Getting to P.E.R.Fi.C.

Think back to when you were a student and how easy it was to assess where you were and where you wanted to be simply by looking at your grades. The P.E.R.Fi.C. System is a simple exercise that allows you to take similar stock of the different facets of your life as an adult and to help you chart your course to a happier life.

The P stands for physical health, the E for emotional health, the R for relationships (familial, platonic, or romantic), the Fi for financial health, and the C for career and passion.

P.E.R.Fi.C. was developed at Happier Living in response to clinicians seeing many clients who were very successful professionally but had a lot of challenges in other areas of their lives, such as in their personal relationships and with their physical health. It’s easy for most people to set goals in the context of achieving a job or establishing a career, because that’s the way it has always been done. But in other areas, most people aren’t as comfortable setting goals or making a plan. P.E.R.Fi.C. offers the tools to apply that same skill set and the structure of setting goals to these other areas and one’s overall sense of happiness.

Feeling overwhelmed is one of the most common ways people start experiencing anxiety and depression. Quite often, when you feel overwhelmed, it's when one particular facet of your life is out of balance. P.E.R.Fi.C is an easy way to get started at bringing your life back into balance.

You can get started on your own or with the help of a therapist. Either way, your assignment is to think about each of the five categories and to give yourself a grade, A through F, based on how you currently feel in your life. Unless you've given yourself an A, you identify what an A would look like and you write it down. Writing it down is a crucial part of your progress.

This is a goal setting exercise in which you focus on these different facets of your life experience. Together, they add up to significantly influencing how happy or unhappy you are. Often, it’s a lot easier to set these goals in your professional life than it is to work on them in your personal life. But with P.E.R.Fi.C., it isn’t just about your career but the many important facets that make up your life.

It’s easy to lament having challenging relationships or not having enough relationships or that the ones you have are not satisfying enough. But often it means you aren’t setting goals for those relationships or dedicating the time and space to them. P.E.R.Fi.C. is a way to do that. It helps you establish these goals for yourself and what you want your life to look like, and it is easy to do.

Why not start now? Here’s how.