In the previous few episodes, we covered what Life Design is on a high level. You can read about the foundational principles of Life Design here and here.

Let’s dive deep into what Life Domains are and why it’s important.

WHAT IS LIFE DOMAIN AND WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

The four core components of Life Design are:

Life Domains
Core Values
Personal Strengths
Life Goals

We’re starting with the first one — Life Domain.

What is a Life Domain?

In short, Life Domain is any important aspect of your life where you spend time or wish you were spending more time.

Examples of Life Domains include:

Your children
Being a parent
Life partner work
Corporate job or business
Hobbies
Fitness
Health
Political life
Community
Friendships

Most people can come up with 5-10 Life Domains.

What is an important Life Domain, and how do you determine which to prioritize?

Right now, you don’t need to worry about which one is more important.

I don’t think it’s fair to ask myself if work is more important than my family. Both are important.

So, as you come up with your own Life Domains, treat each of them as equally important.

As you do this exercise, keep it simple. Don’t overthink it.

The goal is to learn something new about yourself, so just come up with a list that feels right for you.

Why is it important to know what our Life Domains are?

Well, if you remember, the four essentials of surviving your life are:

Balance
Sustain
Enjoy
Elevate

And I strongly believe that it’s impossible to have all four without understanding your entire holistic life landscape.

This is where Life Domains come in.

How will you know what to balance in your life if you don’t even know what you’re balancing?

Life Domains give you the set of areas of your life that you are balancing, and once you know them, it becomes easier to balance them all.

LIFE DOMAINS ALLOW YOU TO USE YOUR TIME WISELY

Determining your Life Domains forces you to prioritize your time.

One of the principles of Life Design is the Principle of Hot Air Balloon.

Your capacity is not unlimited. It is limited.

So when you see that you have ten different areas of life that you’re dealing with, you’re forced to prioritize them.

Each is equally important, so, at any moment in time, you’ll choose one to focus on.

We’ll talk more about focus and prioritization in a future article, so for now, remember that knowing your Life Domains helps you understand your real capacity.

Life Domains Prevent You From Over-Fixating On One Particular Area Of Your Life

For example, Olympic athletes who train for the Olympics for their entire lives and then succumb to an injury…

For them, it feels like their life is over because that was their only Life Domain priority.

So once you start seeing the many other areas of your life that are also important, you begin to realize that even when one of your areas is struggling, there is plenty of good in the other parts of your life.

It makes it much easier to find and create positive experiences for yourself, which is essential for you to be able to elevate your life.

Once you know all of the areas of your life, it’s easier to discover what those good things are.

It helps you recharge.

LIFE DOMAINS CREATE VARIETY

Knowing all of our Life Domains gives us this whole range of options to elevate at any particular point in time.

When we discuss goals, we’ll find out that the best way to set goals is for each particular Life Domain.

From there, if you have ten Life Domains and ten goals for yourself, you can pick any of those ten to pursue.

Of course, it shouldn’t be all ten at the same time.

But you can pick one to focus on and work on today.

By creating ten goals, you have more options.

You can kickstart momentum and then continue that ripple effect.

So, all in all, your Life Domains are really important in Life Design.

This is why it’s one of the key components of it and why we spend so much working on it within Breverie.

HOW TO TURN LIFE DOMAINS INTO SOMETHING PRACTICAL

In Brevery 10x, we do an exercise called the Wheel of Life. It’s very simple.

Let’s try it now.

Draw a circle and divide it into slices like a pie chart.

This represents your whole life. Each slice represents each of your Life Domains.

The size of each slice is determined by how much time you dedicate to a particular Life Domain.

This first circle represents your current life as it is.

Now, draw a second circle. Divvy it up based on how you wish your pie slices looked — your ideal life.

HOMEWORK:

Look at those circles and reflect and brainstorm around any discrepancies and differences you’re seeing.

For example, maybe you want to spend more or less time in a particular Life Domain.

Now, you can make small improvements to get closer to your ideal life.

A NOTE OF CAUTION:

This exercise isn’t created, so you’ll feel hopeless.

The point is to promote self-reflection and self-discovery and to start thinking about how to get those slices just a tiny bit closer to where you want them.

Don’t fall into the trap of setting unachievable goals.

You don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking you can achieve a big goal in just one attempt or one step.

Let’s look at an example of this mindset.

You have a hobby that you love, and you have a dream of turning it into your business someday.

Right now, you have a corporate job, and you’re telling yourself this will never happen.

If you think about it this way, it’ll likely never happen, right?

What you can tell yourself instead is…

How can I dedicate just one more hour per week to my hobby?

It should be realistic, and you do this for a month.

In 4 weeks…

Come back to this goal and add two hours a week, or maybe even one extra hour each day.

Instead of trying to go from nothing to all in just one step, take it step by step.

Gradually, within several months, you’ll notice how much progress you’ve made and how much time you’re allocating to your hobby.

Maybe it’ll be time to take that next step of opening up a shop, and you’ll have the bandwidth built in to achieve it.

WHAT LEVEL OF SATISFACTION DO YOU GET FROM A PARTICULAR LIFE DOMAIN?

What you get out of your Life Domain matters just as much as how much time you dedicate to it.

If you’re happy with one Life Domain but you’re not so satisfied with another, it might be time to shift your focus to those other areas.

When you complete the Wheel of Life exercise, you can mark your level of satisfaction right now, the way it is right now, from one to ten.

Once again, don’t feel discouraged if you see twos and threes or even ones.

Your ultimate goal isn’t to bring everything to ten.

The goal is to help you start thinking about each Life Domain, to see the big picture, so you can make an intentional decision on what you’ll focus on.

As you work on this exercise, determine: