The 10 Dimensions of Life
A framework for assessing and improving our thriving
Introduction
I’m going to kick off today’s post with a transparency note: I intended to share this content with you a month ago. About the time we were working to push this forward, Portland’s 2024 Icemaggedon kicked off and we were without power for four days.
A younger version of me would’ve spent the weeks following that working overtime to get caught back up before going to the last Level Up Retreat. He also would’ve spent a lot of time apologizing and explaining what was happening.
This version of me is saner, healthier, more boundaried, and thinking more about what I’m modeling. Which also means that this version of me is more in integrity with what I’m sharing today.
If you were following along with where we were in January, we were transitioning from visioning (setting annual goals) to implementation (planning and sequencing). The 10 Dimensions of Life and its companion tool, the Wheel of Life, is conceptually in the gap between reflection and visioning. While it’s conceptually in that gap, I often present it in a different order.
But before I explain why, I want to give an overview of the 10 Dimensions of Life.
The 10 Dimensions of Life
The 10 Dimensions of Life builds upon Aristotle’s four dimensions of physical, emotional, mental, and social and includes more dimensions that most of us would consider important for thriving.1
The dimensions are:
Physical
Emotional
Mental
Spiritual
Play
Professional
Romantic
Family
Financial
Community
The first five can be grouped as “self-focused” dimensions and the second can be grouped as “relational-focused.” I want to be clear about this demarcation, though: it’s not true that the self-focused dimensions are divorced from or independent from the “relational-focused” ones or vice versa.
For instance, the Family and Romantic dimensions heavily influence most people’s Emotional dimensions. Similarly, most people’s Emotional dimension influences their Family and Romantic dimensions.
In another example, people’s Financial dimension may influence their Play dimension, at the same time that, for other people, the Community dimension has more influence on their Play dimension.
Ten different dimensions may seem like a lot or too many. What I’ve found is that, in the effort to make fewer dimensions, some dimensions get lumped together. For example, the Financial and Professional dimensions are often lumped together because our jobs and our money is usually so intertwined.
Keeping them separate, though, might help one be satisfied with their job separate from their satisfaction with their financial dimension. It could also help retirees or near-retirees separate how their desires to continue working (or not) relate to where they are financially.
This is thus a case where, though I’d prefer an easier-to-remember framework with 4-7 dimensions, 10 is actually more useful for us and better captures the tension of being human. Our reach exceeds our grasp.
So with that overview out of the way, let’s move into how to apply it using the Wheel of Life Worksheet.