It’s December. We’re on the cusp of a new year. So what better time to take a raw, unfiltered inventory of your life?

If you implement the framework I’m about to discuss, you’ll enter 2024 with perfect clarity on your goals, your vision, and a realistic gameplan to achieve the highest version of yourself.

So what IS a needs analysis?

I work as an instructional designer. I create and develop training solutions for a wide variety of problems. Maybe it’s, how do I onboard this employee is the best way possible? Or, how do I train my client on how to use this complex and highly technical software? One thing’s for sure. Regardless of the “problem”, there is no way I can develop ANY solution for it without first fully understanding what I’m getting into.

Enter the needs analysis. I need to understand my “problem”, the thing I am trying to provide a training solution for, so extremely well that, what the training is developed, I’m close to 100% confident that it will deliver and provide the results that I want.

Using this as inspiration, let’s see how we can apply a similar framework to YOUR life. Because really, the process to revamping and improving yourself is no different. And a lot of what keeps people stuck is a lack of clarity on who they are and their goals.

After all, how can you fix something if you don’t even know what the problem is in the first place?

Here’s the process in a nutshell:

1. Determine where you’re at NOW. (i.e., your point A)

2. Get clear on where you want to BE. (i.e., your point B)

3. Break down HOW you intend to bridge the gap between two points. (i.e., become your highest self)

4. Make an action plan. Do this by determining what currently IS working in your life, and what behaviors need to be ditched or begun entirely.

Step 1: Determine where you’re at NOW.

Look at the current state of your life, and ask yourself: What am I working with? What is my POINT A?

Using myself as an example, before I made a full-on commitment to start studying high-income skills like video creation, copywriting, and marketing; before committing to making the most out of my “single mom” situation—I first had to come face-to-face with WHY I was so dissatisfied with my life.

This was me determining my “starting point”, my status quo, what I woke up to and went to bed to every night. I knew that…

• My finances were shit, as I had spent nearly 7 months unemployed as the primary breadwinner.

• I was lonely, and unhappy with myself, since I wasn’t used to being single after 10 years of relationships.

• I was overwhelmed and frustrated with the pressures of being a new mom and sole provider.

• I missed and longed for the parts of my old self—the Megan who was excited by her life, and driven, and passionate, and stopped at nothing to get what she wanted.

• I was sad. And I didn’t want my daughter to grow up watching her mom just accepting the fate of her life and allowing it to defeat her.

This honest, no bullshit, raw AUDIT and ASSESSMENT of your life is critical. You cannot skip this step.

Think about it like decluttering your closet. The best way to do it is to throw all your clothes at out on the floor, and look at everything one by one. Do I keep this? Is it serving me? Does this go in the donate pile? Maybe I can salvage this one, and still get some use out of it?

If you don’t know where to start, think of your life in broad categories: mind, body, spirit, career/finances, and relationships. Write down what’s currently going on in each of those domains, then reflect on if you’re honestly happy with the current state of each.

Step 2: Get clear on where you want to BE.

This is the fun part.

THIS is the stuff of vision boards, what manifestation and law of attraction gurus preach on, and it’s fun because THE SKY IS THE LIMIT when you are visualizing and painting who you want to be.

Step 1 was important because that was you essentially laying out the current state of your life. Here’s where my finances are at. Here’s what my relationships are looking like. Here’s my health, my wellbeing, how often I’m able to exercise per week, the time I am or am NOT spending on my goals, my dreams, my ambitions.

To determine where you want to BE, you need to ask yourself how you would honestly want your life to look like in a perfect world with no limitations. say you had infinite amounts of money, and time, and you had all the support and love from your friends and family. think about what you commonly use as excuses to stop you from going after what you want—I’ll look stupid doing this. I’m not good enough at this. There’s no way anyone would take me seriously. And just pretend for a second, that in this perfect world, these fears just did not exist. There simply was no concept of them. Meaning, everything you wanted to go for, was guaranteed to be achievable in some way, shape, or form. Maybe it wouldn’t be instantaneous, but you knew for a fact—100%—that it would happen and you would be successful at it.

THIS is the ideal state. THIS is your highest self. THIS is your Point B, the version of you you should constantly be striving to become every second of every day. And by painting a detailed picture of what she looks like—talks like, acts like, what time she wakes up every morning, what she eats for breakfast, what she does for exercise and when she goes and does it, the standards and expectations she has in her relationships—the more you can visualize this on both a grand scale and its minutiae—the better.