The unexamined life is not worth living.
—SOCRATES
Pause to take inventory of your life. You gain critical perspective when you take inventory of your days, thoughts, actions, daily routine.
It’s easy to believe we can’t rest from our work, that we have to push, push, push into the next obligation or we’ll fall behind. But we have to rest from those cycles long enough to take inventory.
This framework by Rebekah Lyons, might help you.
The first question, What’s Right? keeps you aware of and grateful for the gifts in your life.
Asking What’s Wrong? allows you to see where things have veered off course. By answering this question, you assess and name the challenges you are facing.
The third question, What’s Confused? helps you to isolate the rabbit trails you seem to chase to no end, spending an endless amount of mental energy. Writing it down helps you to deal with the anxiety this chase gives.
The last question, What’s Missing? requires a hard look at areas of life you may be too close to, areas you can’t evaluate alone. To answer this question, you need help and insight from a few trusted friends and your near ones. This question helps you to identify blind spots.
Reflecting for a few moments every day and doing a deeper dive every few months keeps us aware of the anxiety-producing things in our lives and allows us to correct course.
Personal Inventory offers clarity, it creates additional space for new dreams to emerge. You’ll be surprised how suppressed passions surface, how solutions to your problems emerge when you take time away.
It’s never too late to re-establish what you want your life to be about.
- Describe your life. what is wrong, missing, or confusing in your life?
- How long has it been since you’ve taken inventory of your life? have you ever?
- Write out a plan for how you can step away, even for half a day, and take inventory.
It’s a very important practice of evaluating your life and redefining priorities to ensure you are living it well.
This is where things begin to change.
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