Do you tend to compartmentalize all the different areas of your life? Career goes there, relationship goes here, spirituality fits there, and health … well, that’s neither here nor there.

Or maybe your compartmentalizing is temporal instead of spatial in your thinking. During the workday you do what you must, this evening you’ll do what you love and have some fun, and on Sunday you’ll think about what it means.

Or perhaps you experience a feeling of compartmentalizing thought vs. action: “I’m spending X% of my time thinking and Y% of my time acting.”

When you view your life as a series of different compartments, each with different rules, then life gets pretty complicated. Trying to achieve balance is very difficult because you constantly feel the need to task switch. My relationship needs attention. Oh no, I’ve been neglecting my health. I need to work harder. I’ve got to stop thinking so much and take more action.

The different “bins” of your life are all fighting for your time. And the longer you neglect one of those bins, the louder it gets and the harder it will fight for attention. Put off your health for too long, and you’ll crash with an illness. Put off your relationship for too long, and a breakup may be the result. Put off your work, and your career and income will suffer.

This is a paradigm that many people share. Keep all your balls in the air. Keep all those plates spinning. Don’t let your spiritual beliefs interfere with your work.

But I think it’s a broken paradigm. Let’s consider a different way of thinking….

What if your life had only one bin, one ball to juggle, one plate to spin. Just one. No need to deal with 10 different areas of your life and keep them all balanced. Just one.

How is this possible? It’s possible if all of those different areas of your life are congruent, if they all follow the same rules. Then thought and action are one, both pointing in the same direction. They’re on the same path. Your work is congruent with your most deeply held spiritual beliefs — you don’t have to take your spirituality offline when you go to work. Improving your health improves your relationship. Increasing your income increases your service.

This means moving from a paradigm of the different parts of your life being in conflict to a new paradigm where they all cooperate. Instead of seeing each part of your life as independent, you begin to see them as interdependent. And isn’t this a more accurate model anyway? Can you truly isolate each part of your life as something separate? Can you abuse your health and think it won’t affect your career or your relationships? Do you think your feelings about your relationship won’t affect your financial situation? Can you ignore your spiritual beliefs when making business decisions and expect no negative consequences?

It seems obvious that all the different parts of your life are deeply interconnected. But a common way to treat problems is to try to isolate them. If there’s a problem with your health, you need to diet and exercise. If there’s a problem in your career, it’s time to work harder. But this isolation protocol doesn’t work well because there’s too much overlap between all the different parts of your life, no matter how much you try to isolate the problem areas and go to work on them.

It’s often the case that the obvious cause of the problem isn’t the true source. If you feel lonely because you haven’t been able to find the right relationship, and you keep trying harder and harder to find a relationship, you may get nowhere. The problem may be that you work at a career you aren’t passionate about, and you project this lack of passion to everyone you meet. And still a deeper issue may be that your spiritual beliefs tell you that service to others is very important, but you don’t feel you’re doing that. Then you change careers to do what you love, and it aligns with your spiritual beliefs because now you feel you’re contributing and serving. Then out of nowhere, you meet your future spouse, who is attracted to your passion about your work and the contribution you’re making. And the encouragement you experience from this relationship in turn helps you advance your career, increase your income, and free up more time to spend with your new spouse. Your stress goes down, and your health improves too. Your inner spiritual conflict was the real source of your inability to find the right relationship. Everything is deeply interconnected.

Although it seems that each part of your life follows different rules, they all follow the same rules. You may have different values for each part of your life, but the rules that govern those areas don’t change.

An example of an unchanging rule is kindness. The concept of kindness should resonate with your spiritual beliefs. You can be kind to your body, and your health will improve. You can be kind to your co-workers, and your relationships with them will improve. You can be kind to your spouse, and your marriage will grow stronger. You can be kind to a stranger, and your self-esteem will increase. It doesn’t matter to which area of your life you apply the principle of kindness. Its application is universal.

Another universal rule is being proactive, assuming personal responsibility for results and taking positive action. It doesn’t matter where you apply this rule: health, relationships, emotions, spiritual beliefs, career, business, money, etc. Being responsible works no matter where you apply it.

Cheating is another universal principle. No matter where you apply it, the long-term results are negative. Cheat your health, and pay the price of sickness. Cheat in your relationship, and the cost is a loss of intimacy. Cheat in your education, and your income suffers.

But more powerful than these intra-area effects, there’s the rippling effect due to the interrelatedness of all areas. So if you apply a universal principle in one area, either positively or negatively, it ripples into all other areas. If you cheat your health, then in the long run this will hurt your career, your relationships, your finances, your emotional state, and your sense of spiritual connectedness. You can’t cheat in one area of your life without suffering the consequences in ALL areas.

Similarly, be kind to your body, and your increased positive energy will positively affect your relationships, your work, your finances, your emotions, etc. Be proactive about building a career you enjoy, and your passion will spread to every other area.

If you violate a universal principle, it negatively impacts all areas of your life. If you follow a universal principle, it positively impacts all areas of your life. Universal principles don’t compartmentalize.

So the key then is figuring out these universal principles and aligning your thoughts and actions with them. This is how you achieve congruence between all the different parts of your life.

So what are the universal principles? Stephen Covey claims that the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People are based on universal principles. I tend to agree, and that’s a good place to start. But I think all of these principles can be reduced to just one: to love. Not the passive squishy emotional feeling of love, but “to love” — the action verb. To love your body translates into proper diet and exercise. To love your mind equates with learning. To love others is service. To love your work is to do it passionately and enthusiastically. To love your feelings means to respect and honor the messages they send you. This verb translates into different specific actions for each area, but the underlying principle is the same. Depending on the situation, “to love” may mean to listen, to serve, to work, to relax, to touch, and so on.

When you start injecting universal principles into every area of your life, alignment will gradually occur. The parts of your life will be transformed such that all these different pieces assemble themselves into one congruent whole. You won’t feel like these different parts of your life are in competition for your time and attention. Instead you’ll feel a sense of internal cooperation. You will have a sense that exercising your body is the best thing for your health and your relationship and your career and your spirituality.

Within each area you’ll either adapt your current circumstances to align with universal principles, or you’ll let go of all the misaligned pieces and start fresh. So your career may shift slightly as you adapt, or you may switch to a whole new career. Your old relationships may transform, or they may end while you seek out new ones. It just depends on how well the external parts of your life are able to align with who you are.

Alignment comes down to working on these four questions until they all produce the same answer:

What do you want to do? (desire)
What can you do? (ability)
What should you do? (purpose)
What must you do? (need)
When these four areas are aligned, motivation occurs automatically. Thought and action are automatically balanced because you are living your purpose consciously. You won’t feel like you should be thinking when you’re acting or acting when you’re thinking. The line between thought and action will disappear. Being and doing will become the same thing.

When you experience misalignment between these four areas/questions, the natural tendency is to slow down… sometimes to a crawl. You’ll feel like you have all these ideas pulling you in different directions, but you aren’t fully satisfying any of them. Your mind knows that continuing to work hard is likely to be futile and won’t solve the real problem of incongruence. It knows it’s time for you to stop, ask directions, and choose the path of alignment.

I went through this while running my games business. While I had many projects to grow the business, I knew deep down that I didn’t want to run that business for another decade. I was containerizing everything: my health over here, my relationship there, my work here, and my spirituality there. Each part of my life felt like it had its own set of rules. Eventually I started questioning whether this was the best way to live. Are we supposed to live like a collection of parts or as an integrated whole? I wondered whether it would be possible to live in such a way where there was only one set of rules governing all areas, essentially meaning that I followed my deepest spiritual beliefs in all matters. This line of questioning led me to discover just how it might be possible for all these different parts of my life might become a single, integrated whole. This would mean that my business and my conscience and my interpersonal relationships were all one. There would be no sense of separation.

In order to go through this process, I had to transform certain parts of my life while totally shifting others. I tried to transform my career initially from within, but the disconnect was big enough that it required a more dramatic shift. Other parts of my life were able to adapt more flexibly. The main reason for my shift away from my games business was that it wasn’t a strong enough outlet for service for me. I think that given enough time, the original business could have been shifted, but that wasn’t the best route for me too take. It was faster and simpler to build a new business from scratch with the goal of congruence in mind than to try to refactor the existing business.

I must say that this push for congruence in all areas turned out beautifully. I don’t feel that sense of separation between the different parts of my life anymore. My purpose says I’m here to serve and help people. My ability says I can do it through writing and speaking and running a web site. My needs say I must support myself doing it. And my passion says it’s what I love doing most. I don’t have to separate supporting myself with a job and then having fun on the weekends and thinking about spirituality at other times. Work = play = love.

When you live congruently, it’s as if all the different parts of your life lock into new positions to form a new whole that’s greater than all the individual pieces. Everything grows stronger: health, relationships, motivation, actions, results, etc.

I know that as a practical matter, it seems as though different rules often govern in different areas. Separating your spiritual beliefs from your work is very common. A lot of businesses seem to operate on the assumption that universal principles don’t exist. I don’t buy that at all. There are non-universal principles that apply just within their own domains (the rules of nutrition apply to your health but not to your work, for instance), but universal principles apply to all areas. I think that one’s spiritual beliefs are the single most important factor in choosing a career or a company to work for. If you have a deeply held belief that you hold sacred, you cannot violate it in any area of your life without suffering the consequences in all areas. You must be true to your inner self at all times. That’s the only way to be congruent and to live as a whole person instead of merely as a bag of competing parts.

When you live congruently, a quantum leap will occur in each of these four areas. Desire becomes passion. Purpose becomes mission. Need becomes abundance. Ability becomes talent. And it becomes almost ridiculously easy to achieve fulfillment in every area then because all the parts are working together in the same direction.

你是否有把生活分成許多個不同的領域呢？一部分是職業(yè)，一部分是人際關(guān)系，一部分是精神健康，一部分是身體健康等等各式各樣的分類。

也可能你把生活按時間而非空間分類。上班時間做你必須做的工作；夜間則縱情娛樂，做你喜歡做的事情；星期天的時候你又會做自己認為是屬于星期天的事情。

又或者你把生活分類為思想和行動：花X%的時間來想事情，Y%的時間付諸行動。

當你把生活看作是由一系列的元素組成，而每個部分都有自己的規(guī)則的時候，生活會變得很復雜。想要更個方面都要保持平衡可不是件容易的事情。因為你需要不斷地轉(zhuǎn)換各個方面。例如：我需要注意加強人際關(guān)系了。哦，不。我忽略了自己的健康問題。我需要更努力地工作。我應該停止想象，付諸行動。

生活的各個部分會相互爭斗，奪取更多的時間。你如果越忽視一部分，那一部分會爭斗地更厲害來引起你的注意。如果你忽視健康太久了，那么你的身體會垮掉。如果你忽視了人際關(guān)系，那么你的生活會已以人際關(guān)系破裂而告終。如果你忽視了工作，那么你的職業(yè)和收入會成為問題。

這很典型，大多數(shù)人都有這樣的感受。把所有的球都拋到空中，讓所有的碟子都保持旋轉(zhuǎn)起來。不要讓你的精神信仰干擾你的生活。

但在我看來這個典型其實是不完整的。讓我們換一種方式思考。

想象一下如果你的生活只是一個整體，一個球，一個碟子，只是一個，你的生活會如何。你不需要處理生活的10個領域，不用費心讓他們保持平衡。只用處理一個就夠了.

這可能嗎？當然可能，只要你把生活的各個領域統(tǒng)一起來，都遵守相同的規(guī)則。那樣的話，思想和行動都指向同一個方向，在同一條道路上前進。做著符合信仰的工作時，你就無須在工作的時候把信仰放在一邊。強身健體的同時你可以結(jié)交朋友，拓展人際關(guān)系。薪水增加的同時你也可以更多地服務社會。

這也就意味著從生活各個領域相沖突變成各領域相互合作。不再把生活的各領域看作獨立的，而開始把它們看作是相互聯(lián)系的部分。這種模式豈不更好？事實上，你真的能把生活各部分徹底分離？你是否想著身體健康并不會影響你的職業(yè)和人際關(guān)系？是否覺得自己的人際關(guān)系不會影響你的收入？在做決策的時候是否背離自己的信仰并認為最終不會有消極的后果。

很明顯，生活的各個領域是密切相關(guān)的。但一般情況下，大家都會把它們分離開來處理。如果健康出了問題，你需要加強運動，改善飲食。如果工作上出了問題，你要更努力的工作。因為生活的各個領域之間有太多的重疊，無論你怎樣努力地試著去把問題分成是屬于生活的哪個領域再去解決，這種分類并不能很好地運行。

事情經(jīng)常是這樣的：看起來是問題的明顯的起因的往往并不是問題真正的來源。如果因為你沒處理好人際關(guān)系而覺得很孤單，努力地想要拓展人際關(guān)系，最終卻沒能解決問題。真正的問題可能是你做著自己不喜歡的工作，而你遇上的人卻又對你的工作不感興趣。更可能是你的信仰是要為社會服務，可是你覺得自己的工作并不符合你的信仰。當你換成自己喜歡的工作的時候你會覺得自己有服務社會并作出貢獻，這和你的信仰是一致的。你會覺得自己并不孤單，然后遇見將來的配偶。他/她被你對工作的熱忱以及你對社會的貢獻所吸引。得益于這段關(guān)系的鼓勵，你的職位會晉升，薪水會增加，而且有更多的時間陪你的伴侶。壓力會減少，身體也會變得更健康。你內(nèi)心世界的沖突才是你孤單的真正原因。每件事都是緊密聯(lián)系的。

盡管看起來似乎生活的個部分遵循著不同的守則，事實上它們遵守著同樣的守則。雖然生活各部分在你心中有不同的分量，但是管理著這些部分的規(guī)則并沒有什么不同。

舉善良這個規(guī)則為例。善良與你的信仰產(chǎn)生共鳴。善待你的身體，你會變得更健康。善待你的同事，你的人際關(guān)系會變得更融洽。善待你的配偶，你們的關(guān)系會更牢固。善待陌生人，你的自尊心會加強。無論在生活的哪個領域你都可以從你的善良中獲益。善良是通用的。

另一個萬能守則是積極，勇于承擔責任并積極采取行動。論在生活的哪個領域你都可以應用這個守則：健康，人際關(guān)系，感情，信仰，工作，事業(yè)，金錢等等。無論在任何情況下你都可以保持負責的態(tài)度。

欺騙也是萬能守則之一。但是無論你在什么情況下使用它，長期以往結(jié)果都是消極的。欺騙你的健康，你會付出生病的代價。在人際交往中欺騙，你和朋友會不再親密無間。在接受教育是欺騙，你的收入會遭受損失。

除了對每個領域內(nèi)部產(chǎn)生影響，還有更大的影響：漣漪效應。如果你在生活的某個領域中應用萬能守則，無論是消極的或積極的，它都會對其他領域產(chǎn)射干能夠影響。如果你欺騙自己的身體，那么長此以往，你的工作，人際關(guān)系，收入，情感以及信仰都會受到影響。你不可能在生活的某個領域中欺騙而不影響到其他領域。

同樣地，善待你的身體，你會有更多的能量去改善人際關(guān)系，做好工作，更好地理財，感情生活也更順利。積極地投身于你喜愛的工作，你的熱忱會遍布生活的各個領域。

如果你不遵守這些萬能守則，那么這將會對生活的各個領域都造成不良影響。反之亦然。如果你遵守了這些守則，那么你生活的各個領域都會有積極的效應。萬能守則并不會劃分是通用的。

所以說關(guān)鍵是找出這些萬能守則，把思想和行動統(tǒng)一起來。這樣，你就能把生活的各個部分協(xié)調(diào)起來。

那萬能守則又指的是哪些呢？斯蒂芬。柯威認為高效率的人有7種建立在萬能守則基礎上的習慣。我也同意這個觀點，這是很好的起點。不過我認為所有的萬能守則都可以用一個詞來概括：愛。愛不只限于感情上的愛，而是動詞的愛。愛你的身體，也就是說要有合理的飲食和鍛煉。愛自己的頭腦，就是要愛學習。愛其他就是要為他人服務。愛工作就是要懷著激情和熱忱去工作。愛你的感情就是要尊敬它們傳達的信息。不同領域愛可以翻成不同的含義，但隱含在其中的守則是一樣的。不同的情況，愛可以是聽，是服務，是工作，是放松，是接觸，是……

當你開始在生活的各個領域開始使用萬能守則時，你的生活會變得很協(xié)調(diào)。生活的各個部分會組合成一個整體。你也不會再覺得生活的各個部分在爭奪你的注意力和時間。相反地，你會覺察到它們內(nèi)部的合作。你會覺得運動不僅有益健康，還對你的人際關(guān)系，職業(yè)生涯和精神生活有很大的好處。

就每個領域來說，你可能需要改變來遵循萬能守則，也可能要把不協(xié)調(diào)的部分拋棄重新開始。因為你改變了，你的工作會發(fā)生變化。在你追求新的人際關(guān)系的時候你原有的人際關(guān)系會發(fā)生改變，或者結(jié)束。變化的程度取決于生活個部分的協(xié)調(diào)程度。

除非下面四個問題有了同樣的答案，否則生活各個部分會繼續(xù)爭斗：

你想做什么？（渴望）

你能做什么？（能力）

你該做什么？（目的）

你必須做什么？（需要）

當著四樣統(tǒng)一起來后，動力會自然而然地產(chǎn)生。因為你下意識地開始實現(xiàn)你的目的，所以你的思想和行動會自動地保持平衡。在你行動的時候你就不會在想自己需要思考，思考的時候也不會在想自己需要行動。思想和行動之間的界線就會消失。想和做會合而為一。

當你在這四個方面/問題面臨不協(xié)調(diào)時，最自然的反應是慢下來，有時甚至是慢到龜行。你會覺得這幾個方面的答案迫使你往不同的方向前行，可是其中任何一個都不能讓你滿意。你會覺得繼續(xù)那樣做是徒勞的，而且并不能解決問題。該是停下來思考正確的方向，選擇統(tǒng)一的道路的時候了。

在經(jīng)營我的游戲事業(yè)的時候我也經(jīng)歷了這樣的歷程。那個時候我有很多的項目可以用來拓展我的事業(yè)，可是我很清楚自己并不想在接下來的10年里繼續(xù)做這個行業(yè)。我的大腦中包含了生活的各個部分：有健康，有人際關(guān)系，有工作，有精神信仰等等。似乎每個部分都有自己的規(guī)則。最后我開始問自己是否有一種最好的生活方式。我們的生活該是各個部分的組合還是一個統(tǒng)一的整體？我在想是否可能有可以管理所有領域的整套守則，或者更確切地說，我能否在處理生活所有領域的事物時都遵守內(nèi)心最深處的信仰？這個問題讓我發(fā)現(xiàn)自己的生活可以是一個統(tǒng)一的整體。這就意味著我的事業(yè)，我的意識，我的人際關(guān)系都是統(tǒng)一的，不再有分裂的感覺。

找到出路之后，我開始改變生活的各個部分：有的是徹底地改變，有的是稍稍有點改變。剛開始我嘗試首先開始改變我的職業(yè)。但是生活各部分徹底分離了，需要進行更巨大的改變。而生活的其他部分能更靈活地適應。我不再從事游戲行業(yè)的一個主要原因是因為它不能滿足我提供服務的意愿。我想如果有足夠的時間，我會從頭開始改變行業(yè)，但這對我來說并不是最好的出路。但是白手起家創(chuàng)立新的事業(yè)來統(tǒng)一生活的各部分比從頭再做現(xiàn)有的事業(yè)更快，更簡單。

不得不承認，這種推動使得生活各領域的統(tǒng)一最后變得很美好。我也不再覺得生活的各部分是分裂的。我的目的是為人們服務，為他們提供幫助。我能夠通過經(jīng)營網(wǎng)站，通過說，寫來實現(xiàn)這個目的。我需要通過這份工作來養(yǎng)活自己。我熱愛這份工作。我不用把自己的生活分成幾部分：工作來養(yǎng)活自己，在周末的時候娛樂，在其他時候想精神上的事情。生活=娛樂=愛。

當生活的各部分統(tǒng)一起來，各部分就像是移到新的位置形成一個全新的整體。這個整體比獨立的各部分更強大。一切都比以前更強大了：健康，關(guān)系，動機，行動，結(jié)果等。

實際上，看起來各領域都有屬于自己的守則。通常大家會把自己的工作和信仰分離開來。很多事情看起來似乎都不遵守萬能守則。我一點都不認同這個觀點。一個獨立的守則僅適用于單獨的領域的（例如：營養(yǎng)學適用于健康并不適用于工作）。但萬能守則卻適用于所有領域。在我看來，一個人的信仰是決定他從事某類工作或為哪個公司工作的最重要的因素。如果你內(nèi)心深處堅持神圣的信仰，你不可能在生活其他領域破壞這個信仰的時候而不產(chǎn)生不良影響。你必須時時堅持內(nèi)心深處真實的自己。這是你把生活各部分統(tǒng)一起來而不是分離開來，相互斗爭的唯一的方法。

當你把生活各部分統(tǒng)一起來的時候，四個領域會發(fā)生巨大的飛躍。渴望變成了激情。目的變成了使命。需求變成了富裕。能力變成才能。因為所有的領域都朝著同一個方向前進，所以實現(xiàn)這個目的很容易。