New 041MINDS writer Nomndeni Motha explores the power of a year-end life audit—a reflective process that helps break the cycle of unachieved resolutions and sets the stage for meaningful personal growth and success in the year ahead.
Everyone talks about new year’s resolutions, but not so much life audits. Mindlessly setting goals and resolutions each new year when you did not achieve the ones you set the previous year can be a vicious cycle. Conducting a thorough life audit can help you break this cycle. As the year draws to an end, it presents us with the perfect opportunity to reflect on personal growth, achievements, and areas of improvement.
What Is a Life Audit?
A life audit is an evaluation of all the areas in your life – personal, professional, physical, financial, relational, and emotional. You can do a life audit at any point in the year when you want to check the progress of your goals.
Conducting a life audit at the end of the year gives you 12 months of data to work with. It helps you identify what worked and what didn’t, what you need to stop and what you need to start doing in the new year. Additionally, a year end life audit is fitting because natural ends and beginnings ignite change and growth.
How to Conduct a Life Audit
1. High Level Reflection
Start with a higher level overview of the year. Without thinking too much about it, answer the following questions:
- What was my biggest accomplishment?
- What was my biggest setback?
- What is the biggest lesson I learnt?
- Who played the biggest role in my life?
- When was I most productive and when was I least productive?
2. Assess Core Life Areas
Isolate core areas in your life and assess how you did on each of them individually. Consider the following categories:
a. Health and Fitness
- Diet and eating habits
- Physical movement and exercise
- Medication and supplements (if applicable)
b. Relationships
- Romantic relationships
- Family
- Friends, connections, and colleagues
c. Career
- Job/business satisfaction
- Professional goals
- Skills and education
d. Finances
- Saving and investing
- Short-term budget and long term financial goals
- Spending habits
e. Personal Growth
- Emotional intelligence
- Pursuing hobbies and interests
- Alignment with personal values
f. Mental Health and Wellness
- Alignment with spiritual practices and beliefs
- Managing stress and negative emotions
- Cultivating happiness and positive emotions
3. Review Your Goals
Go back to your 2024 goals and check the progress of each. Note down which ones you achieved, which ones are in progress, and which ones you have not achieved at all. Some will be somewhere in the middle of the process, that’s good, your answers don’t have to be black and white here.
4. Habits, Strengths and Weaknesses
From the above exercise, you can make deductions that will help you better understand yourself, your environment, and your alignment with your goals. It can also help you identify your strengths and weaknesses.
Thinking about the reflection you just did, make a list of the following:
- Your most influential habits and whether they are positive or negative
- Your most influential environments (where you spend the most time) and how they affect you
- Your strengths
- Your weaknesses
5. Create an Action Plan
The first step in your action plan is a revision of your goals. From this point on, or from the beginning of the new year, what are your goals? You could reinstate some of the previous goals you reflected on earlier, and you could set new goals. Remember to always keep your goals smart – Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time based.
Next, identify specific actions you need to take in order to end off the coming year in a better place than you are now. What could you have done in 2024 that you can do in 2025, to become a better you? What did you do in 2024 that you should not do in 2025, to become a better you?
Depending on the requirements of your goals and action plan, allocate resources such as time and money well in advance.
In order to set yourself up for success, set small milestones to track your progress throughout the weeks and months of the new year. These will allow you to check in with your plan frequently, celebrate the small wins, and make adjustments when necessary.
Conclusion
A life audit is a great tool for reflection and growth; it includes reflecting on your goals and core areas in your life, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and creating an action plan. When done at the end of the year, a life audit can help you make the necessary adjustments to set yourself up for a successful new year.
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