Life changes and at times you will feel lost. You might look around and not recognise where you are, who you are or where you want to go next.
Or you might feel it’s time for a change but don’t know where to start.
A life audit is a great way to take stock of where you are, assess what’s working and what’s not, and set goals for meaningful change.
Here are the steps to help you do your life audit.
1. Reflect on Your Current Life
The best place to start is where you currently are.
Even if everything feels great, it can be worthwhile to review your life and reflect on it by doing the following:
- Think deeply about your life, journal about it all. Writing helps solidify and organise your thoughts.
- Consider different areas: career, health, relationships, finances, personal growth, and hobbies.
- Ask yourself: “Am I happy and fulfilled in these areas? What’s missing?”
- Think about what is working, what isn’t, what energises vs drains you, what have you accomplished, what do you want to accomplish.
- Add any hobbies, interests, goals, things you use to want vs what you want now etc.
2. Evaluate Your Values and Priorities
When thinking about your values and priorities, make sure they are truly yours and not what you feel others expect of you.
Sometimes we have goals or values based on other people’s influence, our upbringing, others bucket lists and so on but they don’t fully align with what we want.
Consider what you are prioritising, what you value, goals and aspirations you have and whether they are yours or they’ve been placed on you.
Write down the following:
- What truly matters to you e.g. use the tips in how to work out your core values.
- Rank your top values (e.g., freedom, security, creativity, adventure).
- Compare your daily habits to your values—are they aligned?
3. Assess Your Strengths and Weaknesses
Being honest about your strengths and weaknesses will help you know what you want to focus on, what matters to you and what direction to go.
It isn’t about finding weaknesses to improve drastically or having to only do what you are good at.
Assessing your strengths helps you know what you could focus on as you are already good at it or even reveal potential business options and hobbies.
With weaknesses, knowing them shows you where you can improve if you want to or what might be best to outsource.
Answer these questions:
- What are your greatest skills and qualities?
- Where do you struggle or need improvement?
- Seek feedback from trusted friends or mentors for a fresh perspective.
4. Review Your Habits and Lifestyle
Certain beliefs, habits and processes are the reason we are where we are, whether that is good or bad.
When thinking about and planning your next steps, consider the type of person you want to be, what habits and skills do they have, what are their hobbies, boundaries etc. How can you invest in learning those?
- Identify habits that support your goals and those that hold you back.
- Evaluate your daily routines: Are they helping or hindering your progress? E.g. my ideal morning routine and evening routine help me.
- Consider changes that would create better balance and efficiency.
Atomic Habits is a great book for changing your habits and creating better systems for success.
5. Set SMART Goals
I have a specific method for setting and achieving goals; part of it is ensuring they are SMART.
- Create Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals.
- Break them down into actionable steps.
- Keep them realistic but ambitious.
Along with ensuring they are SMART, you need to change your environment and processes to match the goals you set and the person you want to be.
6. Create an Action Plan
Setting goals and reviewing everything is a good start.
A solid plan of action that you can implement is the next step.
When making your action plan, ensure it is doable. If needed, start with incremental changes to help you stick to it.
Some people find gradual changes building up to a larger change easier than overhauling everything.
For me, it depends what I am changing e.g. I found it easier to set the alarm for 5am to start my morning routine and do it in full rather than ease into it over a period of time.
However, for weights, I had to start small and build up as I grew my muscle and strength.
To create your action plan, look at what you want to change, the goals you set, habits you need to form and how to do that.
- Outline steps for change in different areas of life.
- Schedule check-ins (weekly, monthly or quarterly) to track progress. I like The 12 Week Year for this.
- Celebrate milestones and adjust as needed.
7. Declutter Your Mind and Space
When your mind is overloaded with tasks and things you think you need to do and your space is messy, it is extremely hard to concentrate or achieve what you set out to achieve.
It can be difficult to declutter what you need to but it helps you create the life you want.
- Remove things, commitments, or relationships that no longer serve you e.g. how to let go.
- Organize your physical environment to support your mental clarity.
- Consider mindfulness or meditation practices.
When I focused on how I spent my time, started my morning with mindfulness and removed people from my life that caused issues/were not the influence I wanted in my life, things got much easier.
My energy increased once I was free of those people and issues.
8. Implement and Adjust
No life audit is perfect and even though you have reviewed everything, set goals, an action plan and changed your habits, life changes too and you need to adapt.
Implement everything possible and do what you can to stay on track.
Understand that at times, you need to make adjustments along the way though.
- Take small but consistent steps toward improvement.
- Stay flexible—life changes, and so should your approach.
- Keep learning and evolving as you go.
Doing a regular life audit can be a great way to help you live the life you want instead of the plan others have for you.
You can easily see the areas you are going in the right direction as well as what needs to change.
Resources
Here are all the articles, books and similar listed in this article:
How to work out your core values
My morning routine
My evening routine
Atomic Habits (book)
Method for success with goals
The 12 Week Year (book)
How to let go
15 mindfulness tips for beginners
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