If you’re looking for practical tips to learn how to get your life together, you’re in the right place. I’m sharing some of my favourite simple, actionable and realistic tips to help you take control over your life and intentionally create a life you love!
While no one has it all together, all the time, there are things you can do to make your life feel more together, more often.
Take control over what you can
Sometimes stressful things happen in your life, or in the world in general, that feel out of your control. And it can be easy to slip into a place where you feel like life is happening to you. Rather than feeling like an active participant in creating your life.
When life feels stressful or out of control, or more specifically out of your control, I’ve found the best thing to do is to take back control of the things you do have control over.
Even when a lot of what’s happening in your life is out of your control, there will always be some things within your control.
While I’d never claim to completely have my life together, all the time. I can say I’ve found a few strategies that help me feel like I have more things together, more of the time.
And it all comes down to creating a solid foundation in my life. Making it easier to navigate life without always feeling totally out of control or like everything is falling apart!
How to get your life together
In today’s post, I’m sharing some of the key things I do to build that foundation and help my days flow more smoothly.
If you’ve ever found yourself wondering how to get your life together, I hope these tips and strategies will help you too!
1. Do a life audit
The first step in learning how to get your life together is doing a life audit. Assessing what is and what isn’t working right now.
Specifically, look for pain points in your days and your life right now. Things that feel stressful, aren’t working, or just feel “off”. You can’t take steps to fix or change something until you know exactly what needs changing. So identifying the pain points is important.
It can be helpful to break your life down into a few different areas and take some time to reflect on each.
For example, you might want to assess the following areas:
- Home life
- Work life
- Finances
- Relationships (romantic, family and friendships)
- Personal health & self-care
- Personal growth
- Recreation & hobbies
For an even more accurate life audit, try tracking your time for a week or so. It can be really eye-opening to see how you’re spending your time. And noticing if how you’re actually spending your time aligns with how you want to be spending it.
Look for the root cause
After you’ve done your audit and identified as many pain points as you can, try to go a little deeper. See if you can not only identify the pain points, but also any of the root causes causing them.
For example, if you feel like your house is always a mess and you can never keep up, that’s a pain point. The root cause might be you have too much stuff, making it hard to keep your house tidy and manage all that stuff.
If financial worries are a pain point you identify, one root cause might be your spending patterns. Maybe you’re doing more impulse spending than you’d like.
If you feel like you never have enough time for your friendships, the root cause could be a tendency to overcommit yourself and take on too many obligations, commitments, etc.
2.Set clear goals
After completing your life audit, the next step is to take control over what you can and set some clear goals.
Remember, even when you can’t completely change or control something, there will be still parts within your control. Be an action taker and start brainstorming ways you can make some of the pain points you identified a little less painful. Focusing on changing the things you can.
Aim to stop reacting to the pain points in your life, and start being proactive instead. Look for ways to solve problems, reduce pain points or find ways to better manage the stress until a bigger change is possible.
Create a clear vision for how you want each area of your life you identified in your life audit to look, feel and flow. Especially the parts that aren’t working right now. Get clear about what it would be like if they were working.
Once you know clearly what you want each area of your life to look like, start setting goals to help you get there and bring that vision to life.
Set specific goals
The key is setting specific goals, with clear, actionable steps. Detailing exactly what you’d need to do to reach your goal. Break down your big goals into smaller goals if necessary too.
For example, setting a goal to “get your finances in order” is great, but doesn’t make it clear what you need to do to make it happen.
Instead, break it down into small, specific steps to take to get there. Perhaps setting goals to track your spending for 2 weeks, taking a month-long no spend challenge, creating a monthly spending plan, setting up weekly financial review sessions with yourself/partner, etc.
It can also be helpful to track the progress you’re making to help keep you motivated and inspired!
Slow and steady progress
Slow and steady progress is the best way for most people to create lasting, sustainable change. Focus on one goal at a time to avoid overwhelming or burning yourself out. Think of it as a marathon, not a sprint!
It’s easy to get excited and want to make dramatic changes all at once. But often, big, dramatic change isn’t sustainable and doesn’t last long. Don’t be afraid to make slow and steady progress. Aim to get 1% better than the day before.
3.Reduce mental clutter
One of the biggest reasons life can feel chaotic and stressful is because of mental clutter. If you’re wondering how you can start getting your life together, a great place to start is by reducing the mental clutter you’re carrying.
Brain dump
My favourite way to reduce mental clutter is getting everything that’s swirling around in my head, out of my head and down onto paper. Things like to-dos, reminders, appointments to make, appointments to attend, work tasks, conversations you keep replaying, etc.
All these things in your head are taking mental space and energy from you. A brain dump gives you the chance to get them out of your head, so you can stop carrying them around with you.
Doing a brain dump also gives a place to start. Once it’s all out of your head, you can look at what needs to be done and needs attention. Then make a plan for when and how you’ll tackle it.
And some things you can just eliminate completely. Realizing you don’t need to keep carrying them or doing anything more with them.
Make a prioritized to-do list
If you find yourself procrastinating or struggling to focus when you have a lot to do, a great strategy is making a prioritized to-do list.
Write down your top 3 to 5 most important tasks of the day. Then do those things before doing anything else.
Not only will it ensure you complete your most important tasks first. But it also helps get those things done and out of the way so they don’t continue hanging over your head adding stress and mental clutter to your day.
Let go of what you can
After completing your brain dump, there may be things you can let go of for now, reduce the effort you put into, or just eliminate completely.
Being able to identify what you can let go of, reduce or eliminate is really freeing.
For example, maybe you decide keeping up with your book club just isn’t working for your right now and take a break from it.
Or maybe you notice you have a busy/stressful week coming up and decide to reduce the time and energy you’ll spend cooking. Opting for simple, quick meals instead.
4. Reduce common areas of stress
Everyone faces different sources of stress and pain points in their days. However, there are a few common areas of stress that many people deal with. Reducing some of these common sources of stress is a great place to start when you’re brainstorming solutions for how to get your life together.
Simplify your space
Clutter is anything taking up your time, space, energy and attention, but not adding enough value back into your life in return.
Removing the clutter from your space means you’ll have less stuff to manage. Saving you time and energy. While also reducing the number of distractions vying for your attention.
If there are things in your space you don’t use, need, love or could comfortably live without, let them go! Decluttering and organizing your home creates a home that will support you, not steal time, energy and attention from you!
Simplify your time
In the same way that there can be clutter in your home, there can also be clutter in your schedule. Be intentional with how you spend your time and where your time is going.
Don’t be afraid to say no, or reduce the commitments and obligations taking up your time, in order to protect your time and save it for the things that matter most to you.
Next, set up a calendar for yourself and use it. Decide what will work best for you. Whether it’s a paper planner, a digital calendar, a time planning app, etc.
Finding a calendar system that works for you makes it easier to keep track of what needs to be done. As well as clearly see what’s coming up, so you can plan for things rather than forgetting or getting caught off guard as they pop up.
Create a spending plan
Financial stress is one of the top sources of stress for many people. Having a plan for your money can reduce some of that stress significantly.
The word “budget” can often get a bad reputation as being boring or restrictive. If you don’t like the idea of budgeting, think of it as a spending plan instead.
A spending plan helps ensure your expenses will be covered. As well as helps you set financial goals and have a plan in place to reach them. But it also helps you feel in control of your finances. Which is an important way to reduce financial stress and worries.
Clean a space
Cleaning a space is a great way to give yourself a quick win and feel like you have your life more together. Particularly if you clean a space that’s stressing you out!
Whether it’s your kitchen, your desk, etc. Put it in order, take back some control and reduce feelings of chaos and overwhelm.
Our brains love order and tidiness. Organizing a space might not solve the root cause of the stress. But it will give you a clear, tidy, functional space to work in as you tackle what needs to be done. It’s a quick win that can give you confidence, motivation and inspiration to keep taking action and solving problems.
5.Set up rhythms and routines
Another great way to get your life together and reduce stress in your life is by setting up rhythms and routines for tasks that need to be done regularly.
Rhythms and routines mean you have to make fewer decisions about what to do and when to do it. Instead, getting certain tasks done becomes automatic.
You’ll always know that what needs to get done will get done if you follow your routine. And never have to waste brainpower remembering what needs to get done and when you’ll do it.
For example, if you consistently throw a load of laundry in every morning, you’ll never have to worry about laundry piling up or when it will get done. Instead, it becomes a rhythm and routine you do automatically. And you never have to give laundry much thought, but it’s always gets done.
6.Take care of yourself
And finally, a very important aspect of getting your life together is taking care of yourself.
It doesn’t have to be complicated, time-consuming or expensive. Simple things like making sure you’re getting enough sleep, drinking more water and eating well can make a huge difference.
Everything seems bigger, harder and more stressful when you’re exhausted or haven’t fueled your body with the nutrition it needs.
Start with the basics: plenty of sleep, good nutrient-dense food, plenty of water, moving your body in a way that feels good to you, etc.
Another great self-care tip is to start practicing gratitude.
Rather than getting stuck in a cycle of focusing on everything you lack, aren’t doing, complaining, negativity, etc., gratitude invites you to notice the good already filling your life. All the things you are doing and do have. All the delights happening around you and the good parts of your day.
Find the joy in your days. And find ways to actively add pockets of joy to your everyday life too while you’re at it. It’s amazing how simply shifting your mindset to gratitude can make such a huge difference!
How to get your life together
Learning how to get your life together is an ongoing, life-long process. Life is always shifting and changing. And what’s working and not working will always be shifting and changing along with it.
Getting in the habit of assessing, adjusting and working towards goals to create a life you love will not only help you feel like you’re getting your life together. It will also feel like you’re living an intentional life that’s meaningful to you too!
What’s something you do that helps you feel like you’ve got your life together? I’d love to hear! Leave a comment and let me know!
