What follows is the system I currently use to improve my life, divided into seven steps. And because everything is better in graphic form, here it is:

Step 1: Inventory

I take stock of who I am and where I am in life. This includes writing down some basic personality traits, talents, my roles, what I identify with.

Step 2: Vision

I write down who I want to be. I divide this into four categories: spirit, mind, heart, and body. You can use phrases that have a lot of motivation and meaning to you, as well as pictures. With this step, don’t write down things you want to do: write down who you want to be and the lifestyle you want to live. For instance, I don’t write down, “I want to get a graduate degree and get a job at a top landscape architecture firm.’ (That comes later.) I would write down, “I want to continue to learn throughout my life and have meaningful work.”

Step 3: Habits

Habits are drawn directly from your vision. They are things you do on a daily or weekly basis that create the lifestyle you want. Habits are things that you anticipating doing indefinitely and many of the resolutions and goals we make should be considered habits. Habits include things like: go to bed early, exercise, and read scripture daily, etc.

Step 4: Repair

This step is about overcoming and eliminating or reducing our weaknesses and problems.

Step 5: Design

During this step, I write down everything I want to accomplish in my life. Some people refer to it as a “bucket list.”

Step 6: Goals

I divide my goals into four categories that are focused on accomplishment and related to my vision: church or ministry for spirit, career for mind, family/social for heart, and home/environment for body. If you ever heard of SMART goals, this is where you make them. I like to make goals on a season basis every three months.

Step 7: Advance

This step encourages you to reflect on all the other steps and explore other ways you want to live your life and help others.

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This is an updated version of this resource I wrote out. You are welcome to check out the old one, but I think the updates make more sense. If there’s interest I can expand further, just comment below. Also, this was inspired in part by Allan Savory’s work which I recommend. If you don’t care about livestock, this version is more focused on life goals.