An Integral Life is improvement in the main important areas of life — career, relationships, and mental and physical health. By identifying our areas of critical importance and embracing a wide scope of practices, we can construct a healthy, happy, successful life. Let’s explore the aspects of self-growth and personal improvement, to enrich our lives and the world around us.
David Roel is currently studying to become a licensed dietitian, and has long been interested in the fields of psychology, philosophy, self improvement and personal development.
Role Models
Find a role model for each area. Choose someone, famous or not, who can serve as a guiding star for you, in your efforts to improve in each of our areas of health, career, and relationships. Perhaps for the relationship area, you might choose a well-known relationship coach or…
Read MoreThe Four Quadrants
I’ve been talking about how health, career, and relationships are important areas to pay attention to in life. I’m going to give a useful model to visualize these areas. First, what is there in the universe? What do we know exists? How might we make a simple breakdown…
Read MoreOvercoming the Negative Voices
As we work on improving our lives, we must be cautious about the negative voices that tell us we can’t do it. These voices can be external to us, coming from friends or family, or they could be internal voices, our internal doubts and fears plaguing us. These voices are insidious, and can sabotage our best efforts…
Read MoreVisualize Your Goals
Imagine the endpoint of your goals. Visualize it. Feel it, hear it, sense it with all your senses. Get it to the point where it is very real for you. If you want a good career, or degree, visualize it. If you want to be more fit, visualize yourself…
Read MoreSetting Goals
Now that we’ve identified our important areas to pay attention to, we need to set specific goals. They will, of course, be unique to you, but they should cover our three basic areas of interest. A broad outline: 1) A career that…
Read MoreCareer, Health, and Relationships, in Balance
It seems to me that success in life lies in establishing a balance in our lives. Most people concentrate all their energy into one or maybe two areas of life, and get very developed in that one area or two areas, at the cost of neglecting…
Read MoreRelationships
Our third critical area of importance is relationship. This includes family, friends and co-workers, but is most strongly represented by our intimate relationships. This will be a major part of almost everyone’s life. Very few want to move through life without…
Read MoreCareer
We all have a dream job. Imagine doing something so exciting that you leap out of bed every day, eager to get started. Something that’s so compelling to you that you would do it for free, if you were already independently wealthy. That would be…
Read MoreFitness and Health
Physical fitness is an important area of life. Certainly we aren’t all athletes, and we don’t all need to be measured against swimsuit models. (Even they don’t really look like that.) But it is our responsibility to keep ourselves in a healthy, energetic, pain-free body that supports us in our efforts…
Read MoreWhat is Important?
Everyone will have a different answer to that. Everyone has different tastes and interests, one’s trash is another’s treasure, de gustibus non est disputandum, etc. But I think there are some rock-solid universal areas that are important for everyone. Let me know if you disagree. 1. Everyone has a physical body, and it’s important to take care of it. Without your health, you don’t . . .
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