Igniting The Fire Within
The Fire Within from Stephen Covey’s groundbreaking First Things First.
How do you lead a life of fulfillment instead of disappointment?
By focusing on your human needs. Not human wants, like a brand new iPod, but human needs, and here is a method that helps you live a life of fulfillment and ignite the fire within.
Here Is A Powerful Method To Direct The Time Of Your Life
A time-tested way to manage the time of our lives is to compartmentalize the different areas of our lives into easy-to-manage, bite-sized pieces. You can think about these areas like career, family, health, finance, studies, relationships, the list is endless.
An master way to handle these lists is from Stephen Covey’s First Things First. In it, he describes the 4 master needs that everybody has, and must satisfy to live, to love, to learn and to leave a legacy.
Physical needs are the needs you have to live. These include needs like taking care of your health, finances, career.
Social needs are the needs you have to love. The need to love and be loved drive your needs for good relationships with friends, family, lovers, colleagues, community.
Mental needs are the needs you have to learn. These include the need for growth and constant, never-ending improvement.
Spiritual needs are the needs you have to leave a legacy, by filling your life with meaning, purpose and mission.
When any of these needs are unmet, you’re like a car running without a tire. You know you’re moving, but something’s not quite right.
You might be doing extremely well at work, for example, and have truckloads of cash raining on you. But if your late hours cause you to become distant from your wife and friends, then you’re not running on all cylinders.
In those moments when you take conscious control and have all areas going on strong, that’s when the engine of your life ignites with the fire within.
How To Ignite The Fire Within
The personal power you have when you take care of all areas is incredible, and it even builds on itself.
When you have a great relationship (social), you feel more motivated to take care of yourself (physical). The more energy you have (physical) the more you can do at work (physical). The more you live on purpose (spiritual), the happier you’ll be and the better relationships you have (social).
Satisfying all 4 needs brings you to a life of vitality, passion and fulfillment, and that inner joy for life that you can only describe as the fire within.
Take a moment, stop and reflect back on the past week. Have you been focusing on one area of life and neglecting another? If so, time for you to take back the power.
The great thing is that you can combine the different areas for a double-punch of power. You could get your husband to go play a few rounds of tennis with you, for example, or listen to a motivational audio program while running. You could join a class to learn something new and meet new people at the same time. The possible combinations are endless.
The Fire Within At Life Coaches Blog
Life Coaches Blog is as much a reflection of my journey as it is a one-stop personal development library for you, my dear readers. I’ve always had this deep want to become a better person, whether physically by studying the martial arts, socially by learning how to be more empathic, mentally by picking up the success strategies of NLP, or spiritually by defining my mission and creating meaning in what I do.
That’s why there are 21 subject categories in Life Coaches Blog, from awareness, coaching to communication. They reflect my own interests and drive to become better, instead of just focusing on one area of my life like relationships or productivity.
I’m still writing to strike the balance between good writing, informational content and sharing my own personal path to growing in wisdom, power and love.
The last 13 months have been an interesting journey, but if you liked what’s come so far, those were just baby steps. Stick around with me, I have a feeling the next 13 months is going to be even more exciting!
I really enjoyed this post. It’s easy to forget how powerful our physical reactions are! I like your approach here. Especially reminding the reader that we are not always ready for change — though we think we are! I agree that the real failure is letting fear stop us. Thanks for posting this!
Hi Julie,
Thank you for your kind words. I am glad it was helpful! “Coping with Stress” is a part of a series of articles on Stress that I have written, hopefully Life Coaches Blog will be posting the rest. So keep in touch!
Kindest regards,
Karen
This is a great article. I especially like the list of symptoms… some of which a lot of people may not recognize as a sign of stress.
It’s also important to continue with your stress managment activities even when there are no signs or symptoms of stress. Doing this will help you become stressed less often and ward off stress before it even begins.
Hi Jill,
Absolutely, it should be a way of life! Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts.
Kindest regards,
Karen
Hi,
Great site!!!!! Good health is very important with the high cost of medical coverage. We need to have a healther lifestyle by taking care of our health eating and exercising. I am a cancer survivor and I know. Our health is our greatest asset. Keep up the Good Work!!!!!
The physical body does not differentiate between happy stress and overwhelm. Stress is stress. We need to develop coping mechanisms in our daily life to avoid the harmful, physiological effects of stress.