June is National Rebuild Your Life Month…a great time to assess how well you balance your life—balance between work and play, as well as between your own needs and the needs of those around you.
For business owners and professionals, here’s a question for you: Have you ever considered what costly consequences you experience in your career or business when the rest of your life is out of balance?
One of my favorite tools for assessing balance in your life is called The Nine Environments of You, a model created by the late Thomas Leonard–considered by many to be the founder of the coaching profession. Today’s blog provides an overview of all nine environments. In the coming weeks, my posts will offer a closer look at each individual environment.
This model will help you identify where your life is out of balance. Once you’re aware of this, you can “upgrade” your environments in a way that will support the ultimate life you desire. This is done by choosing to take action steps designed to increase your level of satisfaction in each of nine areas of your life.
When you hear the word “balance,” you may be visualizing a scale that has the left and right sides in perfect alignment with each other. This is not the kind of balance I’m talking about. All nine areas of your life will most likely never receive equal weight or priority. You are the only one who can determine what the right balance is for you.
It’s All About Choice!
You may consciously choose to give more focus to one area of your life for a period of time, which requires you to reduce the time you spend in other areas. For example, let’s say that your company or business has set an important stretch goal, and you choose to work extra hours for the next two weeks to help reach the goal. Or perhaps a family member has a medical emergency and you choose to shift your focus for a period of time to tend to their needs.
The key here is that you are at choice — not a victim of circumstances or other people determining your priorities.
When you do not create the right balance for you, creativity suffers, resentment sets in, your physical/mental/spiritual health is at risk, your close relationships may be in turmoil, and burnout is ahead.
When all of your environments are in the right balance for you, you’ll experience synchronicity. Remarkable “coincidences” will happen in your life as things fall into place. The end result is that you will attract what you desire with much greater ease.
Without significant environmental design, no process of change is sustainable over time. You may recall times when you had an intention to change something in your life, but shortly after you started working on that change, you found yourself going back to your old ways. That’s because your behavior adapted to old familiar environments that reflected who you were. For sustainable success, you’ll need to design your environments to support an evolution toward who you want to be.
The Nine Environments of You
These are the Nine Environments, as defined by Thomas Leonard:
- Memetic: beliefs, values, ideas, thoughts, cultural norms, frameworks–the lens through which you view the world, including the other eight environments
- Body: physical appearance, health, energy
- Self: personality, temperament, character, gifts, talents, strengths
- Spiritual: deep connections, sacred spaces
- Relationships: close friends, family and colleagues
- Network: greater community, strategic partners, customers, professional connections, social networks
- Financial: money, income & expenses, investments, budgeting
- Physical: places (home, office, car – wherever you spend time), sounds, lighting, furnishings, tangible objects
- Nature: outdoors, beauty, seasons, cycle of life
Have you ever felt overwhelmed with all the unfinished tasks in your life? Do you feel chronically exhausted from trying to juggle and balance the responsibilities of family, work, and self-care? Perhaps you are disappointed with all the missed opportunities that have slipped through the cracks due to disorganization, lack of clarity about priorities, or poor time management…or you feel unfulfilled with your current life choices.
If you can relate to any of this, you know the power that your nine environments have over you, and how important it is that you design all of your environments so they support your goals, intentions, and priorities. Our environments work in harmony with each other.
Everything is Connected
I’ll share an example of how all nine environments are so connected. The purpose of sharing such a deeply personal story is to help you understand that what you do in one environment affects all the other environments.
For decades I dealt with some serious issues with two family members. My brother had a drug and alcohol addiction, and my mother had been his “enabler” for his entire adult life. He had been living in the family room of her one-bedroom apartment for a long time. Despite her desire to see my brother live a clean life, my mother did not have the strength to practice “tough love” by moving him out and allowing him to live with the consequences of his own choices.
Many years prior, I had decided to set some firm boundaries to protect myself from getting pulled into their unhealthy codependent relationship. For as long as I could remember, I had prayed that my mother would stop supporting my brother’s addictions and that he would become motivated to get whatever help he needed to stay clean and sober and live a productive life.
Finally, the day came that I had been praying for. Mom called to tell me that she was ready to start practicing “tough love” with my brother and was no longer supporting him…but she did not think she had the strength to stick to her plan on her own. We invited my mother to move in with our family so we could be there to support her when my brother sought her out for financial help.
Several weeks later, I discovered that my brother had been living at Mom’s apartment—only two miles from our home—and she was still supporting him. She had been hiding this from us the entire time she was living under our roof.
When I found out what was going on, I was furious! My mother had crossed some boundaries and violated our trust. We had supported her under false pretense. Our financial support of her was enabling her to enable my brother, who continued to use drugs and alcohol.
I became nonfunctional as I allowed myself to get drawn into the drama. My relationship with my mother quickly deteriorated, and I asked her to move back to her apartment. I judged her harshly for hiding the truth from us to gain our family’s support. I was emotionally spiraling downward and could not see how to pull myself out of it.
“The Nine Environments of You” Model to the Rescue!
Then I remembered the Nine Environments model that I’d used with many of my coaching clients. I took out a piece of paper and listed each one.
Beginning with my Memetic environment, I wrote down some old beliefs I had allowed to creep in from my childhood: “You’re not lovable . . . you don’t deserve . . .” My self-talk was “proving” these beliefs to be true as I found evidence to convince myself that my mother loved my brother more than me. I proceeded to examine the other eight environments.
Body: I was not getting much sleep, had stopped exercising, and was eating a lot of high carb comfort foods. I felt exhausted and depleted.
Self: My skills and talents were going to waste. I was barely present for appointments with my clients. I was not making any kind of meaningful contribution because I was so busy having a “pity party” for myself. I had stopped singing in choir at church…or even going to church.
Spiritual: My spiritual practices had gone out the window. One of my standard practices is expressing gratitude at the beginning of each day. I had forgotten what I was grateful for and had stopped sending my daily cards of gratitude to others.
Relationships: Not only had my relationship with my mother deteriorated, but I had also been very irritable and short-fused with my husband and daughter.
Network: I was completely disengaged from the business professionals I normally networked with. I had cut off connection with anyone outside my immediate family.
Financial: I was having trouble concentrating on my work responsibilities, which affected my income.
Physical: I had piles of papers all over my office (postponed decisions) because I was having trouble concentrating on my work. The clutter made me feel even more discouraged and depressed.
Nature: I felt completely cut off from nature. I was unaware of anything outside of my immediate surroundings.
Reversing the Downward Spiral
I began to identify action steps I could take to upgrade each of my environments, beginning with Memetic. With the help of my own personal coach, I uncovered a hidden belief that I had developed as a young adult: “I have to be right, powerful, and superior to survive.”
Once I became consciously aware of this belief, I asked myself if it served me to continue believing it. I realized that this belief would not support the kind of relationships I wanted to have with others. Just being conscious of its existence reduced its power over me.
I chose to replace that belief with this new one that supported healthier relationship with those I care about: “I am a generous servant leader.”
As I worked through the other eight environments, I identified action steps I could take to upgrade each one. Taking conscious action helped me reverse the downward spiral I had been experiencing.
I came to the realization that success can be achieved and sustained only when all nine environments are working together in support of each other. When you change your environments, you change your life. Changing only one or two environments does not have the same impact!
I hope that my personal story will help you to understand just how interconnected all of your environments are.
Epilogue
A couple years later, my mother called to say that she was ready to participate in an intervention. If you are not familiar with what this is, an intervention is a professionally-directed gathering of concerned individuals for the purpose of getting a friend or family member to enter into a treatment program.
The intervention meeting did not go well, but a week later my brother decided to enter into the drug and alcohol treatment program we had set up for him. He graduated from that program nine months later and remained clean and sober until his last day of life eleven years later–December 6, 2017–when he suffered a fatal heart attack. For an expanded version of this story, visit my blog: What Death Teaches Us About Life.
Upgrade Your Life!
I am so passionate about this work that I’ve incorporated nine leaves into my logo to represent the Nine Environments. Stay tuned for future blog posts that will drill down deeper as we explore each of the Nine Environments of You.
If you are not subscribed to receive notifications about my weekly blog posts, please subscribe by scrolling to the top of this page and look for the green box in the upper right corner. I invite you to follow along each week and examine one environment at a time. Get ready to experience synchronicity in your life like never before, as things fall into place.
If you’d like a fresh perspective– someone to help you design the balanced life you want by aligning your vision, priorities, and actions—let’s schedule a no-cost, no-pressure Discovery Call today.
Additional Resources
- Blog: Managing the Sticky Notes of Life
- Free Webinar: Managing Priorities
- Guide: Cultivating Happiness: Living Life on Your Terms
- Guide: Creating New Habits
- Guide: Living with Purpose
Thank you for this both powerful and insightful post. The nine environments is a different lens of looking at the aspects of one‘s life than others I’ve come across, and you have made me curious to think about it more. Your personal story really enhanced the explanation of the nine environments!
Thank you, Kai. Yes, the Nine Environments model does provide a different way of looking at one’s whole life, which is so important. I always say, “Wherever you go, there you are!” You bring all parts of your life and being with you everywhere, so all nine environments of your life affect each other. Those who think they can compartmentalize their lives and be successful in the long run are in for a surprise at some point, when things start to fall apart due to neglect of one or more environments. I think of two very “successful” people — Kate Spade and Anthony Bordain — and I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if all nine of their environments had been adequately tended to.
Somehow, some time back, I signed up to your life coach blog, and eventually I became overloaded with email and started hitting delete to keep up with what was ‘important and urgent’ and yours as well were put aside.
Recently I read one entirely, the first of this life balance series. Now I’m reading them with gratefulness, to your willingness to share. You are a generous person. Thank you Kathy for your encouraging and life giving messages.
Bill, I, too, have become more discerning about what I read, since the volume of offerings is so great. Thank you for your kind feedback. I am touched to know that my blogs are meaningful enough to you that you’ve decided to read them again. Best wishes to you.
Excellent write-up. I absolutely love this website. Keep writing!