“An unexamined life is not worth living” — Socrates[^1]

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Most people never live up to their potential. This is because they do not examine all areas of their life. When facets of the self are ignored, you will inevitably drift through life. To rush through life, driven by the underlying fear that something is missing, is a red flag. When friction arises, our default impulse is immediate motion: follow a new diet, switch jobs, optimize routines, or change relationships. But very rarely do we have the courage to slow down long enough and reflect on what really needs to change. When we act without clarity, we do not solve problems, but merely move them around.

You might succeed then in changing the problem’s form, but you’ll never solve the core issue. Before you try to make any changes in your life, it’s important to see where you stand first. Without examining all areas of your life, you will waste it. Taking the pause is hard, and that is why few people are willing to take the time to reflect. But the changes we make in confusion and haste only put us further away from where we want to be. If you seek to achieve self-mastery, you must do the hardest thing modern culture discourages: slow down long enough so you can see where you stand.

Map Your Reality

Before you can chart a route to where you want to be, you must establish where you stand right now. This is not about comparison, but about self-examination. Comparing yourself to others is folly; examining your own life is wisdom. Self-mastery requires all areas of your life. And if you’ve never sat still long enough to think about which those might be, how can you ever expect to develop them? Excelling in your career while your health deteriorates is not success. Spiritual insight without practical stability has no way to manifest in the real world. Friendship without self-knowledge cannot sustain itself. As humans, we can only hold so much at a time, and that is where the Seven Life Areas can help you simplify. Clarity is needed, as modern life has become too complex for our natural human resources.

There lies great power in seeing where you are. For it opens the door to many questions: why are you there? What are the relationships between the areas of your life? Where do you want to go? Problems in life naturally ignite direction. Although taking action is good, our problems usually put us in the wrong direction. You might be able to put on some muscle, become productive, or start a meditation practice, but without the simplicity of the three foundations, they will not transform your life. You might be able to get healthy, or start a successful business, or gain spiritual wisdom, but rarely can you hold it all together. Because without purpose, we’ll never be able to sustain developments long enough for them to integrate into your life.

Alignment

The way you relate to your inner world, including your Relationships, Heart, and Spirit. None of these areas carry the goal of achieving anything. Rather, you must seek to deepen your relationships, open your heart, and connect to spirit. When these are developed, you’ll discover your gift. To know who you are will bring you peace regardless of circumstances.

Achievement

The way you relate to the outer world, including your Body, Mind, and Matter. These areas, when developed, create achievement. Growing your wealth, sharpening the mind, and improving your health is the solid foundation you need in order to successfully bring your gift into the world. To understand the world means to create within it, which will give you power over circumstances.

Purpose

The way your gift serves the world. Purpose lies at the intersection of alignment and achievement and seeks to bring these forces into harmony. Only when you walk with two legs can you go far. Self-knowledge without actualization will only keep you stuck. In contrast, forward momentum without stillness puts you in the wrong direction. But combine alignment and achievement, and you’ll find the deeper meaning of your life.

Your life consists of countless actions, and it’s impossible to track them all. This is why it’s more effective to change who you are at the core than make superficial changes. This is hard, because often we become so absorbed in certain modes of operating and strongly identify with them. When such a process continues for too long, something will come back to bite us. This often comes in the form of a crisis, because that area was underdeveloped. But if you’ve learned to develop each aspect of your life, then these crises will no longer come so unexpectedly. And when they do, we’ll have ample resources to deal with them. Developing the three foundations of alignment, achievement, and purpose will make you more resilient.

Identify Your Blind Spots

An unexamined life creates many blind spots. Balance is not about holding every area perfectly, but eliminating destructive friction between polarities. The four polarities are: Body & Relationships, Mind & Heart, Matter & Spirit, and Alignment & Achievement. Either we see our own shadows, or life will eventually force them upon us. We all need to deal with the Seven Areas of our life. And when we neglect one area, another inevitably pays the price. Once we see the areas that are least developed through the Map of Life, it’s easy to rush in and try to eliminate your weaknesses. Although this is a wise impulse, deeper truths often lie hidden.

No single area stands in isolation, and often where it hurts is not causing the pain. Why is it that one’s finances are suffering? Perhaps because of disorganization, and that could come from a belief in a lack of self-worth, which originates from one’s family, and one could go further down the rabbit hole. Everyone can pinpoint their problems because they create tension and scream the loudest. It’s harder to identify the silent solution. What hurts is often the victim, while the criminal lies elsewhere. Globally specific actions are therefore more fruitful than actions in the direction of the problem, as they target a wider variety of possible solutions. Of course, specific actions are necessary in urgent situations, but to solve problems we need to go deeper and root out the real issues.

Only by mapping your reality can you identify your blind spots. Awareness of these areas comes with time, and the more you develop this skill, the greater your self-mastery. There are, however, natural fluctuations in life. Our life goes through seasons, so sit with your blind spots. These things have developed over time, and will take time to redirect. The longer we can stay in that uncomfortable space of observing, the better we’ll act when the time is right. There are layers upon layers upon layers in life. It’s an intensive process to unpeel them. But without a map, you’ll elongate the process by peeling off the wrong layers and find it necessary to put them back on at a later stage.

Find Your Next Step Forward

Once you examine your areas, you can identify the strategy needed to move forward. This is done both by analysis and feeling. The better thought and intuition can be combined, the more likely your actions will aid you. It’s best to take a strategy and stick with it for some time until that whole area sees improvement. Don’t lift your Relationships, Mind, and Spirit all at the same time. Rather, e.g., develop your connections with friends first, then spend more time in nature, and finally make peace with your parents. It’s good to start slow and work to the heart of the problem in a certain area to then solve it. We often rush to it too soon, and find ourselves facing the same type of situations over and over again.

And once you find that your life has shifted, other things will start to change. It can be quite overwhelming initially to find that you develop one thing and another immediately starts to scream for attention. But this gets easier and better over time. After years of practice, you’ll come to a point where most severe problems do not come from ignorance but because life has thrown these into your direction. These become tests to help you grow and develop even further. Life wants you to serve the world. And that starts by developing yourself first. This is a lifelong process. The knowledge that this is not merely for your own self-development is what can keep you going long enough so the process may transform you.

There is a constant dance between specific development in certain areas and our whole life. For nothing is ever truly separated. Let’s say you want to improve the Matter area and you bring order into the house. Then, your partner all of a sudden becomes unhappy, because you find out to your surprise that he is addicted to the mess. You recognize now within yourself a part that always wanted to please him, and also that you no longer wish to do so. The relationship finally comes to an end. Now one problem is gone, and another has replaced it. It’s like peeling off the layers of a union. This is why self-development can be a very ‘dangerous’ undertaking, as the deeper you go, big things will pop up. Consciously rooting out the problems is, of course, preferable to letting the problem find you.

Live life fully

Socrates’ mandate was not an invitation to overthink or analyze life from the sidelines. It was an invitation to live fully. In a world of sleepwalkers, it can be quite extraordinary to become even partially awake. To find your purpose is to understand the meaning of your life. This can only be realized by first slowing down. When you strip away confusion, you’ll stop reacting to every superficial circumstance and can change the underlying patterns. One step at a time, one small action here, another there. No one will notice the difference. Until one day you’ll look back over your shoulder and you’re stunned by where you now stand. This is what it means to live your life, and no one else’s. When you map your reality, you begin the journey of self-mastery.

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