Reset Your Life: Life Planning Template

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: