Four by Forward

The Four Domains

Mary Morrissey talks of ‘four domains of life’ – her words are Relationships, Health & Wellbeing, Vocation, and Time & Money Freedom. Others identify five areas, for example ‘Fitness, Friendship, Family, Fun, and Finance’ and there are many variations of these across the ’personal development spectrum’. At the Freedom Academy we have chosen to adopt the concept of four main areas, or ‘domains’ of life adapting from Mary’s breakdown. These are:

SELF or INSIDE which includes health and fitness, nutrition, self awareness, development, and learning, mental and spiritual health and development, and connection with the Universe. This leads into:

OTHERS or OUTSIDE – (everything which is not self) our relationship with the Universe, with the planet we live on, with the other life forms we live with and with other humans whether that be personal, community, societal or cultural relationships.

WHAT WE DO – OUTPUTS or GIVING – the third domain is what we ‘do’, (Mary’s ‘vocation domain) everything we spend our lives ‘doing, whether that be helping others through a job, business or voluntary work, being part of a ‘team’ of any sort, creative activity in any form and solitary activities which involve no-one else. We are always ‘doing’ something!

LIFESTYLE – INPUTS or RECEIVING – finally there is Mary’s ‘Time & Money Freedom’ domain. This is really about what we receive, what benefit we get from the other domains together but mainly the ‘output’ domain. It includes any ‘compensation’ or reward we receive for what we do and could be described as the overall ‘Lifestyle’ domain. How we live our lives, the outcome of everything else.

We’ll deal with each domain in more detail as we go on.