As the academic year draws to a close, it can be a good opportunity to take time out and reflect on where we are, and where we want to go. A great starting point for this is doing a 360 review on each of the main areas of our life. Reviewing our life in separate categories in this way, can help us to identify areas that may have been neglected, and the areas in which we feel proud of the progress that we have made. It’s also a great way of developing self-awareness about our mental health and wellbeing.
As recommended by Daniel Harkavy and Michael S. Hyatt in their book Living Forward, it can be useful to think of each of these categories as Life Accounts.
Life Accounts
For the purpose of this exercise, we can think of each area of our life as Life Accounts. In the same way that we have bank accounts, we also have Life Accounts.
We have a Life Account for each of the significant areas of our life, this can include categories such as Career, Relationships, Finances, Hobbies etc. If we are happy with our life in one of these areas, we can think of that Life Account as having healthy balance. If one of the life accounts is not where we want it to be, we can think of it has being overdrawn and requiring more investment of our time and attention.
This checklist provides a framework to assess three Life Accounts. Your Life Accounts will be unique to you, the three categories specified below are an example for how this approach can be used in any area of our life.
As you go through the questions, make sure you write down your answers. Physically writing your answers down will help you to clarify exactly what you are dealing with and help you to identify actions that can be taken to improve in that area.
Let’s get started!…
Career / Work
- How well do you manage your stress and anxiety in the workplace?
- Are you happy in your job? If not, what specifically about your current role are you unhappy with?
- How well are you communicating with:
- The other teachers at your school?
- Your head teacher, manager or the person that you report to?
- Your students?
- What do you find most fulfilling about your job? What could you do to experience more of this?
- What actions could you take in the next 1-2 months to experience a sense of progression in your work / career?
- If you were to rank your Work / Career from 1 – 10, what score would you assign?
Health & Wellbeing
- Do you feel that you have a sense of purpose and meaning in your day to day life?
- How do you feel about the progress that you are making in life?
- If you were to rank your Health & Wellbeing from 1 – 10, what score would you assign?
- What actions could you take this week to improve your health and wellbeing?
Relationships
- In general, how are your personal relationships?
- How do you spend your weekends or evenings?
- Do you feel connected to others?
- How well are you communicating with other significant people in your life?
- If you were to rank how you are doing with regard to the relationships in your life from 1 – 10, what score would you assign?
- What actions could you take in the next week to give more attention and care to the relationships in your life?
Once you have completed these three categories, you can also review other Life Accounts. This may include categories for areas such as Finances, Hobbies, Family, Children, Travel & Adventure, Learning or Personal Development. These categories will be personal to you. Try and keep your number of Life Accounts between 5 – 8.
Next write our your other Life Accounts. Try and include all significant areas of your life.
Then, for each Life Account, ask yourself the following questions and write down the answers:
- How satisfied am I with this area of my life?
- If I was to rank this area of my life from 1 – 10, what score would I assign?
- What actions could I take to improve this area of my life?
Once you have created your list of Life Accounts and completed this exercise, you can return to your notes to review your progress in each of the areas. Reviewing your progress in this way can be highly motivating and can help to keep you on track towards what’s important to you.
Once or twice a year, you can repeat the exercise above and assess each category once again. Taking time out to do a thorough review of our life can be really beneficial and often provides a burst of energy.
Thanks for reading!
Supporting student wellbeing is at the core of what we do at OpenView Education. It’s been a pleasure visiting students throughout the last term with our Mental Health and Wellbeing workshops.
Moving forwards to next academic year, we’ll be visiting more schools with our wellbeing workshops along with our new One Kind Word Anti-Bullying Workshops for Anti-Bullying Week 2021, and our Online Safety Training for Schools. Get in touch today to learn how we can support your school.
