Life is a Venn Diagram
Ok, hands up those who remember algebraic mathematics principles from their school days?
I’m certainly not one who was great at maths, and I was never a fan of ‘abstract’ mathematical principles, but recently after reflecting on life goals and what makes me smile, I realised that our lives can actually be represented by Venn Diagrams.
Confused? Let me elaborate on why I think this is the case. Reflecting on where I currently am in life’s journey, there are three keys things I think about:
- What are my emotional needs
- What are my goals and dreams
- What do I enjoy doing
These three things are really key to my current balance in life and I have realised how important it is to have a healthy overlap and alignment. This is where algebra can help! Going back to Venn Diagrams, each one of the items in my list can be identified as a set on it’s own, as shown below:
They are not necessarily all the same size, but the size does mean something to me, in terms of what I see as the current life priority. Now, each one is important to me, but what is more important is the sum of all the sets combined, and making sure that they are actually compatible. My target result is for each one of these individual sets to have as much overlap as possible with each other, as the resulting intersection is the sum total of my current wellbeing, resilience and outlook on life, and in this case, bigger is better.
I’m aiming for the sweet spot in the middle to be as big as I can possibly make it, the intersection of each set having as large an area as possible, thus ensuring that I am as complete and happy as I can be.
For me, it’s a useful concept to identify where I need to focus my energy in order to ensure that my overall wellbeing is being taken care of, after all life is a balancing act and sometimes it’s all too easy to lose focus and neglect key elements!
I’ve kept my example simple to make it easier to explain, but you may well have a bigger list of sets that you are juggling in life, as well as some that are negative or disruptive. For the negative or disruptive sets, don’t ignore them, but rather think about what you can do to shrink them or mitigateª their impact, either by making some changes in your life to eliminate them, or taking some steps to grow your intersection so that this compensates the outlying sets.
Why not start with a blank sheet of paper and think of the top 3–5 areas that make up your life now,
For example, family, work, hobbies, dreams, etc… the list can be whatever is important to you. Draw them out and consider their size as representing how important or influential they are to you. Once you have them identified, you can either redraw them with the current overlap, or cut them out and move them around, playing with them until you are happy that they represent how you see and feel about things now.
If it’s not the picture you want, take action and make a plan to change the size or content of each set, making it what you really want.
I have learned that once you have clarity on what is important to you in life, you can take action to make changes for the better. My invitation to you is to give it a try, you may be surprised at the result!
ªMy previous articles on resilience and energy levels provide some thoughts on how to mitigate negative / disruptive sets.
