I guess it’s the project manager in me but I love establishing a baseline of anything. Whether it be how much money I spend each month to how messy my house is on any given day – establishing a baseline gives you a starting point for whatever you are trying to accomplish. In this blog, I’ll discuss how you should go about establishing a baseline of yourself which is critical to moving forward with the rest of your life. (yes – I’m dramatic by nature.)

So about 7 or so years ago, the then guy I was dating, decided that he didn’t want to be with me anymore and ran off to marry his then baby mother. Around that same time, I got into a pretty bad accident that totaled my car and almost totaled my friendship with a good friend of mine who was riding shot gun from a night of partying.

It was 5 a.m. We had stopped at a diner around 4 a.m, after coming back from DC, which was a good hour away from my house. I remember looking over at my homegirl who was fast asleep and thinking “damn she sucks as a passenger.” The next thing I knew, I was veering off the side of the road towards an embankment, I over corrected and hit a jersey wall. What I failed to mention was that this event was preceded by nights of partying, event hopping, and living by the stupid motto “#teamnosleep”.

After the smack in the head by God, I decided that I needed to baseline my life. So I sat down one evening and wrote down the following 7 categories:

• Education
• Career
• Transportation
• Relationship
• Friendships
• Children
• Living Situation

Now you can write more or less; the categories are completely subjective and are dependent on the areas in your life where you would like to place your focus. At the time, these items were top of my list.

Once I established my categories, I then made a column for where I was at that very moment in my life. Not where I wanted to be, not the pretty picture I paint for people or the lies I tell myself. The raw and uncut shit-show version that was my life. This was my baseline:

No.	Category	Baseline
1	Education	in school but don’t know when I’ll graduate
2	Career	dead end job; boss is the devil 😦
3	Transportation	TOTALED; trying to figure out which car I want
4	Relationship	single; out of a relationship and still not over it
5	Friendships	Some of them are solid; others are hanging on by a thread
6	Children	one week at my house, one week at his dad’s
7	Living Situation	living with mom

Once I wrote it down, read it out loud and cried a little – I went down each line asking “Is this where I want to be?”, “Do I want more?”,  “Am I better than this?” For each area, the answer was “I deserved better for myself.” So I made another column and I added my goal for each area of my life regardless of how crazy it was. I didn’t confine myself to where I currently was – I dared to dream bigger! (cliche’ enough for you?)

So I made another column and I added my goal for each area of my life regardless of how crazy it was. I didn’t confine myself to where I currently was, what resources I had – I dared to dream bigger! (cliche’ enough for you?)

No.	Category	Baseline	Goal
1	Education	in school but don’t know when I’ll graduate	Graduate with my Bachelors before 2011
2	Career	dead end job; boss is the devil 😦	get the hell out of (insert company name)
3	Transportation	TOTALED; trying to figure out which car I want	Buy a car
4	Relationship	single; out of a relationship and still not over it	I’m good – I need to figure out me
5	Friendships	Some of them are solid; others are hanging on by a thread	Solidify them. Be a better friend. Show up to events and give gifts.
6	Children	one week at my house, one week at his dad’s	Stability for him at all times.
7	Living Situation	living with mom	buy a house

This exercise not only pulled me out of my rut but it helped me to refocus my life. It gave me a north star to follow and it taught me to establish boundaries with friends, family, and situations. Inadvertently, it taught me that it was ok to take some time out to focus on me.

XOXO