Life scans. What are they and how do they work?
If you're not familiar with the term, a life scan is where you take a look at the key areas in your life and give it a score out of 10. Put as simply as that, this may seem like a really bad idea and a sure-fire way to make you feel bad about yourself but at it's core, life scanning is actually a wonderful and powerful tool that gives you control over your life and helps you feel as though you are living your life for you, not for someone else.
I first came across life scans almost three years ago. An Instagram friend of mine who was setting up a coaching business included it in her monthly newsletter and seeing as my journey of personal development and self-improvement was well under way by that point, I thought I would give it a go. Back then I could see how it could be useful but with so many other things going on as well, I didn't make a habit of doing it regularly and that, is where life scans really come into their magic.
Before I go any further, let me explain in more detail what a life scan really is and how you can do one. They're super easy, all you need is a means of writing things down, be that the notes app on your phone or good old fashioned pen and paper. You're going to pick what are the areas of your life that are most important to you. You can pick any number you want and they can be any topic you like. For example, the topics my business coach uses are:
-- Health
-- Friends
-- Relationships
-- Recreation
-- Finance
-- Career
-- Spirituality
-- Personal Growth
I like to go even further and have 14 areas on my list. Mine are: Physical Health, Mental Health, Happiness with Work, Work-Life Balance, Earning Potential, Savings, Homelife, Diet, Friends, Family, Watson, Hobbies, Relaxation, Spirituality.
As you can see, there is a lot of overlap in the areas on my list and you could easily encompass happiness-with-work into work-life-balance and even earning potential, but I like to look at each of these areas separately. The same goes for relationships, I could bundle friends, family and Watson together but as in introvert, the quality of my relationships with my specific favourite people is more important to me than feeling as though I have a good social life on the whole. Hobbies and relaxation could be one topic but my hobbies are quite active (namely agility and horse riding) and I don't consider myself to be relaxing whilst I'm doing them, even though they do recharge my batteries in their own way.
Now that you have your list, you're going to give each of these areas a score out of 10. There's no judgement here, be completely honest and go with your gut instinct. If something feels like a 4, give it a 4. If something feels like a 10, give it a 10! What's important here is how these areas of your life feel to you, no matter how they appear on paper. You might have all the markers of success, the house, the car, the partner, but none of that matters if you're not happy, so be honest with yourself when you're scoring these areas.
Add a line or two about why you've chosen your scores. It doesn't need to be much, just a simple note about why this area isn't a 10, something you'd like to be different or what would make this area a 10. For example, last month I wrote that my earning potential was an 8 out of 10 because I'm not fully booked right now. I also wrote that my physical health felt like a 9 out of 10 because although on paper I have numerous complaints at present, they are all improving and my hopefulness around them has me feeling like a 9 out of 10. This is what I mean about your scores not having to match up to your reality (or rather, if you want to get deep with this: your scores, which are coming from your thoughts and feelings, are creating your reality). Like I said before, to an outsider your life may look fantastic but if your gut instinct is that your mental health feels like a 2, then that is what matters.
One thing I have found most helpful during my life scans has been writing down what would improve my lowest scores. I started doing these scans regularly (by which I mean once a month) eight months ago and when I started, I was scoring lowest on hobbies and relaxation. These were repeatedly at a 2. I wrote down that spending my evenings doing something relaxing would increase my relaxation score and I realised that I dedicated no time to my hobbies at all! The crazy thing was that I didn't even realise this until doing the life scan. If you had asked me what my hobbies are, I could have told you what I like to do, but no-one ever follows up that question with "How often do you do them?" In the day to day running of my life, hobbies had fallen by the wayside and I had no idea that the lack of them could be impacting my overall happiness until that big fat 2 out of 10 dragged my average life scan score down dramatically. Oh spoiler alert, in a moment we're going to take all your scores and work out the average..!
As helpful as it is to identify what you might like to change in order to improve a low score, what is equally important is making a note of the things that are contributing to high scores. For example, my friend score reached a 10 last year after a girly weekend away with two of my best friends and my family score was at a 10 after seeing all my family at my niece's birthday party. These things tell me that spending time with my friends and family are what keep these scores high and while that may seem incredibly obvious, it's amazing how you can forget these things when you're busy with work.
You can leave your life scan there now that you can see which of your key areas could use a boost or you can do what I do and now work out your average score. This part is entirely optional and certainly isn't as important as scoring your key areas and making a note of what's great or not so great about those areas. I like to do this (by adding them all up and dividing by the number of topics there are, in my case, 14) because every month without fail, I have found that my average score is always spookily accurate to how I would rate my happiness on the whole if you were to ask me to rate it out of 10.
So why are life scans important?
Because, if you asked me to rate my happiness out of 10, I could do that, but without taking a look at each one of my key areas, I couldn't tell you exactly why my score was what it was. I might say that I'm feeling a bit tired or a little stressed, but I couldn't pin point that what I was actually feeling was that my batteries weren't recharging because I wasn't spending any time filling my cup with my hobbies. What's more, if you have also made a note next to each area about what you would like to add in or take away to improve this score, then you end up with a list of things you can do to increase your overall happiness. I say increase, maybe you don't need to increase it, maybe you just want to maintain it, in which case your list of things that have contributed to your high scores are your own personal recipe for happiness.
It's been 8 months of regular life scans for me now and I'm really seeing the results. Identifying which of the key areas in my life that were scoring the lowest has meant that I have been able to deliberately work on improving those areas and as a result, my life feels so much more balanced, more full, more vibrant and on the whole I am so much happier.
What I really like about this method is that you can tailor it entirely to your own life and values. You can include as many topics as you like and they can be anything that is important to you. You could even use this scanning method to improve one area of your life in particular by breaking it down into it's components and scoring each one. For example, if fitness was important to you, you could break that down into the areas like cardiovascular health, strength, stamina, diet. Or perhaps your career feels like it could use a boost, you might break it down into earning potential, autonomy, responsibility, opportunity to progress, work-life balance.
The possibilities are endless and with any personal development tool the real magic happens when you start to take action based on what you're noticing. It's one thing to identify what you consider to be the key areas of your life (which is an important step in and of itself) and another to give each of those areas a score out of 10, but to really gain the benefits of a life scan, I invite you to now take some action and make a change around those areas that you have scored low.
Do one small thing today that will increase your score in just one of these areas and experience the difference for yourself. I promise you it's worth it.
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