Meriidian is built on a small number of ideas, applied consistently across six areas of life. This page sets them out in full.
Every part of a life can be understood along two independent axes: how much it matters to you (Importance), and how well it is currently working (Fulfilment). Treating these as one number — "how happy are you with your career?" — collapses two different pieces of information into one and loses both. Meriidian scores them separately, for each of six dimensions, and reads the relationship between them rather than either score alone.
Partner, family, friends, belonging, vulnerability, reciprocity. Research consistently finds relationships to be the strongest single predictor of long-term happiness — ahead of income, status, or achievement.
Physical health, mental health, energy, self-compassion, stress. The dimension that most often shows up as a cause elsewhere before it's recognised as the actual problem.
Career, income, financial life, professional courage, growth. Covers both the practical (money, security) and the psychological (fear vs. genuine drive) sides of professional life.
Meaning, legacy, values in action, contribution, identity. Viktor Frankl's central claim — that meaning, not happiness, is the deepest form of human fulfilment — sits behind this dimension.
Joy, passions, creativity, play, rest, personal growth. Frequently the first thing sacrificed under pressure, and the last thing people think to restore.
Routines, open loops, home, financial admin, life design. The unglamorous dimension that quietly determines whether everything else is even possible.
Plotting Importance against Fulfilment for each dimension produces four zones:
High importance · High fulfilment
Protect this. Don't take it for granted; it needs maintenance, not effort.
High importance · Low fulfilment
The highest priority. The greatest opportunity for meaningful change sits here, and this is where a Meriidian strategy goes deepest.
Low importance · High fulfilment
Enjoyable, but worth reviewing. This is often where time gets over-invested relative to what actually matters.
Low importance · Low fulfilment
An honest area to review. Sometimes correctly deprioritised; sometimes a sign of having quietly disengaged from something that used to matter.
Meriidian asks two different kinds of questions in every dimension: what you say matters (stated importance), and what your actual recent behaviour shows (time allocation, specific decisions, specific conversations you have or haven't had). Most people's answers to these two kinds of questions don't fully agree — and that disagreement is not a flaw in the assessment. It's the most useful thing it finds.
A strategy that only reflects back what someone already believes about themselves isn't worth much. Meriidian is built to notice contradictions directly — someone who rates a relationship as deeply important but hasn't had an honest conversation with that person in months, for example — and name them plainly, rather than smoothing them over.
A single low score is a data point. A pattern across several answers — in one dimension, or across all six — is a signal. Meriidian's strategy generation is built to look for the pattern behind a score, not just report the score itself, because the pattern is what a genuinely useful recommendation has to address.