How to Do a Full Life Audit (and Why It Will Change Your Life)

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they realize that some things are going better or worse than expected.

Maybe you realize that you’re further away from your goals than you expected.

Maybe you find yourself trapped in stagnation and you don’t know how to proceed.

Maybe you just don’t even know where you “are” in the grand scheme of this experience we call “life”.

All of these scenarios are clarified by the magical powers of a life audit.

This article is going to go in depth into:

• What a life audit is and why everyone should do one
• Signs you need a life audit
• How to properly do a life audit

With that, let’s get auditing.

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What is a Life Audit? Why Do I Need One?

A life audit is a full-scope, 360 degree, introspective examination of your life and the people, places, and circumstances within it. It covers a massive amount of ground and hits on everything from your financial health to your spiritual endeavors. At its best, a life audit is completely objective and allows you to see clearly into your life with little to no emotionality.

Think of the life audit like the dashboard of a car. It gives you indicator signals as to how the car is performing and if it’s underperforming in certain areas.

Why You Need a Life Audit

We live in a fast-paced world with a lot of demands on our time. Some of us go to school, some of us are parents, some of us work. No matter who you are, your time doesn’t wholly and solely belong to you. In addition to that, there are many things that lie outside of our conscious awareness. They remain in “shadow”, if you will. Many people find that many areas of their life start to slowly fall apart because many of these crucial life areas remain in shadow.

A life audit brings the areas of your life that are in shadow into the light for conscious and critical examination.

Signs You Need a Life Audit

There are many signs you need a life audit, here are just a few of them:

You find yourself constantly “behind”

In life, we all take different paths.

Some people will get married, others not at all.

Some people will work for corporate companies, other people will start their own businesses or become freelancers.

While there is no one-size-fits-all life path, there are some things that characterize stable adulthood that the majority of people will “get” at some point.

Some of these include things like some form of steady employment, a sense of responsibility, and the ability to think long-term.

If you find yourself missing these things in your life, perhaps a life audit is in order.

You have no direction to your days

In high school or college (if you went), there was a big possibility that you were not as “tight” with your time as a normal working adult would be. That’s because usually, there’s a lot of spontaneity during that time of life and it’s common to take a “let’s just see what the day brings us” type of attitude to life.

While this attitude is permissible to have at that age (especially since you’re still being supported by your parents), it is a death sentence as an independent adult. A life audit will help to bring some direction to your life.

You find yourself constantly frustrated and frazzled

It’s one thing to be frustrated from time to time. However, if you find yourself on the receiving end of chronic frustration and chaos in your life, this is a sign that your life is unorganized and in need of a life audit.

You are contemplating a big life change or you have just gone through one

Life takes us all in many directions. During these journeys, it’s common to encounter situations that just “aren’t working”.

Maybe you’re thinking about leaving your job.

Maybe you’re thinking about ending your relationship.

Maybe you’re thinking about just “moving away” and starting over entirely.

Whatever your situation may be, a life audit will help put it into focus.

You find yourself falling into addictive and compulsive behavior patterns

We live in a world of instant gratification. Most desires we have can be satisfied in a few clicks. Unfortunately, this creates eventual addiction and a bottomless pit of overconsumption. If you find that you have issues that are addictive in nature, a life audit may help.

How to (Properly) Do a Life Audit in 5 Steps

After reading the signs that you need a life audit, you may say:

Oh shit, I guess I really do need to do this life audit thing.

Well, here’s 5 steps to start doing your own life audit.

1. Examine your “launchpad capital”

While your life is your own and you’re the one living it, there is no doubt that there are different sectors of your life each with their own compartments and “metrics” for success. The areas that make one successful financially will not make someone successful in their relationships or their spiritual life. This is where the idea of “launchpad capital” comes in.

A business needs capital to grow and develop into later and later stages. This capital will enable the business to expand in other areas such as developing marketing materials, hiring good employees, and releasing good products. So is the same with you. You can think of your life as a business – “You, Inc”. In order for “You, Inc” to do things, you’ll need a good amount of capital to do it with.

These areas are:

• Financial capital
• Social capital
• Productive capital
• Knowledge capital
• Physical capital
• Emotional capital
• Spiritual capital

Depending on the type of goals you want to achieve in your life, you’ll need more capital in certain areas than others and this is what a life audit is meant to examine and address.

I go further into the idea of launchpad capital in this podcast below:

2. Ask yourself critical questions

In order for a life audit to be truly effective, you’ll need to ask yourself hard and honest questions. This is partially why people see a therapist or a counselor, to help them unravel this questioning process (and you can too, if you choose). However, if you want to see what’s really going well for you (and what’s not), you should ask questions like:

• Am I achieving my goals or am I just skating by?
• Am I where I want to be in life or am I just kidding myself?
• What are some areas that I’m weak in that I am compensating for with other means?
• How do I plan on closing the gap between where I am now and where I want to be?

These are just a few questions you can ask yourself but this questioning process will be unique for every individual.

3. Get hard metrics

Numbers don’t lie and they’re a prime way to ensure you’re staying on track with doing the things you want to do in life and achieving the things you want to achieve. While many areas in life are intangible, there are some areas in life that you can get solid numerical figures around.

Going back to the idea of launchpad capital, you can start to quantify and systematize many areas in your life. Finances are a great example.

In personal finance, there’s a specific number that totals up how much you own (assets) minus the things you owe (liabilities). This is called your net worth.

For other areas such as your personal and social life, it might be good to take count of the number of real friends and associates you can rely on when an emergency strikes. Or how many people you’ve met in the past year as well.

Not every area will be as clean cut as these but if you can get greater visibility around how you’re doing in these areas, the better off you’ll be.

4. Expose your pain points

There are many areas in our life that are better than others. We don’t really need a life audit for those. The areas we aren’t doing well in, we tend to resort to some sort of escapism so we don’t have to deal with the negative emotions that come along with them.

A life audit at its best will uncover those pain points and help you dig to the root of why they’re there and what you can do to better them.

Going back to the example on personal finance, if you do a life audit and realize that you’re spending more than you bring in, you can then start to look for ways to dial back your spending. Maybe it’s automatically saving a set amount a month or maybe it’s cutting back on eating out. Whatever it is, make sure you find out the reason why and then make plans and steps to solve that reason.

It’s an exercise in self-awareness.

5. Put pen to paper

This is where the rubber meets the road. This is your plan to put your life audit in action. You can do mind-mapping as a complement, but doing the hard and necessary work of physically writing out your life audit will help you be more conscientious as you start to unravel the specific threads of your life.

Make a category for each area of your life and then get to work on examining what’s going well and what’s not in that area.

Conclusion, Wrapping Up + Next Steps

A life audit is a full, objective top-to-bottom review of your life in every area possible. While everyone should do a life audit at least once in their lives or with some degree of regularity, there are some signs that will appear in your life that you need one ASAP. This can range from a general sense of uneasiness about where your life is headed all the way to being trapped in the throes of compulsive and addictive behavior.

When you’re ready to do the life audit, you look at all of the areas of your life, ask yourself critical questions, get hard metrics on those areas, expose your pain points, and finally put pen to paper.

After all, your life is in YOUR hands and you need to make sure that it’s the best it can be. A life audit will help you do exactly just that.

Have you ever done a life audit? If so, how did it go? What did you find out about yourself? Put it in the comments below.