The IntentForge Taxonomy

The IntentForge Method is organized around seven interrelated domains of well-being. Together, these domains provide a practical framework for understanding the conditions that influence a person's capacity to live and work with intention.

The taxonomy is not intended to divide human experience into isolated compartments. The domains overlap, reinforce one another, and sometimes compete for attention and resources. A change within one domain may strengthen several others, while a persistent difficulty in one area may create consequences throughout the larger system.

The purpose of the taxonomy is therefore not classification for its own sake. It provides a common language for reflection, measurement, intervention, and evaluation. At the individual level, it helps people identify where their experience is aligned with their intentions and where meaningful gaps may exist. At the organizational level, aggregated information can reveal patterns that may otherwise remain hidden within averages, assumptions, or anecdotal observations.

The Seven Domains

1. Mental & Emotional Stability
2. Physical Health & Energy
3. Relationships & Belonging
4. Purpose & Meaning
5. Learning & Growth
6. Creative Expression & Flow
7. Financial & Career Security

 

Domain 1: Mental & Emotional Stability

Core Definition

Mental & Emotional Stability describes the capacity to experience, understand, regulate, and respond constructively to the psychological and emotional demands of life.

This domain does not imply the absence of stress, difficult emotions, uncertainty, or psychological strain. Rather, it concerns the resources and capacities that allow a person to remain adaptive when those experiences occur.

Subdomains

Emotional Regulation

The capacity to recognize, experience, and manage emotions without becoming consistently overwhelmed by them or suppressing them in ways that interfere with functioning.

Stress Management

The ability to respond to ordinary and extraordinary pressures using effective coping strategies, recovery practices, and appropriate support.

Psychological Flexibility

The capacity to adapt thoughts, behaviors, and expectations in response to changing circumstances while remaining connected to important intentions and values.

Resilience and Recovery

The capacity to recover from setbacks, disruption, disappointment, conflict, and periods of sustained demand.

Self-Awareness

The ability to recognize one's own emotional states, behavioral patterns, needs, reactions, strengths, and limitations.

Sense of Agency

The perception that one's choices and actions can meaningfully influence circumstances, responses, and future direction.

 

 

Domain 2: Physical Health & Energy

Core Definition

Physical Health & Energy describes the bodily resources necessary to participate fully in personal and professional life.

The domain includes both health behaviors and the lived experience of physical capacity. Its focus is not physical perfection or adherence to a particular lifestyle. Rather, it considers whether the body provides sufficient energy, recovery, mobility, and stability to support the person's intentions.

Subdomains

Sleep and Recovery

The consistency, quality, and restorative value of sleep and other forms of physical recovery.

Physical Activity and Movement

Regular engagement in movement appropriate to the person's circumstances, abilities, and needs.

Nutrition and Hydration

Patterns of nourishment and hydration that support sustained physical and cognitive functioning.

Energy and Vitality

The subjective experience of having sufficient physical energy to engage meaningfully with daily life.

Physical Functioning

The extent to which physical condition supports or limits participation in desired activities.

Preventive and Routine Care

Access to and appropriate use of routine health care, preventive practices, and other resources that support ongoing physical well-being.

 

 

Domain 3: Relationships & Belonging

Core Definition

Relationships & Belonging describes the quality of a person's social connections and the extent to which they experience support, reciprocity, trust, inclusion, and meaningful connection with others.

Human well-being is relational. Independence and personal agency matter, but neither eliminates the need for connection. This domain considers both the availability of relationships and their quality.

Subdomains

Close Relationships

The presence and quality of emotionally significant relationships with partners, family members, close friends, or others who occupy similar roles.

Social Support

Access to people who can provide emotional, practical, informational, or other meaningful forms of assistance.

Belonging and Inclusion

The experience of being accepted, valued, and included within communities, workplaces, families, or other social environments.

Trust and Psychological Safety

The ability to communicate, participate, and express concerns without an unreasonable fear of humiliation, rejection, retaliation, or exclusion.

Reciprocity

The experience that relationships involve appropriate mutual investment rather than persistent one-sided demands.

Community Connection

Meaningful participation in communities, groups, networks, or institutions beyond one's closest interpersonal relationships.

 

 

Domain 4: Purpose & Meaning

Core Definition

Purpose & Meaning describes the extent to which a person's activities, commitments, and choices connect with a larger sense of significance and intentional direction.

Within the IntentForge Method, purpose is not treated as a single grand calling that must be discovered. Meaning can emerge through work, relationships, service, creativity, learning, community, spirituality, stewardship, or many other sources. The relevant question is whether the person's life contains activities and commitments that feel worth investing in.

Subdomains

Values Alignment

The degree to which everyday choices and activities are consistent with personally important values.

Intentional Direction

A sense that one's decisions and efforts are moving toward something deliberately chosen rather than being driven primarily by habit, external expectation, or immediate demand.

Meaningful Contribution

The experience that one's efforts matter to people, communities, institutions, causes, or purposes beyond immediate self-interest.

Coherence

The extent to which experiences, roles, commitments, and choices can be understood as parts of a meaningful larger life.

Significance

The sense that one's presence, work, relationships, or contributions have value.

Connection to Something Larger

Participation in a source of meaning that extends beyond the individual, which may include community, service, tradition, spirituality, nature, creative work, family, or other personally meaningful commitments.

 

 

Domain 5: Learning & Growth

Core Definition

Learning & Growth describes the continuing development of knowledge, capability, perspective, competence, and personal capacity.

Growth is not synonymous with constant achievement. Sustainable development includes curiosity, experimentation, reflection, practice, and the willingness to encounter uncertainty. It also requires sufficient opportunity and psychological space to learn.

Subdomains

Curiosity

Interest in exploring new ideas, experiences, perspectives, questions, and possibilities.

Skill Development

Opportunities to build, practice, and refine personally or professionally meaningful capabilities.

Challenge and Stretch

Engagement with experiences that extend existing abilities without creating persistently unmanageable demands.

Reflection and Integration

The capacity to learn from experience by considering what occurred, what it means, and how that understanding might inform future choices.

Adaptability

The ability to acquire new approaches and modify existing ones when circumstances change.

Sense of Progress

The experience of developing, learning, or becoming more capable over time.

 

 

Domain 6: Creative Expression & Flow

Core Definition

Creative Expression & Flow describes the capacity to imagine, make, explore, experiment, solve problems, and become deeply engaged in activities that permit meaningful expression and absorption.

Creativity within the IntentForge Method is not limited to artistic production. It includes the broader human capacity to generate possibilities, combine ideas, improvise, make, design, solve problems, and express experience. Artistic activity is one important manifestation of this capacity, but it is not the only one.

Subdomains

Creative Expression

Opportunities to translate ideas, experiences, emotions, observations, or imagination into some form of expression or creation.

Exploration and Experimentation

Freedom to try unfamiliar approaches, investigate possibilities, and engage in activity without requiring certainty about the outcome.

Autonomy in Creation

The ability to exercise meaningful choice over how something is conceived, developed, expressed, or solved.

Flow and Absorption

Experiences of sustained engagement in which attention becomes deeply focused and the activity itself becomes intrinsically rewarding.

Play and Imagination

Opportunities for curiosity, improvisation, invention, humor, speculation, and activity that is not governed entirely by instrumental demands.

Creative Problem-Solving

The ability and opportunity to approach challenges through original combinations, alternative perspectives, experimentation, and adaptive thinking.

 

 

Domain 7: Financial & Career Security

Core Definition

Financial & Career Security describes the degree to which a person possesses sufficient economic stability, professional sustainability, autonomy, and future confidence to support well-being and intentional choice.

This domain recognizes that well-being cannot be understood solely as an internal psychological condition. Economic resources, employment conditions, professional opportunity, compensation, workload, and security materially shape the choices available to individuals.

Subdomains

Financial Stability

The ability to meet ordinary financial obligations with a reasonable degree of predictability.

Financial Resilience

The capacity to absorb unexpected expenses, income disruption, or other financial shocks without catastrophic consequences.

Career Security

A reasonable sense of continuity, employability, professional viability, or access to future work opportunities.

Professional Autonomy

Meaningful influence over how work is performed, priorities are established, and professional judgment is exercised.

Workload Sustainability

A level and pattern of professional demand that can be maintained without requiring chronic depletion of physical, emotional, relational, or other resources.

Compensation and Recognition

The experience that economic compensation and professional recognition bear a reasonable relationship to contribution, responsibility, expertise, and effort.

Future Confidence

A reasonable sense that one's financial and professional trajectory provides options rather than persistent insecurity.

 

 

Reading the Taxonomy as a System

The seven domains should not be interpreted independently. They are analytically distinct so that patterns can be observed, discussed, and measured, but lived experience does not respect those boundaries. Strength or strain in one domain can influence several others. The taxonomy is therefore most useful when read as an interconnected system rather than as seven separate checklists.

Within the IntentForge Method, the Seven Domains describe where well-being is experienced. Barrier Ecology™ provides the complementary framework for examining why meaningful improvement may be difficult. Measurement then makes patterns visible, and intervention uses those patterns to support more precise individual and organizational action.

---

Why This Subdomain Structure Matters

Each subdomain exists because aggregated well-being scores hide root causes.
IntentForge enables:

• Precision diagnostics
• Targeted interventions
• Meaningful benchmarking
• Longitudinal improvement tracking

This structure allows organizations and individuals to intervene earlier, more accurately, and more ethically—without relying on guesswork or generic wellness programming.