According to Alexander Boswell - in his article
Practical Self Development Advice From A Monk, one of the keys to self development includes being honest with yourself.
Try this:
Get a piece of paper and pen, or use a notation app, and write down these five words:
- Recreation
- Health
- Profession
- Relationships
- Mission
Next to each one, rate how good you feel about your current experience of each one out of 10.
For clarity,
recreation refers to how much fun you’re generally having,
health refers to your overall health and wellbeing. The
profession is your working life, and
relationships can apply to friendships as well as family or a spouse. Lastly,
mission refers to how much you feel you have a purpose in life, a ‘mission’ to accomplish.
Doing this exercise is meant to show you where you put your time and energy. If one or two are quite high and others are low, this indicates that you are giving parts of your life a lot more effort than other things that are just as important. We should be trying to seek a more balanced outlook.
For example, when Alexander (the author) did this, his results are as follows:
Recreation = 3
Health = 8
Profession = 6
Relationships = 2
Mission = 5
"Looking at this, I can see that I prioritise my health and working life far greater than having fun and building relationships. My life mission is also still a bit unclear to me, but I know I want to help people. So I’ve figured that perhaps lately I’ve been more selfish than I realised, these things I’ve prioritised only benefit me. So for the chance of richer life experience, I’ll be moving ahead by looking closer at my relationships, which will likely influence my time having fun as well."
Why not have a go? You even surprise yourself at the outcome!