It’s Evaluate Your Life Day—a day to pause and ask the big question “How am I doing?” If it sounds a bit overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be. Like many daunting tasks, it’s easier if you break it down into small steps.

In today’s post, I’ve got a free printable checklist you can use to quickly assess seven important areas that affect your overall wellbeing. The checklist will help you get started on creating an action plan to make changes.

Invest 15 minutes today to make your life better. You deserve it!

This post was originally published in October 2020 and updated in August 2023.

Having a plan is critical to success

If you have a job, you probably already have work-related goals and action plans. But this type of planning is equally important in all aspects of your life. If you talk to accomplished people, you’ll find they have one thing in common. They take the time to set and revisit goals, and they have a pretty good sense of what they are doing today to get them there.

Now, before going too far, let’s acknowledge that we all have different visions of success. For some people, it’s about earning money or material possessions. For others, it might be about learning new things, spending time with family, or exploring new hobbies. Your vision of success will be different than your neighbours or co-workers, and that’s okay.

In 7 essential elements of a well-rounded life, I shared things that I consider more important than work. These are my personal values, and they help guide my day-to-day decisions. If you take some time to think about your own values and priorities, it will be easier to define your goals and create a plan to achieve them.

Seven elements of wellbeing

There are seven areas to think about when evaluating your life. Some of them overlap with the seven elements I shared in my earlier post, and I added a couple of others for completeness.

Before we jump into the checklist, let’s look at some things to consider for each of the elements.

• Career: Do you feel engaged, challenged and happy at work?

• Relationships: Do you have strong, positive social connections with friends and family?

• Physical Health: How’s your overall health? How are you doing with controllable factors like exercise, nutrition, sleep and preventative care?

• Mental Health: Are your stress levels manageable? How are you coping with life’s ups and downs?

• Learning: Do you make time for activities that keep your brain challenged? This includes formal education and all types of informal learning. I’d also include hobbies in this area too.

• Finances: Are you living within your means? Do you know where your money is going? Do you have a plan for your future?

• Spirituality: Do you have a sense of purpose for your life? Do you have strong beliefs, values and ethics?

Are you ready to get started? Here’s a link to the printable checklist I promised. Print it and grab a pen.

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Evaluate Your Life in 3 Steps

Step 1 – How are you doing?

For each element, ask yourself how you’re doing. Circle one of the three symbols. If you’re feeling good, circle the smiley face. On the other hand, if you feel this is an area where you need to make improvements, circle the sad face. Finally, if it’s somewhere in between, circle the neutral face.

Step 2 – Are you ready to make changes?

Before creating an action plan, consider your readiness for change. Many plans fail because you’re just not ready to make a change right now. Asking this question will help you define how important this element is for you, and how likely you are to make it a priority.  

Don’t feel bad if you’ve identified you’re not doing well in a specific area but just don’t feel you can tackle that right now. You’ll have more success if you focus on areas where you’re ready for change.

Step 3 – What can you do TODAY to make things better?

Now you’re ready to create your action plan. Pick two or three areas that you’d like to work on.

Before thinking about action plans, consider your goals. There’s a difference between goals and plans.

Goals are what you want to achieve. They can be short or longer term. The best goals are SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.

Your action plan is the how. These are the steps you’ll take to reach your goals.

Let’s look at an example.

You’ve decided you want to improve your physical health by getting more exercise. You’re currently a bit of a couch potato but you’ve always thought it would be kind of cool to run a marathon.

In this case, setting a goal of running a marathon next year likely isn’t a SMART goal. It’s specific and measurable, and it might be achievable one day. But it’s not realistic and it’s something that will take years to achieve. You’re likely to get frustrated and discouraged, and give up.

On the other hand, running a marathon is a great long-term goal to work towards. But you’re more likely to be successful with a short-term goal of being able to run 5 kilometres three to six months from now. With that goal in mind, your short-term action plan should be focused on things you can start doing now to get there.

A good short-term action plan item would be to “Walk 10 to 15 minutes a day for the next month”. Once you’ve achieved that, you can set your next step.

And here’s an example from my own life.

Sleep is something I have a hard time with. Despite doing all the things the experts suggest, I rarely manage even 6 hours of sleep a night.

Setting a goal of getting eight hours of sleep a night starting tonight wouldn’t be SMART for me. It would be specific, measurable, and timely. But it’s definitely not realistic or achievable.

Instead, I’ll set a SMART goal to increase my sleep to 6.5 hours over the next three months. In addition to continuing the things I already do, my new action plan item is to start adding a 10 to 15 minute meditation or mindfulness exercise every night to calm me and get ready for sleep.

Write down your own action plan items and keep the checklist where you can see it. It might help to tell a friend or family member who will hold you accountable.

Next steps – Revisit often

Evaluate Your Life Day will come around again next October but reviewing your goals and action plans should be a regular thing. Don’t wait a year! Put a reminder in your calendar for a month from now and check-in on how you’re doing. If you’re making progress, pick some new action plan items to continue making progress toward your goals.

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What’s at the top of your action plan list? Tell us below.