29: What Do You Want Out of Life?

This post is Day 4 of the Figure It Out – 8 Day Email Course. If you haven’t already signed up to get access to all the days, you can do that here. If you’re already signed up and loving this free resource, share it with someone else who needs it.

What do you want…in all aspects of your life?

In the last lesson we asked you to determine what you wanted.  In this lesson we’re asking you to expand this question to all aspects of your life.

Strictly speaking, this lesson has nothing to do with your career…but it does!

Remember Scott’s story from the email?  Read it again:

“My wife and I were almost completely out of $138,500 worth of debt which took us nearly 3.5 years to pay off. I had just negotiated a massive increase in pay at my job, Alyssa and I had just run several half marathons and I had gone from almost 230 pounds to nearly 180.

It hit me then that I had wanted to do those things for a long time before I started doing them but my career choices made it more difficult for me to do so, likewise, my bad life choices, not really having a plan and being clueless about what I wanted had caused me to gain a bunch of weight, surround myself with expensive cars and toys (and pay for them with borrowed money) and to have my self confidence suffer the whole time.

I realized in that moment running the 3 mile loop near my house, that the first step was defining EXACTLY what we wanted in each of these areas of our life!”

What was the common cause of all of the problems he faced?

Right! His career!

You can’t completely separate the different areas of your life.  They are interconnected.  So if your job affects your personal life — your family, your health, your pocketbook, how do you change your life?

Take a whole-person approach to your career.

Our HTYC Profile addresses the 5 areas of your life: Environment, Financial, Family/Social, Personal Development/Growth, Physical Fitness/Health.

If you haven’t already,

Print off the HTYC Life Profile

Now let’s walk through each of the 5 areas and address them with regards to what you want.

Note: This exercise is vital.  Be honest. Be thorough.  You’ll be glad you were!

Environment: What kind of environment do you thrive in? Where do you want to live? What type of neighborhood is important to you? Where is your ideal area to live in?

Financial: What kind of income do you need to support yourself and your family?  What financial goals do you have for your future?

Family/Social: Is family important to you? How many vacations do you want to take with your family? Do you want flexibility to attend school plays? Assemblies? Field trips?

Personal Development/Growth: What do you want to focus on personally? What areas do you want to learn and grow in? How will you do so? Books? Events? Courses? Coaching?

Physical Fitness/Health: What type of fitness program do you want to have? What kind of exercise do you want to do? What do you want to look like? How much energy do you want to have?

As you ask yourself these questions, try to write down–as specifically as possible–what you want your life to be like in each of these 5 areas.

Don’t worry if you aren’t sure how they connect to your career, we’ll tie it all together as we go.

Action Steps

• Complete the HTYC Profile
• Leave a comment below describing one thing you want in your life in one of these 5 areas.

For more information about how to choose what you want in your life, you can listen to episode 29 of the HTYC podcast