Reset Your Life: Life Planning Template

by Linda aka tortagialla | Dec 17, 2019 | DIY printables

Want to reset your life and get guidance on how to propel yourself forward with intention? Check out this life planning template and create your own!

So after completing multiple deep journaling sessions, the first step to reset your life, I ended up writing 8 full pages! It was fantastic to have that feeling of weight lifted from my shoulders. And in writing my thoughts out, it helped to clarify a lot of my goals and aspirations as well.

If you still feel that there is anything in your heart that needs to get out, please write it out. From fears to doubts and worries to dreams, goals, and bucket list items. Again, it’s to get everything out and let go of the past to enable you to move forward.

Brainstorming to create a life planning template…

Now we must move on to the next step and set yourself up for an amazing year and decade. Personally, I find it difficult to just list out goals. I really like the idea of categorizing my efforts, so I did some research in the arena of life planning. I found that there are categories that people usually go through to check-in on their life and progress.

I know that not all categories apply to each and every person though. We have different seasons in life and there might be a year when you put little to no emphasis on certain categories. So my thought is to just have a master list and each year go through to pick and choose what will guide my goals for the year.

If you have read Hal Elrod’s The Miracle Morning (Amazon affiliate link), you will know that he describes his Level 10 Life method, where you basically try to meet satisfaction in the 10 areas of life he has defined. Some other life coaching websites and associations have 7 areas up to 12 areas. Here’s a more comprehensive list that I found from my research.

Examples of Life Planning Categories…

• Personal Development
• Health/Fitness
• Well-Being/Self-Care/Mental Health
• Spirituality/Character/Values
• Family/Parenting/Quality of Life
• Friends/Social Life
• Love/Romance/Emotional
• Finances/Wealth
• Career/Business
• Entertainment/Fun/Recreation
• Charity/Volunteer/Giving/Life Vision
• Physical Environment

Notice there are lots of slashes, because there’s more than one way to describe an area of life. Honestly, we all can personally establish our own categories, because we define things uniquely and lead unique lives. What might be a category for us, might not be for another person. Pick the words that resonant with you personally. You might be in a season of life that health is actually just all about mental health, so it would make sense to make that it’s own category heading, right?

Printable Life Planning Template Idea

So I decided to create some printables to write out my life plan, which is just an overview of where I feel I’m at in each category of importance to me and what I want to accomplish. It would be like my guiding principles that would affect what projects and actions I take throughout the year.

The printables come in either boxes or rows and 6 or 12 spaces. I think that accommodates most people and you should fill them in order of priority with your personal categories.  For example, instead of “love” or “romance” you might actually have the name of your significant other. It’s so much more personal in that way!

For this process, I read through my journaling brain dump and pulled out main points that helped me to shape my life categories. I actually rewrote things several times, because the act of writing it out helped me to organize and sort things in my head. In the end, I printed a fresh page to write down concise bullet points.

Personally, I ended up with six categories and decided to use the rows format to try and be as concrete as possible with specific milestones. Use whatever works best with your categories and goals.

Download Boxes or Rows Life Planning Template Printables…

Life Planning Template 6 boxes PDF
Life Planning Template 6 rows PDF
Life Planning Template 12 boxes PDF
Life Planning Template 12 rows PDF

For each category you rate your current state – 1 being not good versus 10 meaning perfect. Then you list the goals you want to achieve that would contribute positively to that category that would help your rating go up.

The box version lets you just list bullet point goals, whereas the row version has short-term, mid-term and long-term columns for each category. Alternatively, you can list the low, middle and high end goals for certain areas. For example, some people have income goals and they like to put in a range, such as lowest benchmark to middle and then dream sky high amount. It’s a way to give yourself a range and generally milestones make a goal much more approachable.

Also remember to order your life categories as you see fit. Whatever is priority for you should be first. I would love to work on everything but I have to face the truth. Some things will take priority over others – at least this year as the focus. Give yourself that visual cue of the hierarchy, in case life gets busy (because it will) and you can make better decisions on what to focus on.

What’s next?

So, happy life planning to you! And remember that you can download and print as many copies as you need to refine your categories and really work it all out on paper. Then you will have a life plan that is a high-level guide that will help you make plans and drive your actions and efforts in the coming years.

These free design printables are part of a series shared on this blog to help reset your life for the new year. Here are the other related posts:

• 2020 printable binder cover
• mantra: I Believe in Progress Not Perfection
• first step: brain dumping printable

Keep checking this blog for upcoming posts and if you don’t want to miss out on free printables – Sign-up for my email newsletter to get all the updates >>

The First Step To Reset Your Life

by Linda aka tortagialla | Dec 16, 2019 | DIY printables

The first step to reset your life is to do a braindump of everything, anything and all of it. It’s important to get all the thoughts out of your head and onto paper.

I know first hand that life can feel so overwhelming.

As we head into a new year, I always find myself filled with anxiety. A new year gives us the perfect opportunity for an obvious fresh start, so it can be exciting, invigorating and motivational. That’s why New Year’s resolutions are so popular.

But I have a big melting pot of feelings and often I find myself frozen in fear and overwhelmed by all the great possibilities of the future, coupled with fearing a crushing disappointment of repeating my inadequacies of the past. Whew. Whoa. I said it.

Feeling like I’m unable to change old patterns and living the same’ ole same ‘ole life – that is scary to me. But I also know that it’s normal to have fears and doubts. We all have them. We simply have to believe in the possibility of change and move forward confidently. That’s why I created the progress not perfection printable mantra.

As we head into 2020, it’s a whole new decade starting up, bringing an even greater emphasis on new beginnings. I feel the need to pivot and really try to feel more on top of my life so that I don’t have these anxious feelings at the end of every year.

There has got to be a way to move forward bravely with confidence. Even if I feel the pressure and anxiety eating away at me…  I also feel the hunger of wanting more and truly believing that change is possible. And don’t get me wrong… there are many good things in life. But that doesn’t mean I can’t want more… to improve… to optimize and progress!

Let’s reset life for 2020 together.

It’s not about getting more tasks done or checking off lists. It’s about re-aligning my efforts towards the things that actually matter to me personally and contribute to my life positively. The goal is feeling good about time spent, good times and projects accomplished. Rather than feeling crushed by the busyness of modern lifestyles.

Who’s with me?

Now, the very first step when it comes to fresh starts is journaling. Actually, it’s really a pre-step. The idea is to get everything out of your head.

Call it a braindump, morning pages, writing stream of consciousness or journaling to specific prompts – whatever you want. But the point is to write it all out. It’s always helpful to get thoughts out of my head and onto paper. The act of thinking and physically writing thoughts down activates both sides of our brain, almost like every cell in your body will be sent the message!

I know there can be resistance to writing, if you don’t feel like you are a writer or your hand cramps up or you happen to hate your handwriting. But you have to put that all aside and know that these are not grand plans that have to be written beautifully or neatly. On the contrary, let yourself have free reign and just let it flow. In fact, at points, I might just be scribbling something, before some more words come out and I keep on writing…

Brain Dumping

Although it’s great to have a journaling practice, so that you are constantly brain dumping. Just like there’s periods of spring cleaning and deep cleaning for houses… the end of year is a great time to do a deep journaling session or sessions. I think you can braindump in list format, free journaling or following writing prompts – perhaps all three methods – to ensure that you explore ALL thoughts.

I will be treating this as an exercise to literally EMPTY my mind of EVERYTHING. I recommend doing this in multiple sessions during the course of a week, to help yourself truly let it all out. If you are familiar with David Allen’s Getting Things Done book and method… he often talks about how our brains are meant to process, but not necessarily to remember every little detail.

In sharing this process, I know that some people like to see examples or see what other people journal about – but I would suggest NOT sharing your journaling with anyone. I believe that it goes down to the subconscious level, even if you happen to be a very open book type of person. If you keep your writing private, it will give you the freedom to truly let your feelings and thoughts flow out onto the paper with no filters whatsoever.

Download the free printable Brain Dump PDF…

Download Braindump PDF

I’ve designed a lined printable page that has the Brain Dump heading for those who want to follow this process and keep all the pages in the same style. I’m putting all my pages in a binder, so that is why I’m creating these printables. But you can just as well use blank sheets of paper or a notebook of your choice. It doesn’t really matter what you use, rather it’s more important that you actually go through the process.

Keep writing until you truly feel there’s nothing else to write out and you feel a bit at peace that it’s all out on paper. Again – it’s all your thoughts, feelings, worries, aspirations, lists, projects, wishes, dreams… EVERYTHING. No filter need apply. Trust me… you will feel SO GOOD after these types of sessions…

If you are having trouble journaling, here are some prompts that help me:

• To practice writing, you can write your own biography, as if you had to explain to someone brand new your life story. How would you describe yourself? How would you highlight your past milestones? What is your current state of affairs?
• Think about the past year and happy moments. What has brought you joy, so that you want to keep them in your life? People? Events? Projects?
• What accomplishments are you proud of? What do you need to celebrate and remember?
• Evaluate the various pillars of life planning: personal health/development, love/social/friends/family, career, finances, entertainment/hobbies, spiritual or whatever fits with your life as a major component. Think about each pillar and how you would rank yourself – are you happy with the situation or do you find something lacking? What do you want to improve?
• What disappointments from the last year come to mind? What has bothered you, been a pain point or something you truly would like to change?
• Can you pull out understanding, lessons learned and thoughts from writing about disappointments or mistakes from the past?
• What are your greatest fears? What doubts do you have that really take up space in your mind?
• Have you ever told yourself, oh, I can’t do that – or related limiting beliefs? List them out and journal about why you feel that way about yourself.
• Turn things around and explore your strengths. Things you are good at and proud of. You might consider taking the VIA character strengths survey to find out what your core characters strengths are and list them out to elaborate on them and journal to know yourself better.
• What are you grateful for, thankful for and why? Elaborate.
• Journal your dreams, goals and aspirations do you have for the future.
• What is your definition of success? How do you want to feel at the end of each day. Physical items you want in life? People you want in life? Accomplishments you want in life? Write what you want, but also think about the past and what has ACTUALLY brought you joy.

What’s next?

This free design printable is part of a series shared on this blog to help reset my life for the new year. You can download the 2020 printable binder cover I shared here and check the blog for upcoming posts.

I will be taking multiple days and sessions to journal and write all my thoughts out before trying to organize or come up with goals or resolutions. At this point, it’s just about writing it ALL out.

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