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Key points
- Like software in your computer, it's important to periodically take stock and upgrade your life and lifestyle.
- Is it time to examine your goals, unresolved problems, unfulfilled dreams, regrets?
- The key is stepping back, looking at bigger picture, deciding what you most need now.
Maybe you’ve already bottomed out on your New Year’s resolutions or are just feeling a bit restless in your life. Or perhaps you feel “fine,” but fine is, if you’re honest, a bit boring and on autopilot. Wherever you’re at, it may be time for a lifestyle software upgrade. Just as you want to avoid problems by not letting your computer run without installing the latest update, you don’t want to keep running your life on old, outmoded, inflexible habits.
Here are seven questions to help upgrade your mental and lifestyle software:
1. Overall, how’s your mood?
Pick an average day. Skip the ones where both kids got sick or when you got a flat tire on the interstate. Pick a run-of-the-mill, no-drama day. If that day was your life, living that day over and over with some minor variations, would it be a good enough life? Score it on a 1-10 scale, with one massively depressed and ten great.
In my experience, if you’re at a seven or eight, that’s pretty normal and good. If lower, the question is why: Unsolved problems? Recent crisis? Chronic low-grade depression or anxiety? If so, it's time to drill down and address the source.
2. What’s missing?
Is there something that would bump your overall rating up a half-point? Is there something missing from your life or something you regret not being part of your life? Maybe you’re a bit lonely or feel you lack purpose. Or, you don’t have time for yourself because you’re too busy or doing too much caretaking. Or, you’re short on physical connection or even verbal intimacy.
What’s the one thing that would improve the overall quality of your life?
3. What does an ideal day or week look like?
Ok, let's ramp it up a bit more. Push aside all the qualifiers—not enough money, kid responsibilities, impractical. If you were to start from scratch, live that 10—what would it look like?
While this mind exercise may seem impractical, envisioning your ideal zeros in on what is most important to you now, what you desire and need most. Don’t push it away, no matter how undoable it seems; the challenge is to figure out how to bring some of whatever this is into your life.
4. Are there lingering unsolved problems you need to finally put to rest?
We all have something: lingering regrets—how you never said to your parents how much you appreciated them or never got closure with your ex about why he suddenly cut and ran from the relationship. Or problems in your current life that are being swept under the rug—your partner’s drinking, your child’s struggle to make friends, your feelings of frustration at your supervisor’s constant mixed messages, your long-running standoff with your sister. Sure, you're still moving forward in your life, but often these problems can be an undertow that’s always there and dragging you down.
Time to let go, to be free? Time to take decisive action and put it to rest?
5. Have your goals changed?
Having goals provides a direction, a vision of the future, and a sense of control. Sometimes, longstanding goals can solidify into “shoulds,” that are always on your to-do list, stir guilt, but may no longer fit who you are. As we naturally change over time, so do our visions and goals for the future.
Time to update: Let go of the ones that no longer interest you and include the new ones that do. Maybe you need to be more honest and realistic about some personal goals, such as fitness or appearance, or your career because your passions have shifted away from work. Or you need to upgrade because your life circumstances have changed—you're newly divorced, or your children are leaving home, and you're heading toward retirement.
What goals are important now?
6. Two things you most want to change.
Out of all these reflections and responses, what stands out the most? What are the two things, not 20, you want to commit to in a concrete way in the next year? It may be about a goal—be more physically fit or not, learn skills to manage your ADHD, or look for a new job. Or it may be about the process—spend more time as a couple, carve out more time for yourself, speak up more when something bothers you rather than going along.
Like those New Year resolutions that maybe died a few weeks ago, the key is being realistic, taking baby steps that ensure success, and being clear about your motivation—driven by you and not others—and your goal. Think challenge or experiment rather than the forced-march, teeth-clenched "should."
7. Time for an ultimate reality check.
If you and your life continue the way it is now with no changes, where will you be five or ten years from now? Will that be a good enough life? Will you be filled with boredom, regrets, self-criticism, or satisfaction, or even pride?
Ready to upgrade?
