If you’re a reader of this blog, you’ll know that the focus is all about helping you live a purposeful and extraordinary life. That’s the reason I developed a Life Score Process as I strongly believe that the secret to fulfilling your life is to give yourself a life score.
To live a purposeful and extraordinary life, your focus needs to be on redesigning and re-inventing. This approach will motivate and empower you to be the very best you can be in order to leave a true and everlasting legacy.
My readers are Mums, high-level executives, salesmen, app designers, florists, actors, and teenagers. Life has nothing to do with ‘what’ you are, it has Everything to do with ‘who’ you are.
If you aren’t getting the best out of your life, you need to. Life is way too short my friends and I implore you to get the best out of the remainder of your life.
At the time of this writing, I’m currently in isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, like most of you are, and I am finding it somewhat challenging. However, I’ve used this time to take some time to be introspective and re-focus myself on who I need to be.
I thought I’d invest in a strategy to provide myself with a ‘life score’! You know, just to see how I’m tracking. I’d encourage you to do the same.
Take this opportunity to review where things are for you. After completing the following process I felt encouraged, albeit a bit overwhelmed, and had a slight sense of underachievement.
I’m telling myself that this is a perfectly standard response.
How to Determine Your Life Score
How do we calculate where we’re currently at in our life journey. For some of you, you’re acutely aware of how you’re tracking and what needs improvement or adjustment. For others, it’s much more difficult.
How do you take an objective review of how your life is traveling and how do you dig down to identify some of the more ‘urgent’ needs?
Well, It certainly can sound overwhelming.
This got me to thinking. How can I develop a fairly high-level system that delivers a Life Score to help me identify those areas in my life that need, a bit more attention?
Your Life Score Process
For those interested, here is my 5 Step Process to determine your Life Score.
Step 1. Give Yourself an Overall Life Score
Firstly, let’s start by giving your life an overall score. The score should be out of 10.
Take some time (a couple of minutes) to think about what score you should honestly rate yourself.
On a scale of 1 – 10, how are you performing? Maybe, like me, you’re in the range of 5-8. You got your shit together, you’re doing alright, no real complaints.
To assist, use the following Scoring Matrix;
8-10 = Enough to pass on and focus on other areas.
6-7 = Put this on your watch list.
4-5 = Danger Zone.
0-3 = Focus of this NOW!
Step 2. Scoring Your Life Categories
Ok, so we’ve got your overall score down.
Now we need to segregate your life into categories. When you break your life down into categories, it may tell you a different story.
For instance, if you score your life overall, say a 7 out of 10, you might think you’re doing ok. 70% on any matrix is good, right? I thought the same until I started using this process.
Getting specific can shine a light on those areas of your life that need some further massaging to bring them up to optimal performance. You can’t improve what you don’t measure!
I’ve broken up life into the following categories, noting that the fewer categories for this process, the easier it will be.
- Family
- Work/Career
- Health/Fitness
- Finances
- Spiritual Growth
- Personal Growth
These categories are very much high level and have been created to assist you in focusing on what areas need help. If you want to dig deeper, please do so.
For me, other categories include;
- Integrity
- Romance
- Children
- Emotional life
- Vision
- Recreation
Importantly, please be honest with your scoring. Your scoring process is your own, but here’s a suggestion of how I’d rate the category of Finances, for example;
- If your finances are in order, i.e you are comfortably paying off your house/or have paid it off, no significant debts, and are saving, you’d be in the 8-10 range.
- If you have significant debts but are managing to pay them off slowly and can just save for holidays each year, you might be a 6 – 7,
- If on the other hand your debts are overwhelming and you are going backward, you can’t save and are struggling to pay off school fees or take your significant other to the movies, you’d be a 4-5.
- If you are on the brink of going under or losing everything, you’d be a 0-3.
Write your categories down and using the scoring matrix, put a number next to each area, i.e Health/Fitness = 6
It should look something like this;
- Family = 5
- Work/Career = 8
- Health/Fitness = 4
- Finances = 7
- Spiritual Growth = 9
- Personal Growth = 2
Place each category into the 4 scoring ranges, i.e 6-7 = Finances, Spiritual Growth, Work/Career. 0-3 = Family, Fun/Social
For example, It might look like this;
8-10 = Spiritual Growth
6-7 = Finances
4-5 = Family, Work/Career, Personal Growth
0-3 = Helth/Fitness
This may be a wake-up call to you. It certainly was to me.
For instance, I rated my Health / Fitness as a 3. This was a very hard number to write down, considering for most of my life i had been thin, fit, and very healthy. Lately, though, it’s been a different story.
I had to be honest and own up to what both I thought my rating would be and what I thought others (including my doctor) would think it would be.
Now that you have your ratings, you need to prioritise.
Step 3. Prioritising Your Scoring
Ok, now you’ve allocated scoring to all your life categories, it’s time to prioritise.
Le’ts say, your Finances are in the 4-5 range, and your Personal Growth and Fun/Social are in a 0-3 range. You now need to determine what to focus on. Whilst it makes perfect sense to focus on the Personal Growth and Fun/Social categories as they are the lowest ranking of say 0-3, it may not be that simple
Prioritising will be subjective to some degree, as only you know your own situation, however you should determine what are the consequences if you fail to focus on a particular category.
For e.g If Finances are in the 4-5 range and you’ve determined that without a dedicated roadmap to get you back on track (which may include refinancing, or speaking to a Financial Advisor) you’ll end up losing your house or not have enough savings in retirement, the consequences for inaction are significant.
This vs. a lower score in say Personal Growth and Fun/Social of 0-3 where inaction might not have any immediate or even long term detrimental effect.
Whilst lower categories that have less of a downside if not attended to will still need your attention, the categories that will have significantly more downside if not attended to need to be your primary focus.
Step 4. Planning
Now you have your 1 or 2 areas that are both rated the lowest, and will have the most effect on your life if not addressed.
These areas are now your focus. By focus I mean you need to address these issues as a matter of urgency.
If you do have 3 or 4 areas in the ‘Focus on this now’ category, you need to either focus on one at a time or divide your focus on ONLY 2. The more you spread yourself thin in this process, the less attention each category will receive.
You may want to allocate a month or a qt. to each category and fully focus on just one area during this time. Whatever you do, don’t ignore your scores. These scores are where you honestly think your life is currently at. Oh, btw, thanks for being so honest with this process. Being totally honest is the only way you’ll get out of the hole you may find yourself in at this present time.
I rated my health as a 3, and it made me depressed. I was so down about it, knowing that not only did my excess weight look horrible, but my life was actually in danger. Yes, I had borderline high blood pressure, and due to my Mum just having a major heart attack and my Dad recently suddenly dying due to a heart attack, I was undoubtedly headed for catastrophe if nothing changed. If my Personal Growth or my Work/Career was rated as a 3, my focus would be on my health, as this would have had more of a significant effect on my life, if left unchecked.
To go through this process and to be honest and open with yourself, is a wonderful thing. It means you are taking responsibility for your life and you want to improve. Huge congratulations.
The first step in becoming the person you really want to become is identifying the areas of your life you need to improve on.
You’ve now done that (or will be doing that – after you finish reading this) and that’s just So cool! Be proud of yourself. Maybe this was easy, maybe the honesty part was extremely hard. In either case, the really hard work begins now.
Now you need a plan of attack. You need to understand how you are going to approach these areas in order to get some positive results. This plan might be a year-long approach, alternatively, it may only consist of a few small changes that will result in massively positive results.
Step 5. Action
Finally, you need a plan of attack.
The following is what I suggest, dependent on where you’re at and what capacity you have to focus on this;
If a subject matter expert is something you think can effectively help you get out of the pickle you’re in, book in a consultation. As an example, if you need specific financial advice about refinancing, bankruptcy, minimizing your tax etc. then you need to see a financial adviser/accountant. if you need to lose weight or get in shape, research personal trainers in your area or get on youtube to find some exercise regimes that are free.
If you think you have some trusted friends or family that can give you some honest yet helpful advice on your areas of concern, enlist them on this. Give them a timeframe and ask them to come on the journey with you.
If what you think you need is someone to come along this journey with you, someone that’s independent, someone that can be trusted with your personal situation, someone who’s non-judgmental and can give you honest and helpful steps to get you where you need to go, please let me know as I can certainly be that person.
You’re now aware of what areas need attention. Hopefully, this helps you get to where you need to get to.
It’s important to review your life on a semi-regular basis and giving yourself a life score provides you with a good benchmark on how you’re tracking compared to your last assessment.
It’s good practice to also informally assess how you think you’re life is going on a semi-regular basis. Just review the last week, month, year, and see if anything jumps out.
If you get in the habit of reviewing your life, you’re going to give yourself the best opportunity to be the person you really want to be.
Happy scoring my friends.
Ebbo out.
For those wanting some additional reading on life scoring, try Michael Hyatt’s book Living Forward. I can thoroughly recommend it.
Also, Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life has sold 50 million copies and is a life-changing read.
