Is your life divided into different parts? Sure it is: Parts like work, family life, hobby, spirituality or housekeeping are part of most people’s life. But do all of these different parts of your life head into the same direction? If your answer is yes, then I have to congratulate you for living a truly extraordinary life.
But most probably there is little if any overlap between the different areas of your life. Your work is only a means to pay the bills, your family life has little to do with what you love to do with your friends, and most of the time, you have to turn of your conscience to be able to function, because deep down in your heart you know that you are not living the life that you came here to live.
I know this kind of life from first hand experience. Most of my life, I was living a life that was not congruent, nor in alignment with what I really wanted to do - although I thought it was at some times. But worst of all, I knew it most of the time, but felt unable to do something about it.
I was spiralling through work I didn’t want to do, and that was draining my energy and left me empty like a zombie after a short period of time. When I quit a job, I soon ended in another one that was not really better.
Now I still have a job that I don’t particularly like, but it doesn’t drain me as much as most of the others did. And I can see he light at the end of the tunnel, as I am working towards a better work that fills me with energy instead. This blog is an important part of it, and there is more to come.
I’m now actively aiming on building overlap between all of my different areas in life, and ideally bringing it to total congruency.
Living a congruent life simply means that all of your areas overlap, and your whole life is heading into one single direction. Your whole life is based on the same set of beliefs, core values and principles. A great educator of this principle is Stephen R. Covey in is book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Achieving congruency is a process that will accompany you for a very long time, if not even your whole life, because even if your life reaches a good level of congruency, I believe that there is always room for optimization.
To achieve congruency in your life, you have to actively seek for alignment between all different areas of your life.
What helped me a lot is a model of 4 areas that I learned from Steve Pavlina, and that he uses quite often in his own articles.
Basically, you look at your life from four different perspectives:
You then write a list for all four areas and list every aspect that you feel is important in this area. You will end up with four lists, and ideally there is already some overlap. If there is, you already have an idea of what your ideal life is like.
Hopefully, at least two or three areas have some alignment that you can use as a basis to work on different areas.
Maybe your Heart and Spirit already have some alignment, but you neither have the skills necessary to follow down that path, nor can you imagine ways to make a living from it. But new skills can be learned, and if what you can use this to provide some kind of value to people, there is a way to earn some money on the way.
Be creative, and try like hell if, like me, you have trouble with bringing your life to alignment. It is nothing that can be done overnight. But the greater your congruency becomes, the more enjoyment will come into your life. And if you want, you can even find ways to enjoy the actual process of discovering your ideal life in terms of the four areas.
If you have additional ideas on how to achieve congruency, have a hard time with it, or want to share your own story to inspire others, please use the comment form or send me a private message using my contact form.
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