The Seven Life Areas

Introduction

The Seven Life Areas is a map of meaning, a method for harmony. It answers the single most important question that we can ask ourselves: ‘How do I live a good life?’ By revealing the patterns of the seven areas, we expand what is possible and unlock a way of living that transforms the way we view and experience our lives. When all six areas are consciously cultivated, our purpose becomes clear, and a good life unfolds.

A living philosophy

For thousands of years, humanity has sought the meaning of life. The Greeks called this pursuit philosophia, ‘the love of wisdom’. But what we seek is already here: the experience unfolding before our eyes, life itself. At its heart, the essential question has always been the same: What do I want? The answer has echoed through time, just as the search has, and the answer is simple. What we all truly seek is wisdom — the wisdom to live a good life.

Our modern age, however, has become so complex that life often feels impossible to navigate. The structures that once guided us—religion, modern education, our elders—no longer provide clear or satisfying answers. Most frameworks, theories, and teachers focus on only one part of life while neglecting the rest. But elevating one part while ignoring others comes at a cost: imbalance, distortion, and loss.

Unlike many paths, the Seven Life Areas (7LA) seeks to integrate all of human experience, offering both a way toward your center and a way for that center to guide your everyday life. It can easily incorporate religion, education, the wisdom of our elders, and more. It’s a way to help you grow, experience, and serve in our modern times. The result is a good life, yet its deepest meaning can only be uncovered by you applying yourself.

Why do we need a map and a method?

Our society is full of highly differentiated roles—Conversion Rate Optimization Specialist, Director of Corporate Social Responsibility, Colorectal Surgeons—and it can be hard to find common ground, let alone understand all that we need to know in an ever-changing and increasingly complex world. Although a specialist economy yields great rewards, we can’t live and operate our lives from a specialist’s perspective alone. The amount of contradictory information is ever-present. Even the forces within ourselves are often in opposition.

As human beings, we sleep, socialize, work, sing, eat, move, travel, learn, pay taxes, pray, paint—the list is endless. Countless structures through the ages have provided us with direction on how to live and structure these daily activities. Whether it was the Christian church, modern universities, or our elders, these simply cannot keep up with our ever-changing circumstances. We need something that brings us back to the root of things, puts our modern developments into perspective, and can guide us through the seasons of our lives.

The 7LA is such a map, as it incorporates the essentials of human experience and provides a way to live in harmony. It is not a rigid framework, but a method for bringing purpose into our lives. Frameworks always come and go as they pass through time, yet they greatly impact how you live from moment to moment. Take the dichotomy of living in a church versus a Buddhist monastery, having a business in a capitalistic versus communistic economic model. Maps and theories have always greatly influenced our lives. It is therefore important to choose and invest wisely in any given model.

The 7LA is meant to bring the focus back on your life and where your influence lies. Once you see its patterns and make small incremental changes in your life, you’ll begin to gain clarity. You’ll become healthier, sharper in thought, increase your wealth, deepen your relationships with the people around you, awaken your heart, and connect with that which is divine. And once we pour our energy, over time, into all areas, without rejecting any of them, our purpose in life can reveal itself.

Seven Areas

Our life can be united into seven areas. Body and Relationships, Mind and Heart, Matter and Spirit, and lastly Service. Developing our body, mind, and matter produces clarity in our lives. As we become healthier, better thinkers, and bring order to our surroundings, our lives become clearer. Flow arises when relationships, heart, and spirit align. We connect more deeply with the people that matter to us, open our hearts to life, and deepen our connection with that which is divine. The result is more joy, ease, and presence. Once clarity and flow are in place, our purpose automatically reveals itself, and we know how we wish to be of service. This is a fundamental premise of this work, because we cannot bring value to anything before we’ve worked on ourselves. Gandhi said it better than I ever could, “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.’’

A huge problem in our times is that most human beings do not try to live toward their potential and reject or repress most of their experience. It is common nowadays to talk with people who are deeply stuck in their head. More reading or a PhD in neuroscience is not necessarily good for them; it is better to move and be silent in nature. Or a spiritual hippie, who wishes to “change” the world with an admiring open heart, but without any understanding of business. Here, experience as an entrepreneur could be beneficial. Or the opposite: a successful lawyer whose wife ends up leaving him because he is not around. More family time would have been good for him. Although this might seem a simple insight, which the 7LA is, it is not widely practiced and deserves our attention.

Once you understand the 7LA and start seeing the patterns in the world, it is hard to unsee them. These comical examples mentioned above are strangely prevalent in our times. It is therefore important to understand the polarity of the areas: Body and Relationships, Mind and Heart, Matter and Spirit. They are all opposites of each other. Meaning that overdeveloping one area can, and often will, lead to the negative effects of the other area(s). Only Service stands apart, without polarity, because it is what integrates and unites the other six areas.

Who This Is For?

The truth is that we need to evolve as a species and in our private lives. Changing the collective is hard, although not impossible, but changing ourselves has been repeatedly shown by the ancients to be the most effective way of bringing change into the world. I’m not in the business of motivating people to change their lives in one specific direction. Although it has a place, empty motivation does not really do much. As James Clear says, “We don’t rise to the level of our goals, but we fall to the level of our systems.” For the 7LA, it applies as follows: if one focuses his or her attention on the essentials of each area, a good life unfolds. Rejecting certain parts of life is not only often limiting but can result in severe distortion, loss, and imbalance.

It is a map and method that can incorporate and is meant to inspire a life lived as an entrepreneur, a spiritual seeker, an artist, a scientist, a family-oriented person, an athlete, or whatever it is you want to be. We’re living in incredible times, but filled with distractions, we make little use of it. The 7LA is for those who seek harmony, who dare to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, and who have the courage to keep walking, even when they stumble. This work is thus for all genders, ages, and races, but can be specifically beneficial for men who are willing to create a life they’re proud of.

We all share the same end—death. But what lies between birth and death is not fixed. The 7LA offers a path toward service, which I deem to be the highest expression of life. Its form will look different for each person and will shift across the seasons of life, but the invitation is the same: to grow, to align, and to contribute. The 7LA is about how we move through the experience of life itself. How you live it is yours to decide; no one else can define what a good life is and how you should live your life. The 7LA is simply a framework that can help you broaden your horizons and, over the course of 1–10 years, drastically alter the direction of your life.

How to Work With the 7LA?

The 7LA is not a theory to be admired but a path to be walked. To work with it, begin by asking the most important question: Why are you here? These are the steps I recommend for choosing to walk this path:

Intention
Some arrive for a reason: a marriage falling apart, a health crisis, or a need for clarity in one’s life. Others come for a season, such as becoming a writer, launching a business, or bringing a vision into reality. And some are here as a lifelong commitment to themselves and the world.

Understand the map.
Once you know your reason, study each area, read, watch the videos, and subscribe to the newsletter, so you can spend time with the material. Notice the spectra and polarities. See which area calls for attention.

Begin Small
Choose one Life Area, write what it means to you, name what is working and what isn’t, and begin improving step by step. Change happens brick by brick, pillar by pillar, Life Area by Life Area. The good life is cultivated slowly, with care, until the foundation of your life stands strong. I’ve been on this journey for many years and do not expect to ever finish it; this is a journey, not a destination.

Order of Practice
Start where life is calling you. It’s rare for all areas to be perfect, and I don’t think it will ever be the case. So, if a relationship is falling apart, you lost your job, or god is knocking on your door, start there.

Embrace All Areas
Harmony comes from tending to all areas over time. Don’t avoid what feels uncomfortable; neglected areas will return and demand attention.

Service Last
Service is not something to force or hurry. It ripens naturally as the six areas mature. From that wholeness, giving comes as a natural overflow. Rendering aid at your own expense is not service, but servitude, and will not last long.

Common Pitfalls

Yes, it’s easy to get trapped and believe in our self-imposed limits, but avoiding a few pitfalls can help us. These are simple in nature, so very hard to practice.

Never Starting
The greatest loss is never beginning. Many falter before the first step. There will never be a perfect moment — wait too long, and the chance will pass.

Wrong Starting Point
Don’t begin only where you’re strongest; growth comes from entering what feels uncomfortable. Begin where life calls most urgently. If you do not know where to start, develop your body, mind, matter, relationships, heart, and spirit. Life is not static, so one will go through phases. working on several areas at a time, but it’s best to keep a general order.

Too Many Areas, Too Soon
If you try to raise the whole house in a day, the walls will collapse. True growth comes brick by brick, one pillar at a time, until the roof can rest on solid ground. This means that if you’re trying to launch a business or get in shape, it’s totally okay for other areas to be lacking. The power is in knowing all these areas and realizing that, in time, you’ll find harmony.

Rushing Through
Our age craves quick fixes, but depth requires patience. Go slowly. Be present. Give each area the care it deserves before moving to the next. I wish I had this map when I started actively engaging with my life, use it. It all takes time, and it’s good to really dive deep in aspects of life to then return to the center.

Chasing Balance Instead of Harmony
Life will never be perfectly balanced. At any moment, one or more areas will be in rougher shape than others. That is natural. The task is moving fluidly through the spectrum, allowing areas to support one another to achieve harmony. Striving for perfect balance is itself a form of imbalance.

Comparing paths
Everyone is unique. Your growth is yours alone. Comparison is the thief of joy. When you think you want someone else’s life, think again, and be grateful for what has been given to you.

Principles

It is not necessary to fully grasp these principles in order to live the 7LA. They are guiding foundations that reveal the deeper pattern beneath the philosophy.

Polarity
Life is fundamentally dual with opposing poles. Opposites like hot and cold, dark and light, are merely extremes of the same thing. Each polarity is a continuum of degrees. The areas — Body & Relationships, Mind & Heart, Matter & Spirit — are each paired expressions of a spectrum. Only Service has no opposite, for it rises above extremes and unites them.

Change
Everything flows—day into night, valleys into mountains, birth into death. Balance as a fixed state is not possible, so you will never find perfect equanimity in all six areas at the same time. Instead, the practice is to move fluidly through the areas, allowing one to yield to another.

Harmony
Our center lies within the silence of change. We can choose to enter that space, which is Service, and restore alignment with the greater order of life. It is the still point where opposites meet, and transformation finds direction.

Final Thoughts

The Seven Life Areas is a map of meaning and method for harmony. Each step either brings us closer to what truly matters or drifts us away. In the end, we must choose what we stand for, who we become, and how we use the precious time given to us. Let us choose wisely.