Getting Clear On Your 2024 Goals: How to do a Life Audit
A full breakdown on how to do a Life Audit to make better goals + a free Life Audit & Goal Setting template.
WEEKLY RECAP
Happy Monday y’all! Currently typing up this blog from the comfort of my Miami hotel room. I’ve been in Miami the last couple of days for a work trip. I know most people get excited about work travel but, while I’m grateful for the opportunities afforded to me, I am not one of those people. Work travel for me often means blurred work/life balance lines, longer hours, spending time away from my loved ones, and getting thrown off of my routines. But you know what, we do what we gotta’ do! I just remind myself that I like expensive sh!t and envision a certain life for myself and I won’t accomplish those goals without hard work. That being said, I do my best not to treat my work trips as vacations, which means finding ways to stay clear on my goals and adapt to my new circumstances.
One of my biggest goals for 2024 is to look and feel hotter than I ever have before. That means that while I’m in Miami, rather than allowing myself to DoorDash junk everyday and laze around in between work stuff, I’m still: making it a priority to get my daily steps in, going to the grocery store to get actual food (and my kombucha), going to the gym, doing my skincare routine etc. Old Me would’ve gladly spent her days munching on chicken wings and candy and ignoring the fact that her hotel even has a gym. But New Me is fixated on her goals because she knows how important achieving them is to her. What’s interesting is that Old Me had the exact same goals to lose weight, clear up my skin etc. but, the difference is that, Old Me never took the time to evaluate how far she was from her goals or why they were important to her. This is one of the biggest reasons most people fail to achieve their goals. Because they’re too focused on creating goals, just to say they have them, without doing the self-evaluation work first. How near/far are you from achieving your goals? What steps do you need to take to achieve your goals? And why do these goals matter to you? The one practice that New Me does that Old Me didn’t is a Life Audit. I mentioned this in a previous post but, today, I’m going to give you a more in depth explanation of what a Life Audit is, how it can help you create better goals, and I’m sharing a free template to get you started!
But first, it’s time for our…
WEEKLY R.E.P.O.R.T. CARD
Reading: Scripts & call sheets, lol, because I’m in work mode.
Eating: Some yummy Cuban food, because that’s what you do in Miami.
Pinning: Skincare product recommendations (specifically Korean skincare) & flexbility/posture exercises (2024 is the year I get rid of my lower back pain).
Obsessing: over my Good American jeans. Y’all can say whatever y’all want to about the Kardashians but Khloe absolutely snapped with these jeans! I own 3 pairs and am already planning to buy more.
Recommending: that you curate your travel skincare routine. I use The Ordinary on a daily but I particularly love them for travel because their serums are already the perfect size for your carry-on. Also recommending that you pack a couple sheet masks with you for the extra hydration your skin needs after a flight.
Treating: myself (and being treated) to nice business dinners and business lunches because I work hard and I deserve it. And the best way to network is over drinks.
THE LIFE AUDIT
Now, for those of you who have never heard this term before, I’ll answer your main question: what the hell is a Life Audit? A Life Audit is a reflective process that requires you to evaluate different aspects of your life such as: health, career, relationshios, finances etc. The point of the evaluation is to gain clarity on your satisfication in each area, identify opportunities for improvement, and prioritize the areas where growth matters the most to you. Doing a Life Audit provides you with a wholelistic, and concise, overview of your life and your values which ultimately helps you make better goals. Goals you actually care about.
So, how do you do a life audit? The first step is write down your categories - the different aspects you will be evaluating yourself in. You can be as broad (ex. Health & Wellness) or a detailed (ex. Medical, Skincare, Gym etc.) as you prefer to be. In the template that I’ve provided for you (linked below) I’ve listed broad categories but the template is editable for you to change it up how ever you want. After you’ve written down your categories you want to reflect on your current reality (how you’re doing in each area) and give yourself a rating in each area.
The categories in the template are broken down as follows:
Health & Wellness: medical health, diet & exercise, mental & emotional health, skin & hair etc.
Personal Growth: learning and self-development goals, non-creative hobbies & interests, self-care practices, reading, workshops etc.
Finances: personal finances, budgeting & saving, paying off debt, investing, financial security etc.
Relationships: romantic, family, friendships, social events etc.
Career & Education: career goals, professional development, work-life balance etc.
Spirituality & Inner Peace: beliefs & practices, mindfulness, sense of purpose, emotional resiliance etc.
Creativity & Passions: creative outlets & hobbies, passion projects, inspirations, creative pursuits etc.
Contributions & Impact: social involvement, community service, environmental impact, advocacy & activism etc.
Life Growth & Dreams: short & long term goals, bucket lists, dream life, milestones & achievements etc.
After you’ve evaluated your current satisfaction, what’s holding you back and given yourself a rating, you’ll take some time to write out how you'd like to grow in these areas over the next year. At the end of 2024 where do you envision yourself being? Hopefully, not still in the same place.
Keep this audit in a place that’s easily accessible to you so that you can refer to it throughout the year and do your routine check-ins. Most Life Audit gurus will tell you to circle back at the end of the year to see how you’ve done but I actually strongly encourage you to do a mid-year check-in in June. Coming back in the middle of the year to re-evaluate yourself and how much growth, or lack thereof, you’ve had since January will allow you to reasses your vision and priorities. Perhaps, you’ll realize you’ve been slacking in your personal growth area and reading your vision in that area may help inspire you to put some focus there. Or maybe you’ll realize that certain financial goals that were important to you in January are no longer a priority come June and you can choose to focus your attention on a different area. Doing this mid-year gives you time to course correct before December so you can, hopefully, avoid feeling like you’ve failed at something.
Reflecting on these areas, and getting clear on where you currently stand, will help creating your 2024 goals be a lot less stressful. And lucky you, the free template I’ve created also has a tab for goal creation. Let’s dive into how to use it…
I know you know somebody who needs to hear this!
CREATING BETTER GOALS
Now that you’ve completed your Life Audit, you have a clear understanding of the person you want to be at the end of 2024. But how do you get there? Simple, base your annual goals off of the things you wrote in your “Vision in One Year” column. They should be directly aligned. If you find yourself putting down goals that you didn’t even remotely touch on in your Life Audit, then you may want to go back and reevalute the importance of the goal.
Now, most people would simply stop here, after writing down their annual goals. But simply writing down your goals without making an actionable plan is a sure fire way to end the year with no growth. So we’re going to take it a step further.
If you’re chronically online like I am, you’ve probably heard of the 12-Week-Year which was all the hype this past December as everyone prepped for the new year. I actually got introduced to the 12-Week-Year back in 2022 and it is truly one of the best ways to keep your goals at the forefront of your mind throughout the year. The method is simple, take your list of annual goals and break them into quarters (3-month intervals). For example, if you want to save $12,000 by the end of year then, when you break it into quarters, that means you want to save $3,000 a quarter. Doing this helps your big goals become more realistic and attainable. Saving $12,000 might seem like a lofty goal, but saving $3,000 may be a much more achievable number. After you’ve broken down your annual goals into quarterly goals, I recommend going even further to break the goal down monthly. So now rather than saying, “I want to save $3,000 in the next 3 months,” you’d be saying “I want to save $1,000 in the month of January, and another $1,000 in February etc.” — again, helping the goals to seem much more attainable. I strongly recommend checking in, at minimum, once a month just to see how well you’re tracking towards accomplishing your overall goal.
Once you’ve gotten clear on your quarterly and monthly goals, you need to identify the daily/weekly habits and practices you need to maintain in order to achieve those goals. This is your plan. It’s not enough to simply say you want something, you have to take actionable steps in order to get it. Continuing with our saving money example, if you want to save $1,000 by the end of the month then determine what you need to do in order to make that reality. Do you need to move a certain amount of your paycheck into a savings account every payday? Do you need to pick up extra shifts or maybe do some gig work (Uber, DoorDash etc.)? Figure out what it is and write that in your Habits column, this will ensure you have a clear understanding of what you need to be doing in your daily life in order to achieve your overall annual goal.
I understand that this process may be a lot more work than you’re up for doing but I promise you it’s worth it. Doing your Life Audit, in addition to breaking down your big goals, will help: reduce stress around goal creation & achievement, get clear on your priorities forcing you to become a better decision maker, and help promote self-discovery and a sense of life fulfillment.
As promised, to help you along, please find my free 2024 Life Audit & Goals Template here. Simply create a copy and save it to your own Google Drive so you can easily access it throughout the year.
Here’s to 2024 being our best year yet!
And if you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading! 🖤✨
xoxo,
Bae