Map of Life
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Self-mastery
OVERVIEW
Seven Life Areas will help you answer the most important question you can ask yourself: “How do I live a good life?”
When you master every area of your life, you create alignment, achievement, and purpose. Know yourself. Live fully. Serve the world.
You attain self-mastery by examining all seven areas, developing what is out of balance, and integrating them into a good life.
ON THIS PAGE
What is self-mastery?
Know yourself
To examine each area of your life leads to self-knowledge. Each part of the human experience is essential to understanding who you truly are. And when you see where you stand, you can influence where you’re going.
Live fully
By developing each area, you bring your life into balance. Going into the neglected parts ensures growth in all areas without lopsided success and its negative consequences. A life in harmony realizes your full potential.
Serve the world
Service lies at the heart of integration. Manifesting who you are into the world requires both alignment and achievement. By serving the greater whole, you find true fulfillment and the purpose of your life.
Why does life feel out of balance?
Few people ever reach full maturation. What prevents them from flourishing is that growth in certain areas comes at the cost of others. Those neglected areas, in turn, ensure that we suffer calamities, loss, and stunted development due to lopsided growth. We then live a fragmented life.
Some build successful careers that feel utterly meaningless. Others nurture their Relationships at the cost of their own health. Still others create endlessly, yet lack the structure to bring their work into the world. This imbalance prevents us from developing each area and living a good life.
Creating harmony across all seven areas is no easy task. With few role models and with institutions that seek to suppress human wholeness, achieving true balance requires an entirely new approach to life. To outgrow ignorance and tend the whole self is the path of an integrated life.
What is life integration?
Modern culture is fragmented and stuck in its development. It’s natural that few people ever develop every area of their life. Distractions are abundant, and maturation is rare. Yet, blaming the world, family, or society you came from is pointless. Taking responsibility is step one when you want to change.
Integration begins with examining each area. We are multifaceted beings, yet our default modes of operating are often unconscious. Only when you see what’s possible and where you stand can you begin to develop the neglected areas of your life. Self-development helps you become a whole human being.
Small changes compound as you cultivate each area. Elevating one will naturally lift others. As each area comes into balance, your purpose emerges. This allows you to live from the core of who you are. Life will stay challenging, unexpected, and, well, life. But you’ll have attained self-mastery.
7 Life Areas
Three foundations of self-mastery
Alignment
Relationships · Heart · Spirit
Your inner world: the depth of connection with people and nature, the capacity to feel and create, and awareness of soul and what is sacred.
When you create alignment, you’ll discover who you truly are and the gift you were born with. This will fill your life with love, while living from fear results in a life that is not your own and limits potential.
Achievement
Body · Mind · Matter
Your outer world: the health and vitality of your body, the sharpness and clarity of thought, and the abundance and freedom of resources.
Through achievement, you’ll develop the ability to manifest your gift. Developing your capabilities gives you the freedom to create in the world, while a lack of skill results in unfulfilled potential.
Purpose
Service
Purpose lies at the intersection of alignment and achievement. Giving your gift to the world is what creates lasting fulfillment.
A life with purpose moves beyond the individual. The relationship between self and world is where you find your ultimate place by contributing to the web of life. Without purpose, life feels empty.
Explore further
7LA Coaching
A clear path through the Seven Life Areas to attain self-mastery.
Creator OS
A system to manifest your vision and make progress in your work.
Common questions
The 7 Life Areas are Body, Relationships, Mind, Heart, Matter, Spirit, and Service. The 7LA framework forms a comprehensive map for personal development. The ultimate goal is self-mastery, which creates a life of alignment, achievement, and purpose.
A life area is a part of human experience that requires investment of energy and can be developed through practice. Body and Relationships, Mind and Heart, and Matter and Spirit specifically train skills and capacities, while Service creates integration between them.
The very first step is to examine each of the seven areas of your life. Only once you see where you stand can you start to change. Acknowledging which areas you have neglected allows you to make small, incremental changes toward overall life balance.
A hexagon is a structure prevalent in nature that can carry both the development of the individual self and the greater whole. The goal of self-development is to grow a fully developed self. Like a cell in a honeycomb, your life will then be interconnected with other beings because your purpose is always to serve.
In the 7LA framework, cultivating your Relationships, Heart, and Spirit creates alignment. Developing the areas of Body, Mind, and Matter produces achievement. You find your life purpose at the intersection of these two forces. Alignment reveals your unique gift, while achievement helps you manifest it.
Your purpose is something you discover and is singular. Like the blueprint in the acorn that allows it to grow into a full oak. Your purpose is the direction of the development of the self through life. Once each area is developed, you find your purpose through serving the world.
