You might be asking what the hell is a Level 10 Life? Maybe you’ve heard the term before, or maybe this is the first time I’ve ever heard it mentioned?
Below I’m going to explain exactly what it is, how you can use it to reach your goals and simple ways to track your progress.
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What Is a Level 10 Life?
What exactly does Level 10 Life mean? It means that all areas of your life are balanced and you are living your best possible life!
Sounds pretty great, right?
The idea is from an amazing book, The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. It’s basically a way to help you assess your current life situation and then set goals for yourself.
We all want to live a better life, but sometimes it’s hard to figure out exactly how to go about doing that. We might pick random goals that we think we “should” achieve, but are they goals that really matter to us? Will they really make us happier?
That’s where a Level 10 Life assessment helps! You look at different aspects of your life and decide which you need to improve and which you are OK with.
I have my own version of the Level 10 Life assessment (I’ll talk about it more further down), but I call it the Balanced Life Assessment, but it basically does the same thing. It helps you rate different areas of your life so you can start focusing on the areas of your life that REALLY need improving.
Why a Level 10 Life Matters?
As humans, we all strive for a better life. It’s basic human nature to want more out of life.
It can be soul-destroying to feel like you aren’t living up to your full potential. Going to a job you hate every day, fighting with friends and family, feeling unhealthy, feeling like you have no purpose in life… All these feelings can drag us down and stop us from enjoying the life that we have.
Our time of earth is limited and we all want to live a full life while we are here! So why settle for a substandard life?
You might ‘know’ that you should be living a better life but you feel powerless to change things. That feeling of hopelessness can have a long term effect on your happiness and mental health.
Striving for a Level 10 Life will help you feel more in control and help you focus on what really matters to YOU! Not just the goals that you think you should be following because that’s what society tells you to!
How to Track Your Level 10 Life
The first step in achieving your Level 10 Life is to figure out exactly where you are RIGHT NOW!
Step 1: Assess Your Current Life
There are 8 major areas of your life that you can assess yourself on:
- Finances
- Health
- Friendships
- Home
- Mental Health
- Family
- Career & Education
- Spirituality
Do you have pretty good control over your finances, but the relationships with your friends need work? Do you eat right and exercise but you’re miserable in your job?
You don’t have to use these exact same areas, you can pick whichever aspects of your life that you want to. Maybe you want to track your ‘hobbies & recreations’ or ‘personal development’ instead? The eight areas above are just the major ones that most people want to focus on.
Take some time to look at each area and decide what level you think your life currently is.
For Example:
You like your job, but wish you would get a promotion to have more responsibility (and more money!). So you might rate yourself as a “Level 6” for Career.
However, you know you don’t exercise enough, you eat far too much junk food, and you have to take a bunch of medication, so maybe your Health is only a “Level 3”.
The rating that you give yourself is very subjective and it can be difficult to decide. Just make sure you take your time and you are very honest with yourself.
Rather than trying to guess what level each area of your life is, you can take my Balanced Life Quiz and you will get a score between 1 and 10 for each aspect of your life.
Step 2: Record Your Current Life Levels
There are lots of different wants to track your progress towards your Level 10 Life. Here are a few ideas of ways to record your Life Levels:
- Write your level rankings down in a notebook
- Use Trello, OneNote or another digital notebook to record your levels
- Write them on a whiteboard or blackboard so you see them every day
- Record it in your Bullet Journal
- Use my FREE printable Balanced Life Wheel printable!
Below I will explain more about how to use the Balanced Life Wheel printable (and your Bullet Journal) to rate your Level 10 Life. But really it doesn’t matter HOW you track your progress, just as long as you do it!
Step 3: Set Goals to Increase Your Levels
Now that you know where your life currently ranks on the Level 10 scale, it’s time to set some goals!
Goal setting is such an important part of success… it might seem cliqued but it really is!
But it’s not just about picking a goal and hoping you achieve it. You have to actively plan HOW you’re going to achieve the goal and focus your energy on it.
During the goal-setting and planning phase, make sure you are setting time-based goals for yourself too.
Instead of saying
“I want to lose weight”
you need to say
“I want to lose 15 lbs in 4 months by going to the gym three times a week and following a clean-eating diet.”
When you are more specific about your goals, you are more likely to achieve them.
Step 4: Reassess Your Level 10 Life
You want to regularly check back in with your Level 10 Life goals to see how you are getting on. You can do this as frequently as you want, I suggest at least once every 12 weeks.
You will also want to retake the Balanced Life Assessment every so often to see how your Life Levels are changing over time.
Every year I set aside a day to assess where my life is and plan where I want it to be in a year’s time. I call this My Self-Reflection Day – you can read all about how to do your own Self-Reflection Day here.
Are all the areas in your life improving? Or is there an area that has taken a back-slide? Are your priorities still the same or have they changed?
By regularly reassessing your goals and your Level 10 Life wheel, you can make sure your are staying on track!
Level 10 Life & Your Bullet Journal
I’ve mentioned above that a great way to track your Level 10 Life is to use your Bullet Journal. There are lots of other ways to track it (see above), but a Bullet Journal is a great place because you can mix the visual element (the Level 10 Wheel) and the planning element (the goals) in one place.
There are so many different ways to represent a Level 10 Life assessment in your Bullet Journal. I’m a big fan of using a wheel or circle, but there are other ways.
Below are a few beautiful Level 10 Bullet Journal ideas from Instagram!
You’ll notice that the ideas above don’t use a circle or wheel… and there’s a good reason for that! Drawing a set of 10 circles, each getting a tiny bit smaller is really hard!!!
Here are my first two attempts at creating a Level 10 Wheel (please don’t laugh at my lettering!). It took me an embarrassingly long time to draw those circles!
After struggling with those spreads for so long, I decided to create a printable for myself that I could just print out, fill in, and stick into a bujo every year, instead of trying to draw it every time.
And guess what… I’m going to share that printable with you! Just fill out the form below and I’ll email you the PDF. You can use it again and again and again!
Questions to Ask Yourself
So you might well now be asking… “but HOW to I assess my life?”
When you think about your career, you might think, “well, it’s OK, but it could be better”. So does that make it a Level 4 or a Level 7?
The easiest way to find out is to take my Balanced Life Quiz! It will give you a level rating for each of the 8 areas!
But if you want to do it on your own, there here are some questions that you can ask yourself.
(Not all these questions will apply to you… so adapt your questions/answers to fit your lifestyle)
Finances
- Do I have a monthly budget that I find easy to stick to?
- Is my income each month is higher than my outgoings?
- Do I have an emergency fund with enough money to cover at least 3 months’ expenses?
- Do I have enough money to enjoy my free time and do things I want to do?
Health
- Am I happy with my weight?
- Do I get regular exercise that I enjoy?
- Do I eat food that nourishes my body?
- Is my body aging well?
Friendships
- Do I have close friends who I can rely on and they can rely on me?
- Do I have good relationships with my work colleagues?
- Am I always willing to help a friend in need?
- Do I have a friend that I can confide in about my problems?
Home
- Does my home reflect my personality?
- Do I feel safe in my home?
- Do I feel embarrassed by my home if someone shows up unexpectedly?
- Can I keep up with the chores and maintenance on my home?
Mental Health
- Do I feel good and have confidence in myself?
- How much stress is in my life?
- Do my emotions control me?
- Am I at peace with the decisions I’ve made in the past?
Family
- Do I have a close relationship with my partner?
- Do I have fun and laugh with my family?
- Do I enjoy being with my family, even if it is hard sometimes?
- Can I rely on my family to support my decisions?
Career & Education
- Am I passionate about my work?
- Do I feel that I have reached my full potential?
- Do I have a plan for how I am going to meet my career goals?
- At the end of the day, do I feel like I have accomplished something?
Spirituality
- Do I spend time exploring my personal faith to strengthen it?
- Am I taking time to connect with my personal faith?
- Do I pray or meditate daily/frequently?
- Am I inspired by the world around me to be a better person?
Setting Level 10 Life Goals
Once you’ve assessed your life, then it’s time to start setting some goals for yourself.
If you’ve discovered that your life is pretty well balanced, except for your health. Then that’s where you want to focus first. There’s no point in setting yourself masses of goals and then not being about to keep them. Instead, you want to focus on just one or two small things first.
So what’s the best way to set goals? The answer is SMART!
S – Specific
- You need to be specific with your goal. “Get healthy” isn’t specific, but “lower my blood pressure” or “eat more whole foods” are specific.
M – Measured
- You need to make sure your goal is measurable. Saying you want to lose weight is great, but how will you know when you have been successful? “Lose 15 lbs” is a specific and measured goal. “Increase my monthly income by $300” is also a measured goal.
A – Achievable
- Make sure your goal is also achievable. It needs to be attainable and responsible. There’s no point in saying you want to save $10,000 in 2 months if you can’t possibly earn enough to meet that goal.
R – Relevant
- Goals are awesome! They help us stay on track, but they have to be relevant to our lives. Promising yourself that you will be fluent in Klingon by summer isn’t going to help you further your career (unless you work in a comic book store!).
T – Timed
- The last piece of the puzzle is a timed goal. You need to set yourself a deadline. We all work better when we are up against a deadline! Goals are no different. “Redecorate the living room within 2 months” is a useful timed goal.
It’s easy to write SMART plan for yourself once you understand how!
Rather than say “Get healthy”, a SMART goal would be “Lose 15 lbs before my birthday by eating whole food and exercising 3 times a week”. The more specific your goal, the more likely you are to reach it!
Once you’ve set your goals, then you want to think about how you’re going to track them. Yes, the Level 10 Life Wheel can show you the progress you’ve made, but most goals are easier to achieve if you are tracking them more closely.
Here are a few resources I have that might help you:
So what are you waiting for? It’s time to start planning your Level 10 Life!
