Contentment Assessment

By Lonnie Pacelli

Topics: Career Development

Format: Evaluation Assessment

How content you are in your current and future career potential? With your physical and mental health? With your current and future financial status? This assessment will help you think through areas in your life that are most important to you—and develop a practical and sustainable purpose statement to guide you when to say "yes" to some things and "no" to others. Use in conjunction with the blog "Your North Star – Creating a Practical and Sustainable Purpose Statement."

In this assessment there are three different grids, as follows:

Good-Enough Contentment Grid - Use this to identify, for each element, how important that element is to you, what your contentment goal is, and what you need to do to achieve the goal. Do this periodically as your contentment goals may change and the importance of each element may increase or decrease as you get older. As example, someone in his or her 50s may consider legacy contentment as very important, whereas a person in his or her 20s might view legacy contentment as not important.
Decision-Making Grid - Use this to evaluate, for each decision alternative, what you think the impact would be on each element. Use this for decisions like, "Should I take a new job or stay at my existing job?" or "Should we move to Arizona or stay in Washington?"
Annual Goal-Setting Grid - Use this to set annual goals for each contentment element. By doing this each year, you develop more holistic goals that impact your entire life, not just one element like career.