Evaluate Your Life – The Benefits of Taking a Quick Inventory

As the end of the year approaches, it’s a natural time to take stock and see where you are in your life.  Even if it’s not something you tend to do at a particular time of the year, taking a quick inventory can be beneficial in many regards.  

For one thing, it can give you a chance to celebrate your accomplishments and acknowledge your growth.  Take a look back to the beginning of the year and jot down some wins you have had. This could be anything from getting that promotion at work to finding peace around an issue that had been causing you strife.  It could be as small as finishing a sweater you’ve been knitting or as major as taking the trip of a lifetime. As life has a tendency to whiz by at breakneck speed, it’s important to give yourself this time for reflection and appreciation.  This can give you more awareness of a life well-lived, and often it is easier to see progress when you have the perspective of hindsight.

As you take a quick inventory, it is also a good time to look at the goals you have made and see which ones have been accomplished and which ones are still in progress or on the back burner.  Goals are like blueprints; they give us something to work towards but not all of them come to fruition, and that is to be expected. Some goals may have lost their priority status as others have come into view.  Some may not even make sense anymore and can be let go. There is a clarifying and shedding process that happens as life unfolds. Which goals that are still unfinished do you want to take into the new year? Which ones can you let go of?  

In the realm of personal growth, it can be meaningful to evaluate your life to see how much progress you have made.  Because these kinds of gains are less measurable, they can often be overlooked, and you can find yourself feeling like you are not improving or not doing so fast enough.  But it is very important to look for the evidence that you are always evolving – because you are.

In my work with clients, I can often see their progress more clearly than they can, and it is my job to point out the examples.  But you can do that for yourself, as well. As relationships often provide great mirroring opportunities, take a look at some of yours. How might those have changed for the better in the past year or so? If there are relationships you are still struggling with, have you had any insights or shifts around them?  Also, what are some opportunities you have attracted into your life this year? How have you bounced back from setbacks? All of these observations can give you more of a sense of your capabilities and your resilience.    

As you evaluate your life, there are always going to be things you want to improve on and goals you want to accomplish, and that’s natural, but these can keep you very future focused.  So it is important to take a moment to look at how far you have come and all you have done. The more you can find satisfaction and appreciation in the life you have now, the more energy and enthusiasm you will have for what is to come.