Why you need to do a life assessment

Get crystal clear on where you are and where you want to go by doing a life assessment.

On the brink of each new year, it’s common for a lot of people to start thinking about the year ahead. I have to say that this time of year has become one of my absolute favourite seasons. Partly because it’s Christmas time, and partly because it’s goal-setting season too!

But before you start looking towards the future, it’s critical to assess your life right now.

This step of reflection and review is so crucial to your success in the coming year that, if you miss it, you’ll find that your progress is likely to suffer. And I don’t want that for you, my friend.

So in this post, we’ll look at three reasons why you need to do a life assessment – and why you should do it regularly.

We have a life assessment included each month in our monthly stationery membership Paper Me Pretty. You’ll definitely want to check that out here:

Our stationery designs change each month to give you fresh new stationery every single month. And if you’d like to get three months of Paper Me Pretty stationery for FREE, be sure to check out the Christian Living Bundle. It’s a collection of over $1,100 resources to help you grow in your faith. PLUS, you’ll get 3 months of Paper Me Pretty stationery when you get the bundle! Check it out here:

So with that, let’s get into this post!

A life assessment gives you clarity on where you are

This is perhaps the biggest benefit of doing a life assessment. Although for some people, this is the reason why they avoid doing it altogether!

When you assess your life, you’re able to see with greater clarity, where you are right now. Where you stand in your relationships with the people around you. Where you stand in relation to your finances, your health, your work, and a host of other things.

It’s like doing a health check on your life. And for some people, it’s difficult to face the truth.

If you’re drowning in debt, the last thing you want to think about is how much money you owe. It feels better not knowing, doesn’t it? But ask anyone who has gotten out of a huge debt about the process, and they’ll tell you that facing your debt (in all it’s ugly totality) is the first step in becoming debt-free.

The same is true when doing a life assessment. If you feel like you’ve been doing badly in a particular area for a long time, it’s not easy facing the truth. But staring the truth in the face is your first step in making that area of your life better.

That’s why doing a life assessment is crucial – it gives you clarity on where you are. And until you can see exactly where you stand (wherever that may be), you can’t improve, make progress or set effective goals.

It gives you clarity on where you want to be

When you know where you stand, it’s a lot easier to see if that’s actually where you want to be.

It’s kind of like finding your position on a map. Doing a life assessment is like figuring out where the “You Are Here” arrow is. Only when you know where you are, will you be able to see how far you are from where you want to be.

A life assessment can be so illuminating. And it’s a pity that a lot of people who do them only do it once a year. Because the process of doing a life assessment is so clarifying, it’s a good idea to do it regularly. That way, you’re more in tune with where you are and where you want to get to on a frequent basis.

Brendon Burchard, author of High Performance Habits, said that high performers do a life assessment every week to see where there are and what areas they need to improve on.

If that sounds like overkill to you, don’t worry. Why not start off doing a life assessment more often than you are now.

In Paper Me Pretty, our digital stationery membership, we’ve just added a life assessment to our monthly bundles. That way, you can do a life assessment each month when a new bundle comes out, or print out four of them so that you can do it once a week like Brendon suggests. There are 21 items included in our monthly bundles. Click the image below to find out more!

A life assessment helps you to identify the best goals for your current season of life

Once you know where you are, and you can see where you want to get to, it becomes a lot easier to create goals that will really help you to make progress from where you are right now.

This is insanely crucial. A lot of people set goals that look and sound great, but in reality, they don’t take into account where they’re starting from.

When you do a life assessment, you can create goals that relate to your starting off point (where you are now). And the reason this is such a big thing is that it means you’re creating goals that work for your season of life.

A goal to go jogging 3 days a week might not sound very taxing. But if you’ve just had a baby, or moved house, or the school run has changed or stopped altogether, this goal could be a non-starter.

This is why so many New Year’s resolution fail straight outta the gate. In an ideal world I’d love to do a lot of things. But if I’m not in an ideal world, I need to create goals that work for the world I’m actually in. This doesn’t mean I can’t create lofty goals, but that need to address where I’m starting from.

Create goals that work for the season of life you’re in right now. And doing a life assessment helps you to do just that.

Assess your life

I hope I’ve convinced you to start doing a life assessment on a more regular basis. It’s at the heart of creating great goals that work for you.

If you’d like to get our beautifully designed life assessments each month, plus lots of other stationery items, join our stationery membership at Paper Me Pretty.

Here’s to your awesome life!