THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. PLEASE SEE MY DISCLOSURES FOR MORE INFORMATION
Do you feel stuck in your everyday life? Have you had difficulty deciding what to do next and where to go from here? We’ve all gone through times when it feels like everything is at a standstill. That’s why staying motivated and striving for personal growth is important.
To help jumpstart your life and allow yourself to make wise decisions, ask yourself the following questions that will set you on the right path.
Before you answer the questions to jumpstart your life, I want to help you make this exercise beneficial.
You should answer them in two ways.
- First, answer them on a scale of 1 to 10. The lower the number, the more unhappy you are. So, 1 is unsatisfied, and 10 is completely satisfied.
- Second, write down notes and give examples. This helps you better assess where you fall for each one. In other words, you will provide more accurate answers.
#1. How Is My Life Working Out?
Look at your life, job, relationships, finances, health, etc., and think about how you feel about each. Are you content with where your life is currently and where it is going? Do you want more out of any part of your life?
It might be best to leave this one to the end so that you can assess smaller areas of your life in the other nine questions and then answer this question, which encompasses your entire life.
Related: See how your choices shape your life
#2. What Is My Daily Attitude?
Are you always grumpy or look at the negative side whenever something happens? Or are you an optimist who sees the bright side no matter how dark and gloomy the news looks? Having a positive attitude will go a long way to jumpstart your life.
Learn to look on the bright side of everything, and your world will change. This doesn’t mean you can never experience negative emotions or get upset. It means you should focus more on the positives than the negatives.
Related: Here is how to have happy thoughts
#3. How Happy Am I?
This one is similar to the first question but a little different. The first question asking about your life working out is all-encompassing.
On the other hand, this one is here to look at how happy you are. We all have times when things don’t work out, or we struggle with one thing or another. But even with all of these hurdles, how would you rate your overall happiness with your life?
#4. How Is My Health?
Aside from saying you have no illnesses or diseases, you want to take this further. How well do you eat? Do you exercise? How do you sleep? Are you tired or sluggish all of the time?
These are the sub-questions you should be thinking about when you are answering this question.
#5. How Are My Relationships?
Look at all of your relationships to answer this question. Think about family, extended family, friends, colleagues, etc. All these relationships matter, so you need to assess all of them.
Which relationships add value to your life? And which ones take away from your life?
For example, do you leave an encounter feeling excited and energized or tired and stressed? It’s important to note how each relationship you have affects you personally.
#6. How Happy Am I With My Lifestyle?
What does your free time consist of? Are you doing any hobbies you love? Or are you stuck in a rut, doing things that don’t please you?
Consider everything you do and how and if they bring you joy. Be sure to look at the things you think bring you joy. You want to make sure they are things you enjoy doing.
#7. How Are My Finances Compared To Where I Want To Be?
We all have an idea of where we want to be financially. The catch here, though, is to be realistic with our number. We can’t have a net worth of $5 million if we make minimum wage.
Likewise, try not to fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others. Doing this will sabotage your attempts to jumpstart your life.
By this I mean don’t think you should have the cars, house or vacations as someone else. You have no idea what their finances look like, so don’t aim to be like them.
Come up with a number that will provide for you and your family and remove some of the stress surrounding money.
#8. How Well Do I Set Goals?
Are you a good goal-setter or a poor one? How do you know? Ideally, when you set goals, you are specific.
You don’t set goals very well if your goals are more general. For example, wanting to lose weight is a poor goal. Wanting to lose 20 pounds so you have more energy to play with your children, is more specific and a good goal.
Be very specific when setting goals, and you will begin to see yourself accomplish many of the goals you set for yourself.
#9. How Well Do I Achieve My Goals?
Even if you set the best goals possible, not achieving them makes the goals a waste. When you start achieving goals regularly, you jumpstart your life and get excited to tackle new goals. To achieve your goals, make sure you are writing them down to start.
Then practice the art of visualization. Finally, use friends to keep you accountable and motivated to reach your goals.
#10. Am I Growing Personally?
You can set great goals and achieve them, but you still need to improve your life. This happens when you focus on setting goals that don’t help you grow personally.
We must stretch from our comfort zones and try new things to be our best. It will sometimes be scary and stressful, but you will grow from doing this. And when you do stretch, don’t worry about failing.
To assess if you are growing personally, look at how often you try new things. This includes new routines, trying new foods, doing things that scare you, etc.
Understand that you will fail and make many mistakes when you step outside your comfort zone. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be trying new things. Instead, it means you are growing as a person.
As a growing person, you are becoming better at being yourself and living your best life every day.
Your Results
After performing this exercise, you should better understand where you are lacking in life and where you can improve your life. Maybe you aren’t great with your daily attitude, or you aren’t where you want to be financially.
Seeing these things on paper will make the issues more real to you. Writing them down will also allow you to take action on them.
If you aren’t great with your daily attitude, you can make it a point to say positive affirmations first thing in the morning.
This helps you by making sure you acknowledge the small wins you experience every day that you have been overlooking.
You can also see all the great things you have going on in your life. Seeing this and having an action plan in place to improve on the ones where you fall short is how you will succeed in jumpstarting your life.
After six months, you will want to review these questions and answer them again. Then compare your results to see where you have improved and which areas still need more work.
My final piece of advice is not to try to change overnight. If you have a couple of areas that need work, don’t go “all in” with everything. This is a sure path to disaster.
It is like the person looking to lose weight as their New Year resolution. They try completely changing their lifestyle by exercising daily and reinventing their diet.
They failed after a few weeks because it was just too much change. Take things slowly. Pick one area and work on that. After a few weeks, incorporate another area, and so on. By taking things slowly, you increase your odds of success.
Don Dulin is the founder and main author on Unfinished Success, a personal development website whose goal is to help you be the best you. By making small changes everyday to how you live life, you can live your best life. You can learn more about him here.