Do This Before Setting New Year's Resolutions! Assessing 7 Areas of Life Balance

If you're in a goal-setting mindset right now (whether it's the new year, a new season, or just anytime you're setting goals to build your best life going forward), THIS is the episode for you!

In this episode, we're walking through an ASSESSMENT all about the seven spheres of LIFE BALANCE. The 7 spheres are:
1. Spiritual/Soul
2. Partner/Spouse/Relationship
3. Family
4. Community
5. Physical/Body
6. Personal/Mind/Mental Health
7. Business/Career

Each of these areas is either a source of energy or a drain of it. Follow along as I rate these areas in my own life on a scale of 1-10. I encourage you to rate them for yourself as well as we go along!

As always, thank you for sharing, and please share with a friend or loved one! LOVE YOU!

Personal Growth | Motivation | Mindset | Personal Development | Self Improvement | Mental Reframe | Empower | Evolve | Rise and Energize

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Don't forget to check out Shared Shelves Book Club pod!

Transcript

0:40

Hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. I am so glad you're here. Whether you're listening to this right when it comes out or somewhere down the road in the future when you're looking for something that is gonna help you with your New Year's goals or just new goals in general. But whatever it is for you. I'm so glad that you're here. So thank you for tuning in. I did wanna remind you that doing things like subscribing on YouTube, subscribing in general to any of the platforms that you listen on, Spotify, apple Podcasts is super helpful. But then also leaving Apple Reviews is really helpful for people who are searching on Apple. It makes you a lot more searchable when you have more reviews and. Recently, I've had a few come through, so thank you for those of you that are leaving those. I did want to shout out one of them that came through. I have a sneaking suspicion that I know who this is, but I'm not totally sure because on Apple Podcasts, they always have weird usernames. You know what I mean? If you scroll down to Rise and Energize, some of these usernames are so funny and. It's really hard to know who they might be. So anyway, this one was J Money 8 1 6, and said, I really like the energy Morgan brings to my ears. Not only is she fun to listen to, but she has real wisdom and insight at the same time. Love listening, and genuinely brings a smile to my face. Thank you so much, Jay Money. I appreciate it so much That's exactly what I wanna do. I wanna bring you some energy, I wanna bring you some inspiration, and I want to bring a smile to your face at the end of the day. So hopefully you log off of these episodes, or I guess log off is not the term for podcasts, I don't really know. But hopefully you end these episodes feeling a little bit better, feeling a little bit more inspired, a little bit more motivated to do whatever it is that is important to you and helps you just get one inch closer to the life that you want to be living and your dream life. So. I am super excited for today's episode. This is, I'm almost thinking of this as like a part one and two, because before we get into goal setting and vision casting and all of that for 2026, I think it's really important to assess where we are, and this is a personal growth podcast, so if you have clicked on this title, you or if you're listening into this podcast regularly, you probably are someone who is ambitious but also wants to live. Wants to live a well-rounded, intentional, mindful life, and all of us have diff different things that we are excelling at and things that we're maybe wanting to improve in the future and things that are more important to us than they are to other people. So this assessment is something that I used to do kind of on a quarterly basis whenever I was heavy into my network marketing business. And it has nothing to do with network marketing, it was just something that someone had shared within that. Community that I was a part of, and I feel like it's really helpful for assessing where you are now and then also assessing where you wanna go. Because here's the thing, I feel like a lot of the time toward the end of the year, especially when we're setting New Year's resolutions and New Year's goals and all of that, toward the end of the year and the beginning of the. We start to adopt some goals that other people share and we're like, oh yeah, that sounds good. I'll do that too. But then we realize like, it's not actually that important to us. For instance, we just shared our New Year's goals in our little book club chat that we have shared shelves, which also it has its own podcast, shared Shelves book club podcast. So go follow that. If you are a reader and you like to talk about books or listen to other people's reviews of books that you've read, go listen to that one. But in our shared shelves book club chat, we were sharing our book goal. Well, Maybe for someone who is really focusing on career growth in 2026 or is really focusing on physical health in 2026, or really wants to go back to therapy in 2026 and start journaling and kind of work on personal growth. Maybe reading more books is not a goal that you wanna have, but you hear someone say, I wanna read one book per month in 2026, and you think 12 books a year. Yeah, that's doable. I could totally do that. I'll make that a goal. But really it's not important to you and your intentions for your life in 2026. Reading is not something that's important to you, but you just throw it out there as a goal and then later you're disappointed whenever you don't reach it. Like, let's be intentional about our goals. And I think part of that is assessing where we are and where we wanna put focus on. So I'm gonna walk you through this assessment. I think you can do this at any time in your life. I just think that at the end of the year is a fun time to do it. And my husband and I actually kind of did this last year in, at the end of what. How did, how would that be at the end of 2024 going into 2025? I couldn't think of how that would be, but yeah, going into 2025, uh, I think we actually did it on New Year's Eve'cause we had like no plans. We've become kind of boring for New Year's Eve and we just hang out with each other. We have like a glass of champagne at midnight, assuming that we stay up that long. And we watch the movie New Year's Eve, the one that has all the different people and storylines in it. And it's so fun. Anyway, all that to say that we actually did this little assessment at the end of last year and it helped us set some of our goals for the new year. So. I think that it would be really helpful to do at any time of the year, but especially now when you're thinking about goals, let's set them intentionally and let's really focus in on the areas of our life that we feel not only that we're lacking in maybe, but that are actually. Important to us. So I want you, as you listen to this episode, you might be listening like in the car or in the shower, or while you're getting ready or while you're doing chores or something like that. And so normally these episodes are, they're kind of like a pep talk, a boost, a little reminder that you're doing great, boost of your confidence, that sort of thing. But this episode is a little bit more actionable. So I would love if you have a second, even if you're doing one of those tasks, maybe you could get creative and pause me every once in a while and like have a note open on your phone or something. And if you're driving, you just like voice to text about that particular subject because I'm gonna go through, the seven areas of life balance. This is. What it's called, I think it comes from Zig Ziglar originally, but I don't know, I just heard it from a previous coach that I had and kind of adopted it as a regular practice for assessing these seven areas of life balance. So you'll, you'll give them like a rating essentially. And then once you assess them, you'll circle. Let's say one or two. I like to only circle one or two, and those are gonna be your focus for the next period of time. And you can designate this period of time as being 2026 overall. Or you can be like, let's, these are the period. These are the areas that I want to focus in on for the first quarter. So I'm gonna check back in on these at the end of March. I also think this is really great to do with a partner. You guys could do it separately. Like you could send this episode to your partner and be like, Hey, I think that we should do this. You should do yours. Individually for me, I'm gonna do mine, and then we should come together and see if they kind of correlate. You know, like one of the areas is family. So if you're feeling really good about your relationship with your family and your partner isn't, then maybe that's something that you guys can come together on and you can work more toward the desires that they have to improve their family relationships. So that's just one example. But if you're listening to this while you're doing something else and you don't feel like you can really assess this as you go, no worries. You can pause and come back to it, or you can try to do a mental assessment. But I do really highly encourage you to actually write this down somewhere, even if it's a note on your phone or just like on a Post-It or wherever it is. I do highly recommend that you actually take note of this so that in the future you can go back. Assess where you were and where you feel like you are now and where things may have like taken a back burner and where things you may have improved on. So first, so there's seven areas of life balance. I'll tell you all seven of them and then kind of go through them and give, explain what they are. They're, some of them are pretty obvious just in the name, but I'll tell you which ones they are, how I would define them, and then I'll even just go ahead and assess while I'm here on the spot. I didn't plan to do this, so this is gonna be a little scary, but we're gonna do it. So first one is spirit. This is spirit or soul, we could call it. Second one is partner, spouse, or partner. If you're not in a relationship, I would just call this like your close personal relationships, whatever your top one or two people in your life that you see every day and care about like that, that top one person, probably someone's coming to mind, even if you are single, don't have a spouse or a partner. The third is family. The fourth is community. The fifth is physical, the sixth is personal, and this is also kind of like mental mind. And the seventh is business or career. So I'm gonna start with spirit. So spirit or soul. This is whatever connection you have to something greater. And this really could just be, I was reading something that I loved, how it described this, but it was kind of like you can ask yourself if you are doing well with your soul or with your spirit. If you ask yourself, am I at peace with myself? And if that feels really rocky or really like, no, absolutely not. Then there's probably some shifting that needs to happen there. So This could apply to if you practice some kind of organized religion or you believe in God, or you believe in, you know, your connection with the universe or something like that, maybe you have a meditation or a prayer practice and you wanna assess how you've been doing with that. This is that category for that. So for me, for soul or spirit, I actually would say this is pretty low. So I feel a little embarrassed that I started with this one, but that question, am I at peace with myself? I have really been struggling in some other areas of life, and I'll get to those later, I'm sure, but that has made my spirit be a little bit dimmed, like my light has been a little bit dimmed. I guess maybe you could think of this as your light that you're shining out into the world or something, but I feel like my soul is. Just, yeah, I'm just struggling a little bit in that area. So I like to rate these from one to 10. So I'm gonna actually give that one, I'm gonna give it a pretty low score for me. Like a low score is like three or four. So I'm gonna give it a three, I think. Well, I think I'm gonna give it a four. Just because I think that there are some other ones that are lower, but I like to rate on a scale of one to 10, if you're a Good Reads person or a five Stars person or something like that, you can do a scale of one to five, give it stars, give it emojis. I don't care. But I would rate it there. So Spirit is your tie to. God, the universe really are you at peace with who you are as a being? How is your practice going with getting connected and feeling aligned with who you are and your belonging in the world? The second one is spouse or partner, or like I said, you could apply this to whoever the closest relationship is in your life. I personally would rate this pretty high. I think that my husband Jared and I, we have been together, we, we've been together 14 years, but we've been married nine, and I think we're in a pretty good season of understanding each other and doing well together. I probably would give this a 10 if I didn't feel like that was. Crazy. I'll give it a nine, but when you assess this, assess this on all levels. So are you feeling intimately connected with them? Are you feeling physically connected with them? Do you feel like you guys are able to have hard conversations? Do you feel like they're a safe space? Do you feel like you are on the same page when it comes to your life as a partner or as a couple or married? Are you where you want to be milestones wise? Like if marriage is something that you want in the future, is that something that you guys have talked about? Is that something that you want to talk about? So focus on where you are now, how you feel in general. And a lot of these can just be gut feelings, right? That one's pretty self-explanatory. Three is family, and you get to decide how you define this. So I'm at that place in my life where a lot of my friends are starting their own immediate families. And when I think of family, I still think a lot of my, growing up, immediate family, more so than like just me and Jared and my dog Ed. Which I guess would technically be my immediate family now, but when I think of family, I think a lot more of my parents, my siblings. My siblings children slash child, there's only one. And, and then my relationship with Jared as well, of course. And so you get to define that. So when you think of family, if you think of your immediate family, you. Can do that, or if you think of your extended family or your relationship with your parents or something like that. It's however you define it. But I'm gonna go ahead and still define it as my relationship. When I think of my family, I'm gonna think of it as like my siblings and my parents, and then I'll also include the extended family in that too. But this is another one where I feel really positive. I feel like my relationship with my family is. Pretty good. I am very, very close with my siblings. If you used to listen to this podcast when it was still Failure Cups podcast, I actually hosted it with my sister before she had her first daughter and even today I had my other sister over for brunch. I see them all regularly, at least once a week, pretty much. And so I feel pretty good on family. And then I would also say that on my in-laws side, we have a pretty good relationship with my in-laws. I would say that we see my well, we see my brother-in-law weekly, but my mother-in-law, I would say that we see at least once a month. And same with my parents. So I think that we're doing pretty good on family. I'm gonna go ahead and give that one a, lemme give it a eight. Next one is community, In this one, I would encourage you to think about your circle of friends, but I would also encourage you to think about, when you think about community, think about how you're serving your community. So do you have a place in your community? When I think of community, I think about do I feel of importance to the people surrounding me, or do I feel. A sense of belonging to the people around me because you might have a lot of friends, but If you don't feel important to them, maybe that's just me, but if you don't feel important to them, then it can feel really lonely still. And you may not feel like you have a really strong sense of community. So for me, I also think this is another strong one. I feel like, again, I'm really close to my family. My sisters are a lot of my community, but I also have a really. Thriving Book Club. I mentioned shared shelves. I love that group so much and it's such a good, solid source of community for me. Even at work, I have several friends that I feel really close and tied to, and I do feel of service to these people. I feel like I offer opportunities for us to gather. I feel like I want to do things for them. I want to step up and host baby showers for them or bring a dish to their party, or I want to get them gifts or take care of their kids for them or whatever it is for them. So I feel like in community, I feel pretty strong. I would give this one an eight as well, and I would encourage you when you think of this specifically, think about how you feel as a part of your community. The fifth one is physical. This one's pretty obvious as well. So this is specifically how you feel in your body. So do you feel healthy? Do you feel strong? Do you feel aligned with your body? On the flip side, if you aren't feeling that way, maybe if you're feeling really fatigued or bloated or you're sick very often, or going up the stairs is a struggle for you, or you feel out of breath really often, or you feel like you've been eating junk a lot or something like that. Then maybe this is one that you rank a little bit lower. So for me, I, I feel pretty solid in this. I would say that the biggest thing that I'm working on when it comes to physical is my relationship with alcohol. I think I'm doing pretty good on that. I pretty much only drink on the weekends, and I have like. A couple of drinks whenever I do, but especially around the holidays, which is when I'm recording this in real time. It can be easy to indulge in a lot of like treats and things like that, but I find myself more so indulging in like wine or pina coladas, or I only say pina coladas.'cause Jared's family is so cool, I think. But they have pina coladas at all of their. Family holiday gatherings. It could be like Easter or Thanksgiving or Christmas, but it's pina coladas all the way. But anyway, so wine, pina, coladas, mimosas, whatever it is. I find that special occasions, I use it more as a reason to indulge in drinks than in food. So that's the one thing that I would say I've been working on. But as far as like my water intake and exercising regularly and eating mostly a whole foods diet with high protein, that's something that I definitely prioritize and have worked on, and so I would give myself a pretty high score for that. I'm gonna say a seven for physical, and then six is personal. So I would also call this like mental health or mind. So we just did physical, which is body personal is mind or mental health. So how you feel mentally. If you have been going to therapy for a while, maybe this is something that you've improved on, or maybe this is something you've been feeling down, especially in the winter months. I know that we can all get kind of that sad, seasonal effective disorder kind of thing. But mental health is what I would say you're gonna rank here. This is another one that's a little bit low for me. And again, I think it has to do with that soul aspect. I almost feel like turning 30 this year has made me just really get in my thoughts and get in my head and think like, what am I doing here? And, you know, all of that. So it's been kind of interesting, but I would probably give myself like a five, like right middle of the line, you know, on the cusp of being either better or worse. And then the seventh one is business or career. And this could be anything that is related to something that you're building on. Career wise for the future. So you might apply this to your full-time job. You might apply it to your part-time job. You might apply it to, if you have like a side business or a side hustle, you could apply it to where you feel like in your education if you are working toward like an education or a certificate that you can get a job in the future. So not everybody has like a career or a business, but you can think of this as your contribution to society. And meaningful work in general. So whatever meaningful work that you're doing, ask yourself, am I doing meaningful work in my life? Do I know what I'm working toward right now? Am I working towards something that I care about? That is what you can ask yourself to answer this question. For me, this is another one that's been kind of shaky. I feel like the work that I do is very meaningful and very impactful, but work life has been a little bit of a challenge. So I'm gonna go ahead and give this one a six and hopefully that'll improve in the future. But after we go through each of these areas, so hopefully you just went along with me. You kind of assessed yourself. You kind of said, okay, I'm a, I'm between a one and a 10 on this. Maybe you're more extreme than me, and you're like, you allow yourself to give yourself ones or tens. But either way, I want you to assess each area of life and then that way you can kind of reflect on it. And then now I want you to pick like which one you feel like needs the most attention. So maybe you gave your lowest score to business, but you actually care more about your spouse relationship. Like maybe you want your spouse relationship to be a 10, obviously. I mean, we kind of want all of these to be tens, right? But. Come on anyways. So you want your spouse relationship to be a 10 and your business number might be at like a four or five or something, but your spouse relationship is at a six and you're like, I'd really rather focus on improving that because it's more important to me than building my career or building my business goals. Then circle that one or highlight it if this is on your notes app or something like that. And. Choose that one as the one that you want to work on. When you're looking at these, it doesn't, you don't necessarily want to like neglect the ones that you already gave. High scores. Like for me, I think I gave high scores to family, community, and physical. So those three, it's not that. I'm like, okay, good on those gonna be done with those. Let's keep, let's keep going on those. Let's celebrate the fact and like pat ourselves on the back for the fact that those are going well for us. But then let's just maybe not worry about setting goals for those specific ones. Or if you set goals, set maintenance goals, right? Like if you're drinking a hundred ounces of water a day, then maybe just keep it at a hundred ounces of water a day instead of moving it on to like. 150 or whatever. So, I would really encourage you for those, if you are gonna set goals, just kind of keep them maintenance goals, keep doing what you're doing.'cause obviously you feel good about it. And then for the ones that are lower, look at the ones, pick one or two that are really important to you. You know, maybe you feel like your mental health is in the toilet and that's really important to you and you need to seek a therapist or you need to even. Seek a hobby. You need to seek a book club, or you need to start cross stitching or something like that to help improve like just your mental health in general and your mind in general. Maybe that's something that you really need to focus on this year. Circle that one, and then next week, i'm gonna talk to you about goal setting for the year and my take on doing that. So hopefully you love this episode. If you did, please let me know. I love when you DM me on Instagram and tell me like, oh my God, I love this episode. Or when you share it on your social media. I really, really appreciate that. And of course, I always appreciate your reviews, so thank you for leaving those and.