New Year Resolution: Audit Your Life

In a few weeks, people around the world will be making New Year’s resolutions. For many, that involves little more than expressing a wish for better relationships, to take up an exercise routine, to lose weight, to get home on time to see the children off to bed. It is simply another New Year’s Eve tradition.

New Year resolutions

This year, January 1 can represent more than the day to hang a clean calendar. The weeks before your birthday and the New Year offer opportunities to audit yourself and your family life. From the audit, you can determine what actions need to be taken to live healthier, work smarter and be happier. Then, fulfilment will follow.

Set aside time in December to be sincere and straightforward with yourself. This process involves gentleness and generosity to yourself and others within a spirit of honesty. It is not a time for sugar-coating the truth, but daring to see what is really happening around you - what you can control, and how you have adapted to situations beyond your control.

The purpose is not to beat yourself up over mistakes of the past. The goal is to analyse your situation to understand who and where you are now. Out of this deeper understanding comes wisdom and from there, making New Year's resolutions, and taking next steps that bring greater fulfilment, will be easier.

Audit yourself and your family

Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Begin by doing Inner Breathing, intentionally breathing your stress, worries, resentments, guilt, grief out before you begin. Then take a few minutes to think of happy events in your life. You can do this daily or whenever you feel stressed.

The most successful people are those who are able to go the extra mile in effort and spend more time doing the most important things that bring the greatest value to life while maintaining balance. Do you have enough time to do all the things that are urgent and important? Are you distracted by time-robbers like gossip or meaningless rituals? Are certain people or situations demanding too much attention?

My book From Success to Fulfillment, provides assessment charts that can be copied and filled out every six months.

Here are some of the questions for your consideration.

Rate yourself or your family from 0 to 4.

• 4 - fully developed.
• 3 - well developed.
• 2 - partially developed.
• 1 - just starting to develop.
• 0 - not developed at all yet.

Now that you have applied your score to the Triangle of Power, you are better prepared to determine what you really need in order to materialise your goals. Often, people think in terms of doing more of what they do well in order to achieve greater success. While this is true, it is also important to identify your blind spots.

If you score high marks in willpower or great intellectual prowess but are low on the social quotient, then developing a deeper sense of inclusiveness and compassion for others will bring you a more balanced development. On the other hand, if you have great people skills and lots of friends, but are pulled away from your urgent and important responsibilities, then you need to develop more willpower and mental facilities so you can manage your time better.

The key to fulfilment goes beyond being successful. Many executives today have earned more money and are more influential than they ever dreamed possible, yet they feel empty inside. By understanding who you are and what needs to be further developed within yourself or your family, it is easier to know what next steps to take to become a more fulfilled leader, who enjoys being of greater service to your work, to your family, and to the world.