THE FIVE CIRCLES
Clarify "Success" with The SIX Circles
In order to live a life of true meaning and significance, we need to understand how life works. There is a plan that God designed for us. Outside of that plan, we will experience discontent. This is by design so that you are aware of the need to get back in the plan. Let’s start with this illustration for an example:
There are SIX areas (circles) that We need To pay attention to.
1. Personal (mental, physical, emotional health)
2. Spiritual (your relationship with God)
3. Family (biological and spiritual relationships)
4. Professional (the work that God has called us all to do)
5. Financial (the resources that God has entrusted us with)
6. Fun (finding joy in all the circles)
The FIVE Levels
In each of the Six Circles you are in one of Five Levels:
Stuck - Lacking any activity or action
Survival - The process of remaining in existence
Stability - The state of being consistently dependable
Success - Achieving what is desired
Significance - The quality of having a lasting impact for the benefit of others
Now think of all six circles making up a wheel and the levels of “stuck” to “significance” determining the size of the circle in the wheel. If you are in survival in a circle (such as personal), the circle is really small. If you are in significance, then your circle is really big.
There are a few very important insights about this:
Insight 1 - The bigger the circles, the farther your wheel will move—i.e. the greater impact your life can have.
Each rotation of the wheel will get you farther in life. The larger your circles the larger your wheel.
Insight 2 - If your circles are different sizes, your wheel will be lumpy and your trip through life will be bumpy. This is what happens when we don’t have balance in life.
In pursuing a life of meaning and significance we also need to acknowledge that we must pay attention to all the circles, not just our favorite. There will be some circles that we are naturally good at and we tend to focus our energy and effort in those circles. There will be other circles where we don’t know what to do, so we ignore them and they shrink. We end up living a life with a lot of bumps and our wheel can look like this:
The hardest part about life is growing in all areas, not just our favorite. But it’s critically important because of insight 3…
Insight 3 – Wisdom tells us that if we neglect any of our circles, the circle can shrink to the point where it blows. If any circle blows, the rest of the circles will likely go down with it.
You see this time and time again. The man works so hard trying to build his professional and financial circles that he neglects his family and personal. Resentment grows until the couple grows apart or someone does something really selfish and the relationship falls a part. Or someone pushes the spiritual circle off and they get to later in life and ask, “What was it all for?” There are foundational principles for what success looks like in each circle and The Life Plan takes you through that material.
So what do We do?
There are thousands of things that we can do next and that's part of the problem. We don't know what is the next best thing to do so we fill our life up with stuff. We hope that will lead to success only to be left feeling like there has to be more, again and again.
We want to know what is the one right thing for us to do next in order to make progress toward living a life of significance? The one thing to do next so that we can have confidence we are on the right path and have contentment while we are on the journey.
This is purpose of The Life Plan. Through the material you will:
Identify "who you are" and "where you are going" by defining your mission and core values
Identify what true success looks like in each circle from a Biblical perspective
Prioritize the activities you need to complete so you have clarity on what do next to live a life of significance
Set goals to complete the activities and create accountability
You will walk away with a short, clear list of what you need to focus on in life.