Last week I talked to you about all the benefits of slowing down and how that can actually push you forward faster. Well, this week I wanna dive a little deeper into one of the recommendations I had for you and talk all about doing a life audit. So that’s what we’re diving into in today’s episode.
Show Links:
- Goal-Getter Quarterly Mid-Year Refresh Workshop
- Episode 072: Slow Down to Achieve Your Goals Faster
- Wheel of Life Satisfaction Worksheet
- DM me on Instagram
Show Takeaways:
- Learn what a life audit is, how it works, and why it can be helpful for you to do one.
- Discover how to use a Wheel of Satisfaction to perform your own life audit.
- Listen in to hear the questions you should ask, in the second part of the exercise, to help you create an action plan for a more satisfying life for yourself.
Rather read before you listen? ⬇️
Okay, so last week I talked all about the benefits of slowing down and how that can actually push you forward faster.
Well this week I want to dive a little deeper into one of the recommendations I had for you and talk all about doing a life audit. So that is exactly what today’s episode is all about.
Okay, we are going to jump straight into doing a life audit but first I want to quickly chat with you about something you don’t want to miss.
By this point in the year one of two things has likely happened. You’ve been completely underwhelmed by your progress on your goals (aka you haven’t made the progress you wanted to) or you have totally crushed them and you need a bit more of a challenge to keep you going. No matter if you fall into the first camp or the second one, now is the perfect time for a reset. Join the Goal-Getter Quarterly Planning Workshop with an added bonus of 30 dats of accountability coaching to keep you moving forward after the workshop. Head to erinhaworth.com/goal-getter-quarterly to snag your seat.
So, life audit? What does it mean, why do you need to do one, and how exactly does it all work?
A Life Audit is a chance to stop and really take stock not only of where you are in your business but all aspects of your existence to make sure you are focusing on the things that most need your attention.
Like I talked about in last week’s episode, a life audit can be very helpful if you are feeling stuck, frustrated, bored, unmotivated, or just plain blah. I am a firm believer in solving problems, not just bitching about them, so doing a life audit can give you really good information about what parts of life might be leading to your not-so-great feeling.
So here is one way to do a life audit. I start with the wheel of life satisfaction. This is a tool that has been used quite a bit in the life coaching industry and it is a way to measure and visually see where things in your life might not be up to snuff.
You can download a free worksheet for my own wheel of life satisfaction measurement at erinhaworth.com/wheel.
The idea is that this wheel has 8 different life areas listed on it divided up into 8 different pie pieces— business or career, family, friends, focal relationship, money, spirituality, fun, and health.
There are then evenly spaced concentric circles inside this wheel, indicating a measure 1-10, with 1 being closest to the center and 10 being the largest circle.
Here is how to use it: You are going to consider each aspect of your life and your satisfaction with that particular aspect. So for example, you might look at finances and say I am comfortable enough but I would really like to pay down this credit card debt so you might rate finances as a 6.
I want to caution you as you are going into this that there is a difference between satisfaction and an “objective’ measure of success is.
For example, if you are single or divorced and are completely satisfied with that meaning you are loving the single life and have no desire to change your focal relationship situation, you would rate that higher, maybe an 8 or even a 10. Whereas someone on the outside looking in may say that for your focal relationship, you’d earn a 1 or a 2 on success since it doesn’t currently exist.
Or for finances, you may make 7 figures in your business so someone on the outside looking in may rate you at a 9 or 10. But you know that you really need to reach $10 million a year in revenue to have the lifestyle you’d like to live. So right now with your 7 figures you may rate finances as a 5. See the difference between satisfaction & “success”?
Now once you have rated each life area, I highly recommend coloring in the pie chart to each line that you have rated. This will help provide an excellent visualization of the areas of you life that are satisfying and those that are maybe needing some work.
The interesting reason that this has been presented as a wheel is that when you have some really high highs and really low lows, your wheel looks like it would lead to a super bumpy ride. All this is is a really good starting point for your life audit.
The next part is for you to get curious about what your wheel of life results actually mean.
So part 2 of this exercise is to go through and explain why you gave each rating that you did to each individual area.
I like to answer these questions for this part:
- What in this aspect or area is going really well?
- What feels like a failure or a let down in this area?
- How would I like this aspect or area to look ideally?
- What are 3 steps I could take right now to make that happen?
Once you answer those questions for each area, you can step back and decide what is the most pressing for you to feel the way you want to feel?
Then you can move forward and create an action plan to create a more satisfying life for yourself.
Action Step:
I always like to end each episode with an action step that you can take right now to help you move forward and begin to implement immediately. Here is your action step for this episode: Complete the life audit exercise. For each of the following aspects, rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 in terms of SATISFACTION. 1 being not satisfied at all, 5 being moderately satisfied, 10 being over-the-moon, couldn’t be any better satisfied. career/work/business, focal relationship (our marriage), family, friends, fun/recreation, finances, health, and spirituality/growth. Then take a look at which aspects may need a bit more attention in the coming months.
