The Life Pizza
7 Steps to True Wellness
I remember reading a book called The E Myth many years ago by Michael Gerber. The one thing I remember that I have used many times is “Entreupreuners who fail work IN their business, not ON their businesses.”
It’s the same for our lives! Most of us are too busy. We are rushing to do ‘things’ all the time, working, looking after children, being with family, housework and gardening, going out socially, studying, and generally feeling overwhelmed the vast bulk of the time.
We are working IN our lives and not taking time out to work ON our lives!
This is where the Life Pizza comes in! It’s a 7 step guide to setting up a plan to work ON your life, restore your JOY, create some balance and find energy!
You can quickly look at this diagram and instinctively you will know where the imbalances are. And you might want to spend a bit of time thinking about how to restore some balance.
Or to do it more specifically as a Life Plan you might want to wait until you have some downtime where you can be alone and focus on the pizza, and your life!
Find yourself some paper or a lovely diary or book you can keep as your Life Pizza Guide! Or of course, you can create a document in your computer and save it somewhere safe!
Create a separate page for each segment and write the segment name at the top of the page; and draw a 0-10 scale next to it.
REFLECTION TIME
Now comes the reflection time! Look at one page at a time, at that one aspect of your life and if 0 is you put no attention on it at all and 10 denotes you are doing well at it, think about where you are on the scale of 0-10.
So the same with the importance and significance of each area to you.
If you have an area that you believe is really important to you but you place no or little attention on it, what impact do you think it will have on you?
I bet a lot of unconscious misery and illness comes about when we are:
- not conscious of our Life Pizza, of how we feel
- unaware of the imbalances in each area
- don’t have a plan or commitment to address those imbalances
LEISURE
For example, if you look at Leisure/ relaxation/ time for yourself, where would you be on the attention scale? Do you pay attention to you and your needs? Do you give yourself time on a regular basis to just stop?
To stop and breathe and relax completely? To focus on you and how you are feeling? To work out why you are feeling a certain way and decide what would make you feel better?
And now decide how important you are to you! How important is it to you to take care of yourself? To renew your spirit?
If you are not putting much attention on you and your leisure time and playing sport or socializing, having fun or just connecting with others, AND you place little importance on it, what does that tell you about you? And how you feel about yourself?
Taking time out to recover and renew your physical, mental, spiritual and emotional wellbeing is essential! It’s not a luxury. It needs to rank at about 10 on the scale of importance!
Given where you are now in both areas, where would you like to be on those scales instead? Jot that down.
And what do you need to do to reach those numbers? How do you have to think differently? What beliefs do you need to address?
What specific commitments will you make to yourself to give yourself the time and attention you need, and to give yourself permission that you are more important than perhaps housework for 3 hours!
It reminds me of the warning flight attendants give prior to takeoff. They say roughly, “Should anything happen like the plane plummeting towards the earth, oxygen masks will fall from the ceiling”. If you are with a child, what do they tell you to do?
Put the oxygen mask on yourself first! Why? Because if you are dead you are not much use to the child!! You need to take care of yourself so you can take care of others when you need to!
It’s important AND it deserves attention!
ALL THE OTHER SLICES
Do the same with the other ‘slices’ of Pizza!
Rank yourself on the scale of 0-10 for both the amount of attention you place on it and how important it is to you.
Flag those where they rank low in both, and those where you rank high in importance but low on the amount of attention you put on it. They are the primary ones to begin with.
Decide where you would like to be in each area on both scales and then start a plan.
Tackle one slice at a time!
If you would like to have more information and thoughts about exploring each ‘slice’ I will do a series of emails and blogs where we address each one in detail.
28 years ago when I started speaking, my topic was Wellness. Back then, people looked at me as if I was stupid and said ‘huh’! We have come a long way since then thankfully and now people understand that wellness is much more than health. Whether you think about wellbeing or wellness, it’s the same thing and we are the ones in charge of our wellness, our joy, our experience of life!
We, more than anyone can influence our own state of mind and heart, and physical health, with our choices and decisions. Becoming aware of where we are on the wellness scale is the start. So here you have two tools to help you!
- the wellness scale for an overall cute idea of where you are (your energy and vitality reflects a lot of other things in your life!) and
- the Life Pizza that gives you specific areas to address and the way to form a wellness plan for your life!
Until then, enjoy your Pizza! Use it as the guide to start enjoying your life more - one slice at a time!
Zooties!
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