[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 Imperfect Thriving podcast and I’m your host, Kathryn Ely. I’m so glad you are here today and I’m so excited to bring you the second part of our podcast examining the eight domains in your life. Are you ready to move closer to your best life? In today’s podcast, we will assess the other seven domains or areas of your life. By the end of today’s podcast, you will understand what the eight domains of your life are, whether you are satisfied, and most importantly in what areas you’re not satisfied. Because to get to your best life, you must first know what is not working for you. I hope you have Your Blueprint to Thrive Quick Start, but if you don’t head on over to imperfectthriving.com and grab your free download, Your Blueprint to Thrive Quick Start now. I will take you through it in detail how to assess each domain. But before we jump into today’s episode, if you enjoy the episode, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast. You are the reason why I do this podcast, so, your feedback is so important to me. So if you get a second, please go ahead and do that today. And if you haven’t already done so, you can sign up for Your Blueprint to Thrive. Now Your Blueprint to Thrive is a free email course that I designed specifically to walk you through step by step, how to assess your satisfaction with your current life, determine exactly what you want your life to look like, and how to take daily and perfect action to get there. Go to imperfectthriving.com/course and sign up for Your Blueprint to Thrive, your free email course today. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. So, I’ll ask you again, are you ready to get closer to your best life? I feel like when I ask that question, there should be trumpets and fanfare in the background and confetti coming down from the ceiling. So I haven’t done that yet, but I’m going to try to find a way to do that. So just imagine when I asked that question, significant fanfare going on in the background. Now remember in our last episode, we began to assess your eight domains because to move forward, you have to know what’s working and what isn’t working in your life. We assessed the importance and satisfaction and the most important domain, mental and physical wellbeing and self-care. And here’s a quick review of the eight domains; mental and physical wellbeing, self-care, intimate love relationship, pursuit and finances, parenting and family, friendship and community, spirituality and faith, personal growth and learning, artistic expression, adventure and leisure. Today we are going to begin with domain number two, intimate love relationship. This is all about your most important romantic relationship. First, let me remind you of the scale that we’re going to use to rate the importance and the satisfaction of each domain. It’s a zero to three scale with three being extremely important, the most important, two, very important, one, somewhat important, and zero, not important at all. Now, there is no limit to the number of domains that you can think are very important or most important. If all eight domains are three, that is perfectly fine. It’s completely up to you. If half of them are three and the rest of them are ones, it’s completely up to you. It’s all about what you think and what you want. There’s no specific requirement. So how important is a love relationship in your life? Are you currently in a romantic relationship? Are you looking for a romantic relationship? Is being in a romantic, intimate relationship not a priority to you right now? Go ahead and rate the importance to you on your scale of zero to three. Now let’s examine how satisfied you are in this domain. If you are currently in an intimate relationship, you can ask yourself the following questions. If you’re not currently in a relationship, but want to be, ask yourself these questions about your last relationship so that you can gauge what you would want to change about your next relationship. Are you happy with how you treat each other? How satisfied are you and how much time you spend together and how you spend that time? Do you support and encourage each other? Are you satisfied with the most intimate part of this relationship? Do you feel understood and loved? Go ahead and rate your satisfaction on your zero to three scale. Three, extremely satisfied, two, very satisfied, one, somewhat satisfied, and zero, not satisfied at all. You know, intimate love relationships you get out of them what you put into them. If you put zero thought and effort into them, you will likely not be satisfied. That’s why the questions I ask, look at your behavior as well as your partners. If we’re satisfied and fulfilled with ourselves, we’re probably satisfied in our intimate love relationship because we know what we want, what we need, and how to get it. But if we aren’t satisfied with ourselves, we’re probably not satisfied in our intimate love relationships as well. So this is another reason why I keep physical and mental wellbeing as the most important domain. Now let’s move on to number three, pursuit and finances. And first, let me explain what I mean by pursuit. Your pursuit is your one thing outside of all your relationships, something that’s just for you, that fills you with purpose. Now for some, this might be a job or career, it might be a hobby, a side hustle, or charitable work. What is it for you or are you missing a pursuit in your life? How important is it for you to have one thing outside of others that is just for you, that fills you up, satisfies you, makes you feel good and purposeful with yourself, that gives you a sense of accomplishment? Now for me, I discovered several years ago that this was a crucial part of my life that was missing for a long time. I was a lawyer for a long time before I quit to stay at home with my three children and I realized when I was becoming unsettled and my kids were getting older and getting ready to go off to college, that I didn’t have that one thing. And I certainly didn’t want to go back to what I was doing before because being a lawyer did not fill me up. It just wasn’t for me. So since I went back to school and became a counselor and a coach, I have a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment because it is one thing that I love, that I do for myself and my clients. It’s my own thing. So for me, it’s a three on the important scale. Without it, I feel lost. But let’s rate the importance for you, not how important it is for me. Take a little time to think about whether that’s important to you and then write it, zero, one, two, or three. Now let’s go on and look at the satisfaction of this domain. Are you currently in a job or career that you love or do you dread going to work every day? Do you allow yourself time for the hobby that you love or once loved? Do you even know how you would like to spend your free time if you had it? Are you filled with purpose? Now go ahead and rate your satisfaction on your zero to three scale. And we’ll move on to the second part of that domain, which is finances. How important is money in your life? Is there never enough? Write the importance now. How secure and satisfied are you with your finances? What role does money play in your life? Do you feel in control of your financial picture? Do you spend every penny that comes through the door or do you not ever allow yourself to enjoy spending money on things or experiences that bring you joy? Think about these questions and rate your satisfaction on the zero to three scale. Are you not satisfied at all? Then give it a zero, one, somewhat satisfied, two, very satisfied, or three, off the charts completely satisfied. Let’s move on to domain number four, parenting and family. Let’s start with parenting and assess the importance here. If not a parent currently, assess the importance of one day becoming a parent. Is this something that is of utmost importance or not important at all? If you can’t decide or if you seem to go back and forth between wanting to be a parent and being totally against it, this is an area that will need further exploration, but for now, let’s go ahead and give it a rating on the important scale on your zero to three scale. Let’s look at satisfaction. What do you want your children or future children to learn from your words and your actions? How do you see your role in your children’s lives? How satisfied are you that you’re living this role? Do you feel like you give everything to your children and have nothing left for yourself? Write your satisfaction here. Now let’s look at family and by family, I mean family of origin, the people that you came from, your parents, your grandparents, the people that came before you. How important is your connection to these family members? How important is the connection to your heritage, where you came from? How important is it that you help connect the most recent generation in your family to those that came before them? Go ahead and rate your importance now and let’s look at satisfaction. Are your words and actions in line with what you want in this domain? Are you actively nurturing the relationships that you care about? Go ahead and rate your satisfaction now. And we’ll move on to domain number five, friendship and community. Is it important for you to have a few close friends or to be part of a larger group? How important is it to have that one person you can tell anything and everything to? Do you crave connection with others outside of your family? Is it important for you to leave a legacy in your community? Go ahead and rate your importance now. You know, for me, I’ve always been happy and satisfied with having a few very close girlfriends that I feel like really get me, really understand me, and I can be completely authentic and tell everything to and I know that I can trust them that they’ll be there for me throughout anything. But the older I get, the more I want the support of a community. And that’s really part of what I value and what drives this podcast is wanting to develop a community of women around me and around each other who really get that we are all into moving forward in our lives and not giving up and not thinking that the best part of our lives are over. We know that life can be better than ever and we want to be here to lift each other up and to nudge each other in that direction together. That’s the community that has become important for me. And I’m going to do everything I can here and with your help to build one for all of us. But I want you to think about what’s important to you when it comes to friendship and community and how important it is, and go ahead and rate that importance right now. And we’re going to move on to satisfaction. How do you feel connected to others? Are you currently doing the things that make you feel this connection? Do you have the kinds of friends you want to have or have you fallen into friendships with others who don’t share your interest and values? You know, we become the sum of the five people we spend the majority of time with. So have you chosen your friends well or have you fallen into those friendships? Do you spend time with friends who lift you up or bring you down or do you have trouble making connections at all? Go ahead and rate your satisfaction here. And we will move on to domain number six, spirituality and faith. Is it important to you to believe in something larger than yourself? How important? Is this belief something that you rely on, find comfort and support in? Is it important to you that you pass on your beliefs to your family? Do you feel this connection when you’re in a church, when you’re alone spending quiet time with yourself, or out in nature? Go ahead and rate the importance now and we’ll move on to satisfaction. Are you confident and consistent in your beliefs or do you often waiver in what you believe? Do you follow along in what you think you should believe or are you secure that your beliefs are truly your own? Do you routinely question your beliefs? How satisfied are you in your actions in relation to living out your beliefs. Rate your satisfaction here? Three, extremely satisfied, two, very, one, somewhat, and zero, not satisfied at all. Now we’re moving on to number seven, personal growth and learning. You know, Einstein said, “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” I have found this to be extremely 100% accurate in my life. I need to feel like I’m moving forward in some way, every single day. Growing, getting better, evolving every day. How important is it to you to be learning something new, to feel like you’re progressing and moving forward in your growth? Go ahead and write your importance here. Now, satisfaction. What do you tell yourself about learning and self-growth? Do you tell yourself, “I’m too old to learn?” How do you feel about yourself when you learn a new skill or task? Did you use to be curious and love to learn? How capable are you of learning something difficult? This domain kind of ties in with pursuit in a way. Until I went back to school at age 46 for my master’s in clinical mental health, I can definitely say my satisfaction, well, my importance was a three and my satisfaction here was a zero. I was spending all of my time in support of others, and I mean all. I told myself I did not have time to learn anything new. Now, this simply wasn’t true, but it was what I was telling myself, so I believed it to be true. Now go ahead and rate your satisfaction zero to three in this domain and we will move on to the final domain, number eight, artistic expression, adventure and leisure. Some of us need to feel our artistic side; painting, arranging flowers, decorating our house. Some of us really need travel and to have a change of scenery. Some of us given the choice would rather use free time to curl up with a book. None of these is right, none of these is wrong. It’s all about personal preference and what you want and need. So that’s why I’ve combined these three elements into one domain. You might enjoy a balance of all three so you can write these separately in importance or in a category together. Do you find one of the three of these important? All three? None of them. It’s completely up to you. For me, I need to spend time in artistic expression and adventure. I find that obligations in life can interfere much more with travel, so it’s easier for me to find space and time for artistic expression. For me, painting, looking at art, and enjoying beautiful interiors really fills me up. How important is this domain to you? Go ahead and rate it now and we’ll look at your satisfaction. Do you like to create? Do you find time to do so on a regular basis? Do you never get to create because you run out of time because of your obligations? Do you love to travel? Do you travel as much as you like? What gets in the way? Do you have enough downtime to curl up with a good book? How satisfied are you with this domain? Go ahead and write it now. Well, you did it. We finished assessing all eight domains and I hope that you followed along with your worksheet to make it just as simple as possible. Where are you with your level of satisfaction in each domain? Do you have a clear picture of the areas of your life that could be more fulfilling? Are you getting to the bottom of what you want? What is important to you and not anyone else? I’m so glad that you joined me today for this episode. So if there’s one imperfect action that you can do today, I will encourage you to do this one, go to imperfectthriving.com if you haven’t already, download your domain assessment worksheet, then put some time and thought in discovering exactly what you want and fill it out. And when you complete this exercise, you will have taken a huge step towards your best life. And when you do that, pat yourself on the back here, trumpets, see confetti. Celebrate the fact that you took action toward the life that you want. Thank you so much for joining me today and 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.