A map and method

The Seven Life Areas is a map of meaning and 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 create a new way of living. This is achieved by organizing experience into trainable domains and providing a path for conscious integration.

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. At its heart, the essential question has always been the same: ‘What do I truly want?’ And the answer has echoed through time, just as the search has. What we all truly seek is wisdom — and that means to live a good life.

In our modern age, however, life has become so complex that it 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 does not seek to replace any other structures, but rather incorporates them by helping you grow, experience, and serve. The result is a good life, yet its deepest meaning can only be uncovered by walking the path.

The Seven Areas

Life can be united into seven areas: Body and Relationships, Mind and Heart, Matter and Spirit, and lastly Service. A life area is a dimension of lived experience that requires investment of energy and can be developed through practice. Body and Relationships, Mind and Heart, Matter and Spirit, specifically train skills and capacities, while Service creates integration between them.

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. And 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 challenge of our time is that many people struggle to live up to their potential and often repress parts of their experience. It is common to talk with people who’ve become overly identified with the mind. A PhD in neuroscience is not necessarily beneficial for them; it might be better to embrace silence in nature. Or take a hippie with an admiring open heart, but who is disconnected from practical realities such as money. Here, experience as an entrepreneur could be beneficial in order to manifest his vision. Or imagine 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 fundamentally is, it is not widely practiced and therefore deserves our attention.

Once you understand the 7LA and start seeing the patterns in the world, it is hard to unsee them. The 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. 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. This is the central aim of 7LA, because those who actively pursue self-development can often miss the true mark of improvement entirely—which is to become of service. Our individual lives will simply never be enough, and in order to achieve lasting fulfillment, we have to look beyond ourselves.

Scope

The goal of 7LA is to orient human life toward clarity, flow, and purpose. In mapping out the human experience, it aims to show the essentials of each area while maintaining the integrity of the whole. In its method, it aims to be both practical and inspiring so we can develop and become more than who we were. It helps us notice imbalance, so we can become more conscious with our choices, integrate tensions between domains, and to live in harmony over time. Everything that helps us live a good life can be part of the 7LA and your life design. Anything that does not must be ignored and thrown away.

In the end, it’s the compound effect of all that you do that determines the quality of your life, not any given component. Therefore, it is not the goal to get all the pillars of each area right, or to develop any area into perfection. It’s meant to be used, cultivated, and internalized. It is both a science and an art. It aims to cultivate a certain type of awareness, a pattern recognition system, that is simple enough to be taught, and universal enough to be applicable throughout the seasons of your life.

7LA will not solve every problem for you, but rather seeks to change your relationship with the tensions of your life. It does not replace any other methods for improving a certain quality of your life, ranging from dentists to therapists, and religions to universities. It aims to incorporate all of your experience and orient it in a way that serves both yourself and the world. It is a compleat map of your life—not complete in the sense of incorporating all the possible range of human endeavours, but lacking nothing that is not essential for a good life. This seems like a big claim, but I stress that it is not. This is merely stating that 7LA is opening a door; you can choose to walk through it.

Simply put, Seven Life Areas is meant to do three things:

Path

Wherever you are, no matter your age, gender, or religion, start developing each area. The 7LA is a path meant to be walked, and is not merely an intellectual theory. It’s extraordinarily hard to tell what overall life ‘balance’ looks like, especially as you go through the stages of life. What we do know is that when we lift a part of the whole, the rest responds. So start, no matter how small, the single most important thing you can do is to take the first step. And one choice will lead to the next, and the next, and all of a sudden, a path has appeared in front of you.

Gift

After we’ve gained some progress, we’ll begin to come closer and closer to our gift. The innate ability of your soul, your dharma, that what we’re meant to do in this lifetime. Give it a name that suits you, but I incorporated it in the area I call Service. Because rendering true service is a phenomenal metric of a good life.

Harmony

The area of Service is also meant to bring harmony between the other six areas. Once we’ve rediscovered our gift and know our purpose, interesting things will start to happen. The art that the 7LA aims to cultivate is to dance through life, meaning to let areas come into the light and let them pass back into the dark. It’s about moving through these different domains of life with awareness of their relationship and our innate gift.

Who This Is For?

We are all individually and collectively creators who influence life. 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. But if one focuses attention on the essentials of each area over a long period of time, a good life will unfold. Rejecting certain parts of life is not only often limiting but can result in severe loss. Do not walk crippled because you’ve chosen to only use one leg.

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, it’s easy to miss the mark. 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 for all genders, ages, and races, but specifically designed for individuals who wish to discover their gift and make a meaningful impact for themselves and the world.

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 a few 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 am I here?’ These are the steps I recommend for choosing to walk this path:

Intention

Some arrive for a reason, such as a marriage falling apart, a health crisis, or a need for clarity in one’s life. Others come for a season, wanting to become a writer, launch a business, or bring 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 path 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. It ripens naturally as the other 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

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 in that order. Life is not static, so one will go through phases and work on several areas at a time, but it’s best to keep a general order and stay specific.

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 to invest in Matter and Body, and for other areas to be lacking. Dive deep in any aspect of life to then return to the center.

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. It all takes time, and death is your only destination, so no need to rush. The power is in knowing all these areas and realizing that, in time, you’ll find harmony.

Chasing Balance Instead of Harmony
Life is phasic, not symmetrical. At times, one area leads and others follow. Your life must allow imbalance in the service of wholeness. The task is moving fluidly through the spectrum, allowing areas to support one another to achieve harmony. Striving for perfect balance in life is in 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.

Why do we need a map?

Our society is full of highly differentiated roles—Machine Learning Operations Engineer, Regulatory Compliance Analyst, 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 similar specialist’s perspective alone. The amount of contradictory information is growing by the day, and even the forces within ourselves are often in opposition.

As human beings, we sleep, socialize, work, sing, eat, move, travel, learn, shop, 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. One could even argue that modern technology has a far greater hold on us than it should. We need something that can fully internalize and grow with 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, with set rules and guidelines, but a method for living your purpose. 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 as a monk in a Christian versus a Buddhist monastery, or of running a business within a capitalistic versus a communist economic model. It is the underlying theory—Christianity versus Buddhism, capitalism versus communism—that gives rise to entirely different ways of living and experience. It is therefore important to choose and invest wisely in any given model or theory, because it will determine a great deal of your life.

Transform your life

The 7LA is a map for creating meaning of life and a method to bring your awareness to harmony between the life areas. Once you see its patterns and make small incremental changes, you can transform your entire way of living. You’ll become healthier, sharper in thought, increase your wealth, deepen your relationships, 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 gift in life can reveal itself, and we know how it is we wish to be of service.