Follow this simple life audit process to help you identify changes you need to make to experience more happiness and fulfillment in your life.

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It is so incredibly common to build a successful business while unintentionally putting your own life on the back burner. I see this constantly in my work as a business coach for 6 & 7 figure entrepreneurs: the intense focus on making the business as successful as possible, while the CEO’s life quietly gets sacrificed in the process.

And the funny thing is, most of us started our businesses because we wanted more out of life… More freedom, more flexibility, more money, more time to do the things we love. But then the business became the thing that gets all our time and attention… and it stayed that way.

The entrepreneurs I work with are constantly thinking about the big picture, coming up with the next big idea, putting out fires, dealing with team challenges, and trying to make it through another day feeling like we’ve actually accomplished something.

And listen, some seasons of life genuinely do require us to put our heads down and give it everything we’ve got to create the future we want. The problem is when that season turns into years.

When we get so caught up in chasing the next revenue milestone, solving the next problem, or building the next big thing that we forget to stop and ask ourselves:

Am I actually living the life I wanted all this success to give me?

Sometimes, the realization that you’ve living out of alignment sneaks up on you. I’ve had clients share things like:

• “I don’t actually have to work. I’m financially free. So why am I still spending 60 hours a week in the office?”
• “I want to be there for my kids before they become teenagers and don’t want to spend time with me anymore, but I come home from work exhausted.”
• “We want to take a year off and travel as a family, but I can’t step away for a week not to mention a year.”
• “I don’t want to keep working this much, but I honestly don’t even know what I’d do with my spare time if I wasn’t working.”

These people have worked incredibly hard, built profitable businesses, and checked off goals they once only dreamed of. And somewhere along that path, they began to realize that building a successful business and building a life you genuinely love aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Which is exactly why I’m such a big believer in doing a life audit at the end or beginning of every year.

It’s an opportunity to step away from the busyness of everyday life, take an honest look at how happy and fulfilled you actually are, and ask yourself what you’d like to be different.

Because why should we put so much thought into our business goals, financial targets, and strategic plans, but leave our personal lives to whatever time and energy happen to be left over at the end of the day?

And while I talk a lot about entrepreneurs, this is just as valuable whether you’re running a business, working a 9–5, or raising your kids at home.

I genuinely believe that being intentional about how we spend our days is one of the best ways to make sure we don’t look back years from now wishing we’d done things differently.

I’ve been doing a life audit every single year since 2017, and when I look back, I can see just how many of the things I love about my life today started with sitting down and asking myself what I actually wanted.

It’s helped me:

• Realize that my corporate career wasn’t fulfilling me and find the courage to start my own business.
• Grow that business to six figures while working fewer than 20 hours a week.
• Spend five months travelling across Canada with my family when my kids were 5 and 8, roadtripping in a school bus we converted ourselves.
• Buy 30 acres of forest on a lake and start turning it into the dream home we’ve been talking about for years.
• And make room for a thousand smaller things that make my everyday life better, like baking sourdough, meditating daily, mountain biking, joining a volleyball team, and embracing family traditions we continue to forward to.

None of those things happened by accident. And they certainly didn’t happen because I magically found more hours in my day.

They happened because I got clear on what mattered to me and made a conscious effort to build my life around those things. And that’s what I want for you, too.

The best part? A life audit isn’t complicated.

You don’t need to completely reinvent your life, quit your job, or book a one-way ticket somewhere (although if that’s what your life audit tells you, I’m not stopping you!).

You just need to make some time to sit with yourself, get honest about what’s working and what isn’t, and figure out what you actually want your life to look and feel like. Then you can start making a plan to bring more of that into your life in 2027.

So, let me walk you through exactly how to do your own life audit.

What is a life audit?

If you’ve never done a life audit before, it’s really quite simple.

It’s an opportunity to step away from the busyness of your day to day, think about how you’re actually feeling about the life you’re living, and get honest with yourself about what you’d like to experience differently.

And the beauty of doing a life audit is that you don’t actually need to be unhappy or going through some big life transition to benefit from it.

In fact, if you make it an annual tradition, it’s a really great way to take stock of how wonderful your life actually is (we lose sight of that sometimes), while at the same time gently improving the areas that you want more from.

Related post: How To Find Your Purpose & Direction In Life

Why a life audit is so important

Without taking the time to actually think about what you want, it’s really easy to live life on auto-pilot and spend years working toward goals that aren’t necessarily aligned with what would make you happiest.

And this is something I see all the time with ambitious entrepreneurs. We get so focused on the next big business goal, whether that’s hitting 7 figures, expanding the team, opening another location, and we don’t always stop to ask ourselves WHY we want those things in the first place.

And by no means is there anything at all wrong with wanting to build a wildly successful business!

But after having so many conversations with clients who have achieved the financial success they spent years working toward, and then starting to acknowledge just how much they unwittingly sacrificed to get there… I realized there’s a way to help them create success while staying aligned with what really matters, and it starts with a life audit ritual.

How my life audit ritual shaped my success

In 2022, my husband and I took our kids on a five-month road trip across Canada, travelling to as many national and provincial parks as we could get to in a school bus we’d spent three years converting into a tiny home on wheels.

And this wasn’t a goal that happened because we just happened to have tens of thousands of dollars laying around, or because I had a job that let me take five months of vacation, or because it’s what people generally consider the responsible thing to do.

In fact, had we followed society’s expectations, we probably would’ve bought ourselves a nice new car instead of spending three years renovating a school bus and taking our kids on the trip of a lifetime.

But when I did my very first life audit back in 2017, when I was absolutely miserable in my corporate job, one of the things I realized was how much I valued having the freedom to spend time with my family and create really incredible experiences together.

And not just the occasional two-week vacation, but being able to travel for months at a time, explore new places, and have the flexibility to actually enjoy our lives while our kids were young.

And because I had gotten really clear on how important that was to me, I was able to make decisions in my career, business, and finances that supported creating that reality.

Four years later, we were travelling across Canada with our kids, who were 5 and 8 at the time, making memories that we’ll have for the rest of our lives. And it all started with that life audit I did in 2017.

The truth is, if we don’t take the time to think about what we actually want out of life, it’s really easy to just keep doing what we’re doing, chasing the next goal, and spending our time and money on things that don’t meaningfully impact our happiness.

And I’d much rather figure that out now than look back 20 years from now wishing I’d done things differently.

A life audit forces you to be intentional with how you’re spending your time, money, and energy so that they can contribute to your personal fulfillment and success.

Why entrepreneurs specifically benefit from a doing a life audit

While I believe everyone can benefit from this exercise, I think it’s especially valuable for entrepreneurs.

Think about how much time you spend thinking about your business. You set annual revenue targets, create quarterly plans, track your performance, review your finances, and constantly look for opportunities to improve.

But how often do you give your life that same level of attention?

One of the patterns I’ve noticed over the years of coaching ambitious entrepreneurs is that it’s incredibly easy to put your personal life on hold until the business reaches some imaginary finish line.

• Once I hit $500K in revenue, I’ll slow down.
• Once I hire the right team, I’ll take more time off.
• Once things settle down, I’ll finally make time for myself.

But there’s always another goal to chase, another problem to solve, or another opportunity that feels too good to pass up. And before you know it, years have gone by.

I firmly believe that your business should support a life you love, not become the thing that prevents you from living it.

And that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work hard, have big ambitions, or absolutely love what you do. It means recognizing that your happiness, health, relationships, and personal fulfillment deserve just as much attention as your business goals.

After all, you probably didn’t become an entrepreneur just to recreate the corporate grind, miss out on time with your family, and feel stuck in a hamster wheel of your own making. So if your business isn’t currently supporting the life you want to live, it’s worth asking yourself what needs to change.

And a life audit is a pretty great place to start.

How to do a life audit

Here’s what I recommend having before you begin:

• 30–60 minutes of uninterrupted time. Give yourself enough space to actually think about your answers instead of rushing through them between meetings or while the kids are asking for snacks.
• Permission to be completely honest with yourself. This isn’t about coming up with answers that sound good. It’s about acknowledging where you’re genuinely happy and what you wish was different.
• A willingness to let go of other people’s expectations. Remember, we’re figuring out what you want out of life, not what everyone else thinks you should want.
• A pen and some paper. Or, if you’d like some extra structure, you can grab the ultimate Life Audit Workbook here for just $9! (it’s an editable and printable pdf that will guide you step by step through this exercise.

Step 1: Reflect On Your Happiness In Each Area Of Your Life

The first part of the life audit process is to take a really honest look at how satisfied you are in each area of your life.

And the reason I like to break it down into different categories is that it’s really easy to say something like “I’m pretty happy with my life overall” without stopping to think about the individual areas that might not be going quite as well.

For example, you might be doing incredibly well in your business and financially, but realize that you haven’t made much time for your friendships in the last year, or that you’re not taking very good care of your physical health because you’ve been so busy working.

Or maybe your relationships and family life are amazing, but you’re feeling really unfulfilled in your career and have been craving something different for a while.

So we’re going to look at 11 different areas of your life:

• business/career
• finances
• mental health
• physical health
• friendships
• romantic relationship
• family
• hobbies & creativity
• learning and personal growth
• adventure and travel
• home and environment

Go through each area and rate how satisfied you currently are on a scale of 1–10. But don’t just write down a number and move on, because the number itself isn’t really the most important part of this exercise.

What I want you to spend some time thinking about is WHY you gave yourself that number. Ask yourself:

• What’s going really well in this area of my life?
• What am I enjoying? What am I happy with? What do I want to make sure continues?
• What’s NOT going as well as I’d like?
• What’s missing? What’s frustrating me? What would make this area of my life even better?

And I want you to get really specific here. For example, don’t just write “I want to work less.” Think about what that actually means. Maybe you’re currently working 50 hours a week and you’d really love to get that down to 30. Or maybe the number of hours isn’t even the problem, but you’re tired of constantly checking your phone in the evenings and feeling like you’re never actually off work.

Or instead of writing “I want to get healthier,” you might realize that you’re only exercising once a week right now and you’d really like to get back to working out for 30 minutes 3–5 times a week, because you know how much better you feel when you’re consistent.

The more specific you can get about what IS and ISN’T working, the easier it’ll be to figure out what changes you actually want to make.

And don’t forget to write down all the things that are already going really well, too! This isn’t about finding everything that’s wrong with your life. It’s about recognizing what you’re already really happy with and making sure you’re continuing to prioritize those things as well.

Step 2: Envision Your Level 10 Life

We’re going to go through each of those 11 areas again, but this time, instead of thinking about how things are going right now, I want you to think about what a 10/10 would actually look like. Here’s the question I want you to ask yourself:

“Imagine you’re standing here 12 months from today and you’ve just had the most phenomenal year of your entire life. What does this area of your life look like? How does it feel? What are you doing? What are you NOT doing?”

And then write out a paragraph, or even an entire page, describing what that would look like.

Now, this is where I find a lot of people start holding themselves back. They start thinking about what they’d really love to experience, and almost immediately their brain jumps to all the reasons why it wouldn’t be possible.

• “I’d love to take a month off work, but there’s no way my team could manage without me.”
• “I’d love to spend more time with my kids, but I have way too much on my plate right now.”
• “I’d love to travel more, but that’s just not realistic with the business.”

And before they’ve even allowed themselves to think about what they want, they’ve already talked themselves out of it.

But here’s the thing. You don’t need to know HOW you’re going to make any of this happen yet. That’s not what we’re doing right now. Right now, I just want you to give yourself permission to think about what you’d actually love your life to look like, without immediately worrying about whether it’s realistic or how much work it’s going to take to get there.

And again, the more specific you can get, the better. For example, let’s say one of your goals is to have more freedom in your business. That’s great, but what does that really mean?

• Does it mean working 20 hours a week instead of 50?
• Does it mean being able to take two weeks off every quarter without having to check in with your team every day?
• Does it mean not having to work with clients directly anymore and being able to focus on other parts of the business you actually love?
• Or maybe it means being able to close your laptop at 3pm every day so you can pick up your kids from school and not think about work again until the next morning?

Those are all very different versions of freedom, and figuring out exactly what freedom looks like to YOU is going to make it so much easier to create a business that actually supports it.

And to be completely honest, you might find this part of the exercise a little challenging.

Sometimes we’re so used to being busy and just doing what needs to be done that we haven’t actually spent much time thinking about what we’d like our life to look like if we could design it however we wanted.

So if you find yourself thinking “I don’t even know what I want,” don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Just start writing whatever comes to mind. You can always come back to this, change your answers, and get more specific as you go. Nothing is written in stone.

The important thing is that you’re giving yourself the opportunity to actually THINK about what you want, instead of just continuing to do what you’ve always done.

Step 3: Create A Vision

Once you’ve gotten really clear on what your Level 10 Life looks like, I highly recommend taking it one step further and creating a vision board. Because it’s one thing to write out all the things you’d love to experience in life, but it’s another thing to actually have a visual reminder of what you’re working toward.

And I know vision boards can sometimes seem a little silly, especially if you’re someone who likes to focus on practical plans and action steps, but I’ve personally found them to be such a valuable part of keeping my goals top of mind. Especially when you’re running a business and there are a million things competing for your attention every day.

But it’s really easy to get caught up in putting out fires, getting through your to-do list, and dealing with whatever feels urgent, and completely lose sight of the bigger picture of what you’re actually trying to create. And having a vision board somewhere you see it regularly is just one more way to remind yourself of what matters to you.

It can be a picture of the lakefront home you’d love to build one day, a family travelling around the world, a group of friends enjoying a weekend away, or even something as simple as a woman reading a book on her porch with a cup of coffee.

It doesn’t have to be all big, expensive, once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Sometimes the things that make us happiest are the little things we want to experience more often in our everyday life.

I wrote an entire post on how to create a vision board for your life and business, so once you’ve finished this exercise, I definitely recommend checking that out.

And one thing I want you to keep in mind as you look at this big beautiful vision you’ve created for yourself is that you have a whole lifetime to make these things happen.

You don’t need to do everything tomorrow, next month, or even next year. (Although, if you’re anything like me, your brain is probably already coming up with a hundred things you want to start working on immediately.)

Which brings me to the next step.

Step 4: Set Specific Goals

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make when it comes to goal setting is trying to change too many things at once.

And I totally get it. You’ve just spent an hour thinking about all the things you’d love to experience, and now you’re feeling really excited and motivated and want to start making ALL of it happen.

But the reality is that you’ve still got your business to run, your family to take care of, and all the other things you were already responsible for before you sat down to do this exercise.

And trying to make 15 different changes in your life all at once is just going to leave you feeling overwhelmed and disappointed when you inevitably can’t keep up with everything.

So instead, I just pick 2–3 areas of your life that you want to focus on improving over the next year. Look back at the scores you gave yourself in Step 1 and the vision you created in Step 2. And ask yourself:

• Which areas of my life am I most excited about improving?
• Which areas need the most attention right now?
• What changes would have the biggest positive impact on how happy and fulfilled I feel in my everyday life?

And remember, there really is no right or wrong answer here.

Maybe your biggest priority right now is getting your business to a place where it doesn’t need you involved in every little decision, because you want to have more time to spend with your family (I can help you with that as a business coach for service providers.)

Maybe it’s improving your health because you’ve spent the last few years growing the business and you’ve let your exercise, sleep, or nutrition take a backseat.

Or maybe your business and family life are both going really well, but you’ve realized that you don’t have many interests or friendships outside of those two things and you want to start making more time for yourself.

Whatever it is, choose the things that feel most important to YOU. And then start setting specific goals that will help you move closer to that vision.

You don’t need to completely transform your life in the next 90 days, but you do need to start making intentional choices that move you in the direction you want to go.

Related post: How To Break Down Your Goals into Actionable Steps

Use A Goals Planner To Stay Focused On Your Biggest Priorities!

And if you’re anything like most of the entrepreneurs I work with, you probably don’t struggle with coming up with goals and ideas. You struggle with staying focused on them when there are a million other things happening in your business and life that need your attention.

Which is exactly why I created The Intentional CEO’s Goals Planner.

I wanted a way to bring together the kind of strategic planning we do in business with the personal goals and priorities that are just as important, so that we’re not spending all our time moving our businesses forward while forgetting about everything else we want out of life.

It’s designed to help you get clear on your biggest priorities, break them down into monthly and weekly goals, track your progress, and actually make time for the things you said were important to you.

And because I know not everyone reading this is an entrepreneur, we have a version for entrepreneurs and a version for non-entrepreneurs too.

Step 5: Revisit Your Life Audit Regularly

The last step is to make sure that doing a life audit isn’t something you do once, get really excited about, and then never look at again.

Because the reality is that what you want out of life is going to change as you get older, experience new things, and go through different seasons of life.

The things that were important to me when I first started my business in 2018 aren’t the same things I want to prioritize today. And I’m sure that as my kids get older, our business evolves, and we move into different seasons of life, those priorities are going to continue changing.

Which is why I think it’s so important to revisit this exercise regularly. I personally love doing my full life audit every December as I prepare for the year ahead, but I also look over it every quarter to see how things are going and whether I’m on track.

One of my favourite things about having done this exercise every year since 2017 is being able to go back and look at my old life audits and see just how many of the things I once wrote down as dreams or goals have actually become part of my reality.

And sometimes it’s things I’d completely forgotten I’d even wanted! It’s such a good reminder of how much can change in a few years when you’re actually intentional about what you’re working toward.

Which is also why I really recommend documenting your life audit somewhere that you can keep coming back to year after year, rather than just thinking about it in your head and then forgetting about it.

Life Audit PDF Workbook

I have the perfect workbook to help you through this process. Follow the link below to purchase the life audit fillable pdf workbook. It not only includes all these prompts, but also has a wheel of life for you to fill in! You can print it out or edit it on your computer. And it’s only $9!

So there you have it! 5 simple steps to doing a life audit and setting yourself up for more happiness, fulfillment, and success in the new year.

I genuinely can’t emphasize enough how valuable this exercise has been in my own life, and how much I believe everyone could benefit from taking the time to do it.

Because it’s so easy to get caught up in our everyday responsibilities, our businesses, and the never-ending list of things we need to get done, and just assume that we’ll eventually find the time to do all the things we’ve been wanting to do.

But the reality is that we’re probably never going to reach a point where everything is done and we have all the time in the world to focus on ourselves.

There will always be another project, another client, another business goal, or something at home that needs our attention.

And that’s why I think it’s so important to be intentional about creating the life you want NOW, instead of just waiting for the right time to come along.

You don’t have to give up your big business goals or stop working toward financial success to do that. You just need to make sure that as you’re building your business and working toward those goals, you’re also making room for the other things that matter to you.

And sometimes that means making some pretty big changes in the way you’re running your business, the way you’re spending your time, or the priorities you’re choosing to focus on. But you can’t start making those changes until you get clear on what you actually want.

So if you haven’t done a life audit before, I really encourage you to give yourself an hour to sit down and go through this exercise before the end of the year.

And if you’re an entrepreneur who’s realizing that the business you’ve worked so hard to build isn’t actually giving you the freedom, balance, or fulfillment you want, I’d love to help you figure out what needs to change.

That’s exactly what I help my 1:1 business coaching clients do: build businesses that are growing and financially successful, without having to sacrifice their personal lives in the process.

Book a free discovery call with me here if you’d like to learn more about working together.

And I’d love to hear from you in the comments below:

What’s one area of your life you want to focus on improving in 2027?

That’s it! 5 simple steps to doing a life audit and creating more happiness, success, and fulfillment in your life. If this article was valuable for you, please take a second to share it on your social media so that more people can benefit from it!

Being intentional about designing my life was the single most important factor in creating this level of success and fulfillment

Let’s summarize this simple life audit process for easy reference:

Which area of your life are you going to focus on improving this year? Tell us in the comments below.

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• How to Delegate Tasks Like a Pro: A CEO’s Guide to Working Smarter, Not Harder
• Entrepreneur’s Guide To Creating A Business Vision Board
• How To Achieve Your Goals | 10 Things To Do After Setting Goals

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