s going on with you mentally. Your philosophy about everything in life all comes from your mental life. Mentally, you must develop a success philosophy that will produce thoughts and therefore habits which will serve you.

Emotional Life— Emotions are really just chemical reactions in the body and brain, but they have a tremendous impact on the quality of our lives. Emotions can be affected by the thoughts you produce, but emotions can also occur independently. In fact, when we think about the quality of life, what we are really talking about is how much time you spend in positive emotional states. Happiness, gratitude, ecstasy are all states of emotion that most value and wish to spend time in. The elephant in the room that few are willing to say out loud is that your emotions are in your control at any given time. You get to choose what emotional states you live in. Emotion comes from the root motion–meaning that by changing your physical state, changing the foods and drinks you consume and spending time being mindful of emotions that arise in your mind, you can have complete control over your emotions. The key is to remember that you CAN be in control of them, but to do this you must be mindful of what emotions you are experiencing and take action to shift your emotional state to one that you value.

Physical Life— We live in what we perceive to be a physical world. Everything, everyone, our bodies present in a physical form. This is easy to understand, but it’s worth noting that most people do not have control over the physical aspect of life. The current epidemics of obesity, heart disease, and prescription drug addiction suggest that mastering the physical world is far from complete for humanity. Though we have discovered secrets of the universe like electricity, gravity, radio waves and x-rays, bacteria and other planets, there are many more physical aspects to life that people have yet to discover and understand. For the purposes of this article, however, I suggest that you start by getting control over this aspect of your life first. The reason being that your physical life controls so much of how you view the world. Your health, energy level and vitality directly affects your mental and emotional world, and by changing yourself physically, you can have a positive or negative effect on the quality of your life. Start by getting fit, gaining strength and developing the capacity to produce more energy. (Energy is not something you have, it’s something you produce.)

Spiritual Life— This area of life is by far the most misunderstood. The word spiritual usually brings about thoughts of religion. However the word spirit comes from the root “spiritus” meaning breath. Spirituality really predates any religion and it’s root meaning shows how truly the important this part of life is. Spirituality deals with our consciousness and its contents. To understand spirituality, you must recognize that you are not your thoughts. You are the one who is producing them and listening to them. Your spiritual world reflects your ability to ability to separate yourself from your thoughts and feels as well as recognize there are other states of consciousness available to you through meditation and mindfulness. Some call this prayer. Some call it something else. What it really is though is the ability to recognize and connect to an infinite energy and intelligence that is apart from the thoughts your mind produces. To become spiritual then, you must first recognize that you are separate from your thoughts. You are something else entirely. You are a “spiritual” being, one that is able to change your consciousness and self reflect.

Mastering these four areas of life is so difficult that I feel it’s safe to say most never achieve it. Worse, most don’t even recognize there are different aspects to life. Some say, “There’s just life.” That mindset fails to recognize that just like a stew, life can be boiled down to it is most simple ingredients. Start by acknowledging these four areas of your life and you can begin to work towards changing them in a positive way. Every area of your life should work to serve you, not hinder you in living in an incredible state most of your life.

Here’s to your incredible life,

Sean