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When’s the last time you audited your life?

No matter our profession, we are bound by some type of quality control, assurance, compliance, and governance. If we don’t adhere to policy and procedure as it relates to our chosen work, there are consequences. Those consequences can look like progressive discipline or maybe even termination.

So, why is it that when it is time to show up for work, we are more than willing to be compliant, but we don’t hold ourselves to the same compliance on a personal level?

The simplest answer is because our work pays us to be compliant.

The dividends of keeping our personal lives in a state of well-being are not as apparent. Nobody is showing up every other Friday to give us a morality and inner peace paycheck.

Instant gratification has no home here.

This is why we feel like we are constantly starting over. This is why we fall short. This is why we don’t value our worth. This is why we settle.

The inside work is always slower to show meaning. We want what we want when we want it, and that is why it is difficult to sustain good habits and have the fortitude to stay true to ourselves.

When’s the last time you audited your life? 

Maybe you already have a personal tool kit by which you measure your progress or attain personal goals. (I would imagine the majority of us do not.) Most of us are simply bouncing from crisis to joy and then joy to crisis. We never really catch our breath in between.

Maybe the audit of your life could be a brief intention setting meditation that takes a few minutes each day (or every other day) or a couple of times a week. If you have time to scroll on any type of social media site, you certainly have time to set an intention for your life, yes?

I have been doing this, and when I tell you the awareness and subtle shifts are slow, I am not kidding. It’s as slow as me running a 5K. But, honestly, it’s more fulfilling than any paycheck I have ever received.

Slow as they are, these shifts have become more apparent to me, and I like it; I feel it deep in my core. I know how I feel today better than I did yesterday, and I am able to stop overreacting or, what I have been talking about more recently, practicing the pause. Not everything requires an immediate response.

This is how I set my intentions during my daily meditative process:

>> How am I feeling?

>> Manifestation.

>> Gratitude.

The “How I am feeling?” one is very literal. Sometimes I write (I choose to write this out every day, but you don’t have to): cold, sad, violent, horny, whatever it is.

The “manifestation” part is all the things I want in my life that I currently do not have. For me, that is sustainable peace and calm and a clear path forward.

I include a brief gratitude list, which, honestly, remains minimal—my children, a roof over my head, and family and friends who love me.

You are the boss of this; it’s for you. I am the boss of this; it’s for me. 

I don’t know about you, but being the boss of myself is exhausting sometimes. And other times, it is a miracle. This self-auditing process is getting me to the middle of “exhausting” and “miracle.”

The middle is where the sustainable peace and calm is; the middle is where I continue to get to know myself; the middle is where my entire life pivots.

There could never be a paycheck that could compensate as well as self-auditing does. It is the best investment you could ever make.