27 - Transform Any Area Of Your Life With My Simple Three-Step System

Is there an area of your life that you feel is holding you back, or you are struggling to make progress in?

Are you stuck in your career, need to make some health changes or perhaps you feel out of control when it comes to your money?

As part of my life coaching, I have developed a Three Step System that gives you the building blocks to transform any area of your life. They are based on the tools that all successful businesses use, and a few years ago I started to use them in my personal life. The transformation was incredible.

The Three Step System:

Step 1 – Audit

Step 2 – Big Thinking

Step 3 – Strategy

Let’s go a little deeper…

Step 1 - Audit. When was the last time you took time, I mean some real quiet, quality time, to think about you and your life?

One of my favourite tools for doing this is called the Wheel of Life, such a simple tool where you score each area of your life and recognise the areas that are lowest scoring or not serving you best. You can find a template and guide in my resources section here.

This is a great foundation to recognise the one or two areas that you want or need to focus on right now.

My Story - For me, one of the first areas I needed to sort out was finance! I was in so much debt that I was looking at years before I would burn it down, I needed to make a change. So in Step 1, I took the time to understand my situation fully. Creating a spreadsheet, I documented how much I had in savings, investments, pensions and how much debt I had, documenting each provider and interest rate.

Step 2 - Big Thinking. Society, your parents, friends, colleagues all live in a world of safety. “Go to school, go to university, get a good job, don’t take this risk or that risk”. If you were to switch off all the external noise and influence, if you were to imagine you had no limits, no financial constraints, you could achieve anything - what would your dream life look like?

Write as much detail as you can on your dream life onto paper. Ask yourself, what does success look like? What would it take for this area of your life to be 10/10? This is an exercise that you can come back to as much as you need to, your desires will change as you do. At this point, don't think about what you can't do!

My Story - When it comes to my finances, my big dream is to financially free in the next decade. To have enough investments and assets that I don't have to work again if I choose not to, so I can see my family often and travel the world without constraint. I would love a country cottage close to the sea, with a beautiful cottage garden, a big veggie plot and some chickens.

Step 3 - Strategy. This is the step where you build the plan to get you from where you are today, to where you want to be. Don't worry, you wont need to know all the steps, just the next few logical ones.

Do some research and identify some of the major milestones that you may need to achieve. Then document what milestones you need/or are prepared to achieve in the next 12  months. Finally, identify some actions you can take right now.

This is strategic thinking.

If you take this approach with any aspect of your life, you will have your Vision, some milestones, and a plan to make progress towards achieving it. Make it important to you, throw in a few visual reminders such as a vision board or an inspiring image on the wall detailing your key objectives (check out mine in this weeks blog photo) and voila - you have the secret to my, and your future long term success.

Yes, this is a simplified version but hopefully you have the basic idea. If you would like to learn more, then check out my website at www.elsahogan.com/store to see how I can help you. 

Now, most people don't use these tools in their personal life, and their lack of progress is evident. You can make tremendous progress using these three simple steps.

A final note on my story, well I identified some major milestones 1) get debt free, 2) build my investment portfolio to £200k, 3) £1.25M....

My big vision is to achieve a wealth pot that feels almost unattainable, but that is the point - it is a big goal that I break down into little ones. The first milestone was to get out of debt, so I created a plan to do it with some very specific goals:

• Audit my outgoing commitments: Download 3 months of bank statements, highlight what were necessary/nice to have/unnecessary outgoings with a green/amber/red pen.
• Reduce necessary and nice to have payments by calling the supplier, looking for discounts, switching providers etc. Cancel any red unnecessary payments! Target 20% savings.
• Put the savings towards paying the smallest off first (The Snowball Method), then the next, and the next. Any lump sums, bonuses, or any profit from sales could go towards paying down debt. Remove 40% of debt within 12 months. 

You get the point.

I love having a life strategy. Now, I am out of debt and building growing wealth through property, pension, and investment funds - making progress towards my next big objective and bringing me closer to my ultimate goal of financial freedom.

As I approach the end of the year, I review the progress made over the past 12 or so months, what went well, not so well and reflect on things for a while. I then review my "dream life" to ensure it is still relevant, and begin to build a new plan, with clear personal and professional objectives for the next 12 months. 

Whatever your dream life looks like, you can break it down into achievable steps and make intentional progress against them. Taking time to reflect, and ensure you are on the right course is super important too.

What is it that you want in your life? In love. In a home. In a career. In fun. In health. And take the action to achieve it, you deserve to live the best life.

Always with love,

Elsa x