Look around. Not just your surroundings, but where you are in your life. Right now. Today. This minute. Are you where you want to be? Is this how you pictured your life to be when you reached this age; this stage in your life?
As I travel the country meeting and speaking with other Women, I find a similar thread running through their conversations and frustrations:
Where will you be in 12 months?
Sound familiar? We can rehash the past and the journey that brought us to this point, but other than using it as a learning tool, the past is past – it is time to put it behind us and figure out what we going to do to make tomorrow different from today.
In my book, The Working Woman’s GPS: when the plan to have it all has led you astray, I talk about the importance of taking an inventory of your tools and resources, the people you surround yourself with and your daily and monthly feelings toward your life. The exercises give you an opportunity to look for negative trends that take you off the path of your best life.
In the monthly exercise I suggest that you rank your activities and the feelings about them in three ways:
- (+) Means I feel good and experience positive energy (love, like, am comfortable) from this activity, person, event, or situation
- (-) Means I feel extreme dislike. I feel uncomfortable and do not experience positive energy from this activity, person, event, or situation
- (/) Means I have mixed feelings about this activity, person, event, or situation.
Here is a sample of what a Monthly Feelings Inventory might look like: 
When I used this exercise, I realized that I needed to change positions at work; everything related to my work on my list was negative. I also realized that I needed to step down from a board that demanded and deserved more attention than I was able to give. Until I did this inventory and saw it on paper, I hadn’t realized that a particular situation or person was not aligning with my inner being. Once I had a visual, I worked for months on ways to get more pluses (+) than minuses (-). This inventory had a critical impact on my journey.
I invite you to create a similar inventory checklist. Chart out your regular activities, daily/weekly/monthly and rank them for how you feel about them. What falls on the negative list? What can you do to make a change?
Tough Question to Be Answered Honestly
If you do nothing, you will likely be in the same place in 12 months. How does that make you feel?
