Hey, hey, friends, and welcome back to faith fueled woman.

This is your host, Kristen.

Today is part five of the reclaim your Life series, and we're going to talk about auditing our schedules, auditing our life so that we can live more intentionally.

Welcome to Faith Fueled Woman, a podcast designed for christian women eager to deepen their faith and shine God's light in every aspect of their lives.

Each week, we'll delve into practical strategies, inspiring stories and biblical wisdom to equip you with the tools you need to navigate life's challenges and grow deeper in your faith.

From finding calm in the chaos, forming deep christian friendships, to everyday ways to connect with God will cover it all.

Hi, I'm your host, Kristen.

I'm an encourager, a faith led entrepreneur, a mom, and a wife.

Let's be encouraged in our everyday lives as we let our faith guide us, fuel us, and fill us with God's incredible peace, wisdom, and joy in our lives.

Okay, we are going to talk about auditing our lives.

We're going to talk about how do we look at our schedules and see if they actually align with what we say our priorities and our values are?

And what can we do if they don't match up?

What can we do if the future we want doesn't match with how we're living our lives now?

And before we get too far into this episode, I wanted to let you know I have a new download for you called the Life audit workbook that can help you walk through some of these thoughts and prompts to get you to write on paper what's important to you, how are you spending your time, and what's blocking you from aligning your priorities and values with your schedule.

So head on over to kristenfitch.com life audit.

It'll also be in the show notes, so you can click it right from there.

All right, as we get started, I wanted to share a little bit with you from the book the ruthless elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer.

He says, we simply can't see, read, watch, taste, drink, experience, be, or do it all.

Not an option.

Life is a series of choices.

Every yes is a thousand nos.

Every activity we give our time to is a thousand other activities we can't give our time to.

Because, duh, we can't be in two places at once.

We have to learn to say no constantly.

As Anne Lamott so humorously pointed out, no is a complete sentence, and it's one we need to work into our vocabulary.

And then he goes on to say, in the language of Henry David Thoreau we have to live deliberately I just finished reading his famous memoir, Walden, about going into the woods for two full years.

To slow down and simplify, take a look at this line.

I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach me and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

And I'll just end with this.

That he says, do you ever catch yourself with a sneaking suspicion that you'll wake up on your deathbed with this nagging sense that somehow and all the hurry and busyness and frenetic activity, you missed the most important things?

And friends, today we're going to talk about how do we make sure that we're making time for the most important things.

That means people, relationships, faith.

That means our health and wellness.

Excuse me, that means the impact or legacy that we're making in the world that can have to do with money and careers, other areas.

But this, if we don't, if we're not intentional, then what's going to happen is time passes by.

We miss moments, we miss opportunities, and we miss being intentional with our resources and our time.

And they are the most valuable thing.

So really this episode is about how do we cultivate our schedules so that what we want and how we want to be spending our time actually match our schedules.

So let's dive in.

The first thing we want to do is we want to actually determine what are the most important categories or areas or buckets of our lives.

And I mentioned a few that are most important to most of us, which is going to be relationships or people, our faith or your spirituality, your health.

Right?

Because if we don't have health, it's very hard to focus our, or to have the time or energy or resources to do anything else.

The impact that we want to have in the world.

Some of you might call this giving or volunteer time, or just how are you guiding or mentoring or caring for the people in your lives.

Then there's other ones.

Career can be one.

Money, finances, and so there's other buckets.

And in the life audit workbook, I have some of the top categories, but you can also add your own.

One of them I have is growth.

So I know that to be our best growing selves is we don't want to be stagnant, which means we have to be learning or stretching ourselves.

And so I think for me, growth is important.

And I think for most humans, just like plants, we need the right inputs in order to grow, to thrive and not be stagnant.

And so for me, growth is important.

So what are you learning?

What do you want to learn about?

How are you growing yourself?

You know, your skills, your knowledge of the Bible, you know, all these things.

Okay.

So what we're going to do is you want to write down what priorities are most important to you and then what values are most important to you.

So priorities can be spending quality time with your significant, you know, your spouse, if you're married.

It can be spending quality time with your children.

It can be doing work that has meaning, you know, a bigger meaning than just showing up and clocking in every day.

So it can be anything like that.

Priorities can be that you're spending time with God, you know, daily.

So whatever those, those things are.

And then your values are things like, you know, what, what's important, you know, what are you aligned against?

And so for most of us listening to this podcast, our faith, right, our relationship with God is going to be a value, right?

So being someone of faith and then trying to have those same qualities, you know, exuding those same qualities in our lives, but then it might be other things.

It might be, you know, being sorry that you don't want to do things that make you feel uncomfortable or.

So you just write down whatever your values are, and then after you do that, what we want to do is we want to look at what is life training in your life and what's life giving.

So life draining are those things that you might still be doing or you're spending time on, but it's just exhausting you that it just zaps your energy, it zaps your mental focus, whatever it might be.

And I'm not saying all those things that are life draining we can get rid of, right?

If it's because you're home caring for five children, well, you can't necessarily get rid of that, and you wouldn't want to, but you can figure out what parts of being home and caring for your family and your home and your kids.

Is life draining?

Is it that you spend so much time cooking the meals or is it so much laundry?

You know, so if we figure out specifically the life draining things in our lives, then we can figure out how can we adjust how we're doing it to try to free up some time or some mental space.

So life draining is that we're still volunteering in something.

It can be at the PTA, it could be in a nonprofit, it could be at our church.

But we're in a role that's just taking up too much of our time.

Or we're in a role that no longer fits where we're at season and we have to learn to say no sometimes, or I'm going to stop this or pause this when the session's over.

I'm not going to say yes again by default because I've always done it.

That's the sort of thing we're talking about.

But we want to get clear on what are the things that are life draining to us.

And sometimes it could be people.

And once again, I'm not saying that we can remove all the people that might be draining the energy out of us.

It might be your in law, it might be a close friend.

It's that you might have to change how you spend time with them or how often you spend time with them.

And then next we want to write down what are the things that are giving us life in our lives.

So is it when you spend more time in prayer?

Is it when you read a good book?

Is it when you just have quiet time or you're walking in nature?

Is it when you get to go on a date night and leave?

If your kids are younger, you get to leave the kids at home.

If your kids are older, you're empty nester.

It may just be not getting stuck in the mundane and doing something different with your spouse or a friend.

We want to write down what those things that give us life are because when we know what they are, we have more opportunity to add in those little sprinkles throughout our day, throughout our week.

But if we're just on autopilot and we stay busy, we're not intentionally thinking about, oh, my gosh, just spending 15 minutes in my garden or getting fresh flowers and arranging them in my home makes me feel lifted up.

Right?

It makes me feel a little happier.

It makes me feel more grounded.

But we need to know these things because it helps us design our day, design how we live, to balance us out a bit more.

All right, so you want to write those down.

And like I said, all the things I'm talking about.

You can find pages in the workbook that I mentioned.

And so grab that if you want to stop the episode and go grab that now, you can at least be looking at this.

All right, after you write those things down, then there's two main other things that you want to do.

The first is there's a worksheet.

Or you can write this down yourself, but you want to write down the category that you want to answer questions for.

So let's just pick health.

Okay.

So the category being health for your life audit.

And you would do this for each category that's important to you, or you want to have a different future or you want to have changes in your life.

And so you're going to write down what is my envisioned future and or goals for my health.

So let's say that you think, you know what, I'm too sedentary.

I've just been so busy.

I'm not fitting in daily movement or, you know, I have let myself, or I have because of my life, I've gotten busy and I just haven't focused on doing weightlifting or maybe I just have been so stressed out, I haven't been doing things to lower my stress.

Okay.

I mean, this is, sorry, we're going to get to that.

But what I'm saying is, let's say that's what's going on with you.

So for envisioned future and goals, it might be, I want to live.

I want to be the healthiest as I can so that one day I get to see my grandchildren.

You know, if you have them one day it may be that you want to, as you get older, you want to be able to age gracefully and you want to be able to be really active.

Ride a bike, go on trips, swim laps, you know, whatever it is.

But you be able to care for yourself.

It could just be that, you know, that you've gained weight and it's just, it's affecting your health numbers.

Okay, so in the envisioned future and goals you want to write down, what do you want your health to look like?

So you'd write things like, I want to be a physically fit, thriving, you know, healthy woman, you know, as I move into my fill it in, forties, fifties, as I move into my next five decades.

But just write down any of your goals in what the future you want is.

So for me, my husband and I, we go on bike rides some evenings.

We have a pickleball net and we keep saying we're going to play more.

But that's another thing we want to add because they say the racket, what do you call it, the racket?

Activities, tennis, pickleball, anything like that.

Racquetball.

They're actually really good for you because of the movement, hand eye coordination, lots of reasons.

But they actually show that people that play racquet sports have longer or better life outcomes.

So it's a great thing to do.

So anyways, but you want to write down what your envision future and goal is for the category so we're talking about health and then you write down current reality.

And so this is where you write the things I started talking about earlier, like, I am too sedentary.

I don't get in many steps every day.

You know, I stress eat whatever it might be.

Or maybe you have some health numbers that aren't ideal.

Right.

You could do a better job, but you could improve them.

And so write those down.

That's your current reality.

Or maybe you're having chronic pain or you're having other issues and so it's hard for you to do that.

Okay, so write this down.

Health could also be that you're just not eating well.

Maybe you just don't find time in your schedule to make healthy or wholesome meals.

And the easiest thing to do is just to get prepared food.

So maybe you know that you want to do something different with that.

You just don't find how to do that in a simple, easy way.

Then the next thing you want to write down for the life audit for each category is write this down.

Changes to make goals I want to set.

So what we want to do is we want to take our current reality in your envisioned future and goals and figure out what's the gap.

Right?

In other words, how do I get from where I'm at in some simple ideas to get me where I want to be in my future?

Now this doesn't have to be hard.

This is more of a roadmap or a plan so that you can intentionally be thinking about these things.

So as you go through your day, your week, your month and your year, if it's on your plan, then you will be more, it'll be more top of mind.

For instance, I try to get in, you know, at least 10,000 steps a day.

My normal goal is 14,000 steps or 15,000 steps a day.

Now, I'm not saying I hit that every day.

There's days where I don't and then there's days where on a weekend I go on a really long walk, usually with other ladies, and I go well past that.

Or maybe I'm busy cooking all day to have family or friends over and so I'm standing and moving the whole day.

But we want to go.

And if you're at 2000 steps a day, then your goal might be next to get to 5000 steps a day.

But we can put easy strategies in place to do that.

You know, walking further from your car, taking breaks every hour at work and doing a lap or two around the office or outside of the office.

So there's easy ways to start applying these things.

It's not saying you have to commit a full hour or a full 30 minutes to walk more or to make a, yeah, you know, a really healthy meal.

There's easy ways that we can apply, but we have to first be intentional and have set some of these goals so that our mind can start connecting where we're at with where we want to be and help us start figuring out solutions.

Okay.

So that's the next thing we'll go through.

And you will do this for each topic or category that you want to audit in your life and that you want to be more intentional with how you're living.

All right.

And then there's just two more things that I want to bring up.

And let's see.

Okay, before I jump into the other two exercises you can do, I do want to also mention I did not put this in the life audit rest.

Making time right to slow down is actually should be important in our lives.

And I think for many of us, it's not.

And so even for your health, maybe it's that you struggle to feel like you've done enough to rest.

See, here's the thing.

God tells us that he designed us and he created how we should be living.

To experience rest, to say, we've worked well for six days, right?

And then to rest on the 7th day, the Sabbath, but also each day to not take on more than we need to.

And many of us are doing that.

We're taking on more than we need to.

And so I just wanted to share a scripture with you.

Psalm 23 two says, he makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside still waters.

He restores my soul.

He leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake.

But there's many other scriptures that talk about, obviously, the Sabbath, but also about not taking, you know, from yesterday's worries, you know, or today's into tomorrow.

In other words, each day has enough of its own things.

We don't need to add to it.

And so I would just remind you, when you're looking at this and trying to be more intentional, don't forget about slowing down and rest.

That's the whole idea about doing a life audit and seeing what's life draining us.

What can we say no to?

What can we pause?

It's about knowing that our health and wellness has to do with getting sleep and also resting and resetting and renewing.

And part of that, of course, is when you fill in the area about faith, then it's, am I making time right for silence?

Am I making time to hear God?

Am I having enough quiet or rest in my life that the busyness is not filling my head, but it allows me to let the Holy Spirit be filled in my mind.

So I just wanted to bring that up before I go into the last two exercises.

Okay, so here we go.

All right.

The next thing that we're going to do, and like I said, go grab the life audit because these are already written out for you and they're, you know, worksheets, if you will, within the workbook.

All right, so the next one is, so many of us have dreams and goals we want to accomplish, but we're just busy, you know, in our daily lives, and we don't stop regularly or many of us don't to say, all right, what is my dream?

What is my goal?

And can I take small steps towards it?

Maybe it's going to be months or years before we get to our goal or our dream, but what can we do now to move towards it?

And so there's another sheet that's called making changes that matter.

And so I go on to explain.

Most of us have dreams and goals we aren't moving towards or we envision a future different from our current life.

And so here's what I want you to do, is write down a dream or goal that you have.

And so I say write that down, and then what is stopping you from moving towards it?

And so basically I have two columns after you write down your dream or goal.

And of course, you can fill the sheet out multiple times.

You know, just print multiple copies and then write down for each page a different dream or goal that you have.

All right.

And so you're going to basically create two table with two columns, and the one's going to say, what roadblock, time wasters or belief is stopping me from making progress on your dreamer goal?

The next one is on the other column.

How can I remove the roadblock, spend my time differently or reconsider my belief?

And so the example I'm going to give here is, let's say that you just feel on your heart that you want to write a book.

You just have had this idea or a devotional or something like that, but you don't really know where to start or you've just not made the time to do it.

And so that's where you're going to put my dreamer goal up there.

And then I'm going to talk from my own personal experience, I've started several books and devotionals.

Now, I've done lots of workbooks and different things like that.

And I have co authored a book many years ago, but I have in progress devotionals and books that I want to get published.

But the honest truth is, I haven't made it a priority to get it done right now in this season.

So for me, what roadblock, time waster, or belief is stopping me from making progress?

Well, I would say I'll just give you two examples.

So, one, the time waster is my husband after a long, busy day of working, and he coaches soccer, and he helps so many people around us with things that they need help with that often it's eight or 09:00 at night before he stops for the day, and then often later in the evening, he has more to do to help one of our sons or something else.

And so he likes having a break and watching a show because for him, that's time to relax and kind of decompress.

And so often, if we don't have a prayer, we will watch a show.

Right, or a series.

But.

And that's okay.

But the problem is, sometimes I feel like it becomes a pattern and we do it night after night.

Once again, it's okay.

But I have these goals I want to accomplish.

So one of my challenges might be my time waster is watching too much, too many series or shows, right?

Too many nights.

In other words, not setting a boundary for myself to say no.

Two nights a week, I want to work on writing or getting my other stuff done so that I can then have time during the day.

So for me, that's a time waster, spending too much time watching media.

Another roadblock might be that I am not setting time in my schedule, because if I say this as a priority, it's not matching my schedule.

Putting time in my schedule every day or every week to work on writing and finishing the book or devotional.

And so on the left hand column, I would write, you know, watching too much media.

And then I would put, not the roadblock is not prioritizing and scheduling time in my calendar to work on my writing.

On the right hand side, I would then write, I can schedule an hour a day or 30 minutes a day in the morning or at lunchtime to work on my writing.

Okay.

And then for the time waster of watching too much media, I could put limit how many nights a week I watch shows and replace that with writing or reading books or something that seems more productive and is helping me grow both in my life but also as a writer or devotional writer.

Okay?

So that's the next sheet that I want you to fill out.

And like I said, you can either do this on your own paper or you can go and grab the download.

All right, the last exercise, similar to the other ones, but let me just go through here.

Well, actually, there's a couple other ones, but I'm actually going to skip to the last one I want to share with you.

And it is where do I want to make changes in my life?

And it's specifically about boundaries.

And so I want you to ask yourself or write down this question, where do I need to set boundaries in my life?

Now, this can be boundaries of people.

This can be boundaries about when you're working, you know, like, are you, is your work creeping into the evening, but you're working all day long, meaning that your number of hours per week that you're working is just kind of creeped into your personal life and your time, where you should be, you know, maybe focused on physical, you know, getting out and moving your health and your wellness or spending time with people you love.

So it can be that.

But it could also be that you keep saying yes.

Right?

Maybe you already have grandkids and you keep saying yes to your kids to watch their kids.

Now, I am definitely not saying you should say no.

What I'm saying is if it becomes so much that you're exhausted and they just ask you day in and day in and day in, then you might need to set a boundary or how much notice you need before doing it, unless it's, of course, urgent or important.

But whatever it might be, you know, you know better than I do, what's going on with you.

And then I sort of talked about this on the other worksheet.

But this is another important question, what distractions are keeping me from stepping into the future that I want.

And some of the distractions might be, and I'm going to cover this in a future topic, but maybe that your phone, right, or media is distracting you.

I know that I, there's times, and it feels like lately this has gotten worse.

I'm on my phone more than I need to be, and it's more like this pattern of just like, going and wanting to check things when if I just set it down and put it in the other room, I could stay more focused on what I'm working on.

I'm not saying I never do that.

What I'm saying is I find myself picking it up too often.

A good example of that is, let's say you're in line waiting.

Most of us are not used to just waiting, you know, or standing there.

Either we feel uncomfortable or we just think like, oh, well, my phone's right here.

It's on me, it's in my purse.

We pull it out and we just scroll mindlessly, or we read something or listen to a podcast.

And some of those things are good things, but we also find ourselves.

I'm guessing this is you spending more time on a device than we realize.

Or we are touching it more than we realize.

You know, I forget the data on it, but the number of times we touch our phones is pretty astronomical.

And the number of hours the average person spends on their digital devices.

Now, you might be one of the people that's not doing that.

And if that's true, then kudos to you, because it's definitely the majority of people, right, that are living with these digital devices.

And so that would be the last question I'd ask you, is, what are the distractions keeping you from the life that you want?

What are the distractions keeping you from the life that God is asking you to step into?

And so write that down and just simmer, let it simmer, let it kind of marinate with you.

And in your mind, you don't have to answer all these things all at once.

A life audit is something that some people might just mark off 2 hours on their calendar to do.

But I would think a lot of the rest of us just over, I would say pick a timeframe over a week or over two weeks, I'm going to audit my life.

Meaning I'm going to review the workbook, some of the questions, or review what I said, write down the questions and you may not have the answers or have really thought about this before, that's okay.

But just kind of get it in your mind kind of marinating, and then come back to it when you have a little bit of quiet time.

And then you can start writing in the answers to these questions and how you want your future and your goals to be different from how you're currently living.

Okay?

And so remember, this is part five of the reclaim your life series.

And we only reclaim our lives by being intentional and by putting into our day, our week, our month, and our year the things that are going to enrich us.

Keep our eyes focused on God, keep our eyes focused on each other, on loving others and showing up for others.

And so I hope this was helpful.

I hope it gives you some food for thought as you try to live more intentionally and reclaim your life.

So once again, if you want that download head over to kristenfitch.com life audit.

It's in the show notes, so you do not have to remember that exact URL.

Until next time, I hope you have a great week, and I hope you're working on reclaiming your life.

Thanks again for listening to the show and if you enjoyed today's episode, we would love it if you could take a minute to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcast because it helps our show get discovered by more people.

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