How to Audit Your Life

Why do we fill our lives with so much? Our lives may be getting better in that they are more comfortable and we are living longer.

We have access to better food, better health care and are wealthier than our fathers and grandfathers.

But are our lives getting easier?

It would be nice to take time to audit your life and cut out all the things you don’t need.

And the people that are holding you back.

Hopefully you’re going to have some free time over Christmas (or whatever you’re celebrating) this year. Why not take time to audit your life and take back control:

Why Do a Life Audit?

Are there things that you want to achieve but you never get round to it? What are they?

Not so long ago, I was trapped in the wilderness of busyness and over-commitment. I had a problem with saying no to people.

My life was filled with so many activities and interests that I barely had time to focus on what was really important to me. As a Dad you have limited time and resources. You might want to:

• Spend more time with your kids
• Finally get fit and healthy
• Learn a new skill
• Read more

Reading Gorilla Mindset inspired me to make a list of all the activities in my life to see what was good and what was holding me back.

A year ago I conducted this Gorilla Mindset inspired life audit. 12 months on I've managed to put most of these into practice. pic.twitter.com/fC8GVqboxs

— Neil M White 🇬🇧 (@ThisDadDoes) December 12, 2016

Listing these activities helped me see that there was too much going on. Resolving to cut some of those activities and people out felt harsh at the time and it’s been a gradual withdrawal.

However the opportunities that this had given me can barely be quantified.

How to Do the Life Audit

To help you do your own life audit, I’ve created a template based on the spreadsheet I used myself. I’ve left space for you to fill out what you want or need to.

My advice would be this:

Be ruthless: List everything (or everyone) in your life that you interact or take part in on a regular basis. When you think about it almost everything has a positive or negative impact on your life goals – there are very few ‘neutral’ people or activities.

Be brave: Don’t shy away from the big decisions. Some of my actions turned out to be life changing and difficult at the time. But you’re doing this for you, not for anyone else. These are your goals and this is your life. Caring too much what other people wanted got you here in the first place.

Be specific: Have you heard of the acronym ‘SMART’? The ‘S’ stands for specific and is in the context of setting goals or visions. I’ve used the example of ‘more money’ because most Dads probably want that! But you can be as specific as you want – maybe it’s to land your dream job, work from home or learn to fly fish.

Life Audit – Actions Speak Louder than Words

This exercise means nothing if you’re not prepared to put it into action. That’s why the action boxes are so important. You’ll notice that I didn’t add actions for those things that have a positive impact.

But are there ways you can make the positive better? Your job makes you money, but would going for promotion get your more? Or a different job? Or 2 jobs?

Spend time thinking about your actions and revisit regularly to check your progress and keep yourself accountable.

Summary

A new year is a chance to reflect and a chance to plan. I don’t buy into New Year’s resolutions because they are faddy and promoted by those who gain from them: the fitness industry and dating/recruitment websites.

But having an annual audit of your life makes sense to keep you focused on your life vision and what you need to do to make that a reality.

I’ve created a simple template based on my own life audit that you can download for free. There are instructions in the document on how to use it.

Download it here

Neil

P.S. My hope is that I haven’t taken anything away from Gorilla Mindset and I know many of you have read or listened to it. If you haven’t, you can get it here (Amazon)