An 8-Step Guide to a Life Audit That Will Transform Your Future

Do you feel like your life is not quite what you want it to be? Do you feel frustrated and somewhat overwhelmed by all the different options in life, and the fact that it’s hard to know what exactly you should do to reach your goals and feel happy with your life?

If this hits home, what you need to do today is a life audit. It means that you evaluate your current life, choose what you want your future life to look like, and come up with a realistic plan to get there.

Doing a life audit is a nifty way to gain a better understanding of where your life is headed and what you need to change in your routine to one day feel like everything is as it should be.

So, today we will figure out:

1. What your current situation in life is (in all honesty)
2. What kind of life you want to live, and
3. What you need to do to get there

First, get in the right mindset

One constant challenge in life is stopping yourself from letting other people’s expectations and societal pressures affect you. You shouldn’t be doing anything just because most people are doing it or because your relatives expect you to.

When it comes to your life audit, you need to be able to dig deep within yourself and push aside those little voices in your head saying that perhaps you should just follow the crowd.

Additionally, you need to be tough with yourself and look at your life with utmost honesty. You might think that you’re doing enough or that you’re headed in the right direction, when in reality you’re spending your time in an unproductive way and doing very little to move the needle.

Take a look at what other people are doing

While you shouldn’t compare yourself to others too much, analyzing other people’s life paths can help you a lot.

You especially want to know what those people whose lives you admire have done to get where they are now. This applies whether they are famous household names, or ordinary people you look up to.

Dig deep into their old jobs, what college they went to, or any projects of theirs you can find. Often a seemingly grand career actually started quite slowly and in perfectly normal jobs that are available to you too.

The famous authors and artists you admire probably didn’t produce their best work right off the bat. Reading their old interviews or news articles can give you a better understanding of how much work for example your favorite author did before they got published.

Get started with your life audit!

Next, it’s time to do your actual life audit. I encourage you to take a lot of time with this. Your future matters and these exercises don’t work very well if you only skim through the steps and think about each question for about two seconds.

To change your life, you need to understand something new about yourself and your life as it is today. You need to analyze your daily life and where it will likely take you.

Again, if you want the life audit to work, you need to be super honest and realistic. Look at your life straight in the eye and dare to point out your mistakes to yourself. This is what will make the difference between making the same mistakes over and over again and starting a new life that will feel right to you.

Go through the following exercises and questions, and make sure to write down any new thoughts or ideas that you get. Writing can help you clarify your thoughts and make you realize surprising things.

Step 1: What are the things that bother you in life?

There are many things that you might not even realize bother you. The good thing is, most of these things will undoubtedly be surprisingly easy to change.

Now, I want you to take a piece of paper and write down every single thing that you’d like to change in your life.

Start from when you wake up on a Monday morning and work your way through the week. Think about your surroundings, your feelings, the items around you.

Perhaps the clothes you wear don’t make you feel comfortable and confident. Or maybe your commute feels like a complete waste of time. Or perhaps you often feel tired in the afternoons, or you have a hard time finding enough time for your new side hustle.

Write it all down, and later you can come up with solutions.

Step 2: Take all the different areas of life into consideration

Go through this list and think about how you would like to improve each area of life. We will dig a little deeper in the next steps of the life audit, but it’s good to consider all these categories more than once and from different points of view.

Make sure to write all your thoughts down!

HOME
What do you want your home to be like? Do you want it to be modern and expensive? Cozy with warm colors and your own library? Tidy? Stylish? In a better area?

FRIENDSHIPS
Are you happy with your current friendships or do you think you should make some changes? Do you want to make new friends or spend more time with your current friends?

ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP
Do you want to be in a relationship? What would your ideal relationship be like? Do you need to set higher standards?

FINANCIALS
Do you need more money? Should you save more? Do you need another source of income?

CAREER
What would your dream job be like? Do you want more responsibility or a more flexible job? Perhaps you’d like to venture into a completely new career?

HOBBIES
Is it time to get back to an old hobby you love? Is there something you’ve always wanted to try? Do you want to make more time for your hobbies?

SKILLS
What skills do you need? What do you want to learn just for fun? What skills could really help you in your daily life, intrapersonal skills included?

FREE TIME
How would you ideally spend your free time? Do you have a habit of wasting it? Should you go out more or stay at home more often?

TRAVELING
What are your bucket list destinations? Would you like to travel more? Could you do more weekend trips?

PERSONAL GROWTH
What do you need to learn to grow as a person? What about your behavior or mindset bothers you?

HEALTH
Do you feel like you should make changes to your eating habits? Is it finally time to make exercise a habit?

CLOTHES AND ITEMS
Are you happy with your style and the quality of your clothes? Do you feel like the things you own are really ‘you’, or would you prefer to make some changes?

Step 3: Who is your dream self?

One important part of a life audit is to gain a better understanding of who you want to be. Who is your dream self?

The process of building a comprehensive image of her in your head can take weeks, months, or even years. You can still learn a lot about her today, if you just ask yourself the right questions.

You want to know exactly what her daily life looks like, what she does in her free time, where she lives, how she dresses, how she behaves, and how her mindset differs from yours. The more detailed you can be, the better.

The only caveat here is that you should only list things that honestly matter to you. Things that would be kind of nice or cool in other people’s eyes, don’t belong on your list.

Use the list from Step 2 and picture your future self in your mind. You need to see her on her way to work, making dinner, talking to a new acquaintance, buying groceries, and spending a Sunday night.

When you have a clear understanding of who she is, you can start identifying the differences between you and her.

List all the ones you can come up with because later on you will need this list to know what changes you need to make.

Step 4: What are the main things you want from life?

Now, let’s get to the big questions.

An important part of your life audit is knowing what your biggest dreams and goals are. I’m sure you already have quite a few in mind, and that’s good.

I want you to list your most important goals. Remember, only the ones that you genuinely desire matter. Anything that sounds awesome but wouldn’t actually make you happier is not worth your time.

Do you want to move to London? Foster guinea pigs? Spend much more time reading books in parks? Open your own online pottery store? Start an anti-bullying movement? Graduate from an Ivy League college?

Whatever your heart truly desires, don’t hesitate to say it to yourself.

Step 5: When do you want to achieve your goals?

Once you have listed all your goals, it’s time to think about the timelines.

Some small changes can be very easy to make. You can start spending more time reading books in parks right now.

It’s relatively easy to start fostering pets and if you already live in the UK, moving to London is quite doable.

However, big goals that require A LOT of work or aren’t only dependent on you take much longer. That’s why you need to know when you want to achieve them. “Someday” doesn’t fly here.

If you want to write a book, you need to start working on it. If you want to start that pottery business, you probably need to learn a lot about running a business and how to make quality pottery that people want to buy. If you are thinking about getting a degree, you need to think about how you can fund it and how you can get in.

You need to be realistic with your timelines and deadlines, but it is always good to push yourself a little.

Step 6: Ask yourself these questions

• How would you like your normal days to be?
• What would your ideal weekend be like?
• What would your ideal social circle be like?
• What dreams have you always had and still haven’t achieved?
• What are you afraid might happen?
• What are you secretly hoping will happen?
• What have been the happiest times in your life?

Step 7: What is good about your life right now

Not everything needs to be changed. There are many good things in your life right now, and appreciating what you have makes you happier.

I want you to list 20 things that are good about your life right now.

They can be big or small things, as long as they make your life better.

When your list is ready, take a look at it and see how you could implement more of these things in your life.

If you mentioned your friends, could you spend more time with them or do something extra fun with them? If you mentioned books, could you perhaps spend less time online and more time reading?

I definitely also recommend practicing gratitude regularly, it can boost your happiness a lot.

Step 8: Make a plan to change your life

The last and most important part of your life audit is to use the information you have gathered to make actual changes in your everyday life. These will take you from an okay life to your dream life.

First things first, you need to consider your resources: time and money.

If you want to invest in something, like education or a bigger eating out budget, you have to decide how much money you’re willing to spend. If you need more money, how can you make that happen?

The same applies to time. How many hours can you spend on a weekly basis on the things you want to do more of or that will help you reach your goals?

Another important thing to do is to prioritize what matters most.

You can’t change everything about your life today and you don’t have enough hours in a day to work on every single one of your goals at once.

Prioritize the goals and changes that make the biggest difference or are easily doable right away. Choose a few at first and add more of them to your routine when it feels doable.

Some articles that can help you:

5 Important Steps to Make Your Goals Achievable

Here’s How to Make it Super Easy to Be Productive

7 Common Goal-Setting Mistakes You Can’t Make Anymore

Take your life audit seriously

Doing a life audit can honestly help you a lot on your way to a better future. Take your time with this, you can do this over the course of a week if you want to.

Also (I really can’t stress this enough), only what you truly want and need matters. You need to push other people’s opinions and societal pressures aside. They will only lead you in the wrong direction.

It’s a good idea to do a life audit regularly, for example around New Year’s. That way, you’ll ensure that you’re constantly improving your life.

I just did my life audit and came up with lots of ways to make my life more fun and more like ‘me’. Don’t wait any longer, start taking steps toward your glorious future!

And if you liked this post, I’d love a comment (or a share), it’s always interesting to hear what you all have to say!