[KATHRYN]: Imperfect Thriving is a part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you thrive imperfectly. To hear other podcasts like the Bomb Mom Podcast, Beta Male Revolution, or Empowered and Unapologetic, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network. Welcome to the Imperfect Thriving podcast for all of us women in midlife to discover your self-limiting beliefs, determine exactly what you want your life to look like and the imperfect actions to get you there. Hi, this is the Imperfect Thriving podcast and I’m your host, Kathryn Ely. I’m so glad you are here today. I’m really excited about today’s podcast. I have one huge question for you today. Are you ready to get closer to your best life? Think about that question for a minute. I’m not asking you if you’re ready to go to the movies or out to dinner. Are you ready to start on the path to your best life? If you are, you’ve definitely come to the right place, and if you’re not, ask yourself why not? What do you have to lose? On today’s episode, you will learn all about the eight domains of your life and how to assess them. Then we will assess the first and most important domain of your life. Now, how can this exercise get you on the path towards your best life? Well, to make this exercise super easy, I’ve created a worksheet for you to use and a follow along with this assessment. Just go to imperfectthriving.com and download Your Blueprint to Thrive Quick Start today. Before you can move in the direction of your best life, we have to assess what you do like about your life the way it is right now and what you don’t like. What could be better? And once we know where you’re not 100% over the moon, happy with your life, we know what our focus will be. When we know what areas need work, we can begin working on them. But before we jump in with today’s episode, if you enjoy this episode, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast. And if you haven’t already done so, you can go sign up for Your Blueprint to Thrive. Now Your Blueprint to Thrive is a free email course that I’ve designed for you that will take you step by step through assessing your satisfaction with your current life, determining exactly what you want your life to look like, and how to take daily imperfect action to get there. Just go to imperfectthriving.com/course to sign up today. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Okay. I can’t wait any longer. Let’s do this. Back to the most important question. How satisfied are you with your life? And I just can’t stress this enough. I’m not asking how your life looks on paper or how you think your life looks to everyone else. I mean, how satisfied are you with all of the aspects of your life, how you feel, your days, how you’re spending your time, and this one life you have been given? How are you interacting in your relationships? Are you filled with purpose or not? Unless you are 100% living the life of your dreams, today’s episode is for you. Today is the first of two podcasts in which we will explore and assess all eight domains of your life. Now, a domain is just a fancier word for area of your life. So why do we need to assess them? Well, assessment is the first step toward living the life you want. I mean, you can’t move towards your best life until you know exactly what that is, exactly what is working for you, and what isn’t working in your current life. Now, you might have a sense of being unfulfilled or unsatisfied with the life you’re living right now, but aren’t sure, or really unable to pinpoint what needs to change to make your life better, richer, and more fulfilling. After this episode and the next, you will have a clear picture of how important each domain is to you, how satisfied or unsatisfied you are in each. And once you have this important information, you’ll know what’s working well and most importantly, what areas if improved upon, could make all the difference in how satisfied and fulfilled you can be in your life. [coughs] Excuse me. So, if you follow along with the worksheet I created for you, you will be taking a big step toward understanding where you are and learning where you want to go. So here are the eight domains that we will be covering over the next two episodes. And you can find more about these on the imperfectthriving.com website. Number one, and it’s number one for a reason, mental and physical wellbeing and self-care. Number two, intimate love relationship, domain number three, pursuit and finances, number four, parenting and family, domain number five, friendship and community, number six, spirituality and faith, number seven, personal growth and learning, and number eight artistic expression, adventure and leisure. So, let’s get started. We will look at all eight major domains and we will first rate them in importance on a scale of zero to three. Three is most important, two, very important, one, somewhat important and zero, not important at all to you. But before we jump in, there’s something I really want to go over with you first. This exercise is meant to uncover the level of importance of each domain to you and only you, not how important they are to others, not how important they should be. And I can almost guarantee the first answer that comes to mind will be tainted in some way by outside influence. I know this because I hear client after client in my practice when we do this very exercise say, “Well, this domain should be more important.” I also know this from my own personal experience. I spent the first 48 years of my life trying to follow all the things I thought should be the most important. So I cannot overstress the importance of assessing what you want in every domain or area of your life. And you might even be saying to yourself right now, “I know what I want in my life.” But do you really? In my counseling and coaching practice, I have seen female client after female client who felt lost and unsure of which direction she wanted to go, what to do next with her life. And a lot of these women were in midlife. They’d been caring for children and parents and lost themselves along the way and they were lost simply because they didn’t know what they wanted. They did not know what they wanted because either they had never asked themselves this question or they had asked themselves this question so long ago that they forgot what the answer was. What do I want? We are all conditioned from early childhood on to live up to the expectations of others: our parents, teachers, society, church, the opposite sex. All teach us what we should do and who we should be. And most of us learn to follow along with these expectations, doing what we should to live up to them without questioning. I mean, this is how we learn what’s acceptable behavior in society and what’s not. So it does serve a purpose. The problem is as we become adults and have the opportunity to then do things how we want to do them, we’re so programmed by expectations we forget to ask or we just get so busy in life, we don’t have time to ask and explore. Well, no more. We’re done with that. So if no one has ever asked you, including yourself, what you want, we’re going to start asking that today. I really want you to give it some thought until you come up with exactly how important each domain is to you. Now, after you determine how important a domain is to you, we will look at how satisfied you are in that domain. We will use the same zero to three scale with three being completely and totally 100% satisfied. I mean living the dream in this domain. Number two is very satisfied, one, somewhat satisfied, and zero, not satisfied at all. So let’s get started. Mental and physical wellbeing and self-care. Now I have this domain first for a couple of reasons. First, typically as women we do not put our wellbeing first. We learn the story or the expectation that women should always be caring for others. We put our self-care last because of this and hope that we don’t run out of time before we get to it, but let’s face it, most of the time we don’t get to what’s last on our list. Now, I definitely lived this firsthand for the first four and a half decades of my life. And those of you with small children do not have the amount of time that those with grown children can spend on yourself. But I’ve found that even those of us who do have more and more time as children get older and we’re not spending as much time physically caring for others, we’ve done so for so long that we forget to care for ourselves and forget to ask what we want and need. Now, the second reason I put this domain first is the most important reason. If we care for ourselves well, we are better women, we are better mothers, we are better spouses, we are better everything because we’re happier and we’re more fulfilled. So now you know how I feel about this domain. How important is it to you? How important is it that you take care of your body and your mind? Is it a, three, most important, two, very important, one, somewhat important or zero, not important at all. Go ahead and get your worksheet out and put your number down. Now, what do you do to take care of your mental health? How do you show you value yourself and value your physical wellbeing? How do you nurture your inner and outer beauty? Do you give yourself time for self-care or is the last on the list? So think about these questions when you’re determining how satisfied you are with how you care for yourself, your mental and physical wellbeing. Is it a three or could it be better? Is it a one? Could it be much better? Is it a zero? It’s non-existent and all, and there’s nowhere to go but up? Where are you in this domain versus where you want to be? If you aren’t where you want to be, make a note of it. I’m so glad that you joined me here today for this episode. We will continue to assess the remaining seven domains in part two of this podcast. Now if you haven’t printed out your domain worksheet head to imperfectthriving.com and get yours today. It will make this exercise simple and clear and easy to follow. So the one imperfect action I encourage you to take today is to go to imperfectthriving.com, download your domain assessment worksheet, and put some time and thought and discovering what you want and fill it out. Put it down on paper. If you do this, you will take a huge step towards your best life and when you do that, pat yourself on the back. Celebrate the fact that you took action toward the life that you want. Thank you so much for joining me and let’s try to build our community of helpful, supportive women by sharing this podcast with your friends and loved ones. Until next week, go out and take imperfect action. If you love this podcast, will you rate and review it on iTunes or your favorite podcast player? Also, I have a free nine-part blueprint to thrive email course. It’s a step by step guide to find out what you want your life to look like, exactly what’s holding you back, and how to get to that life you want. Head on over to www.imperfectthriving.com/course to get the course today. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, Practice of the Practice, or the guests are providing legal, mental health, or other professional information. If you need a professional, you should find one.