144. The Satisfaction Audit
How satisfied are you with your life?
With your career?
Relationships?
What goals and dreams do you have that you’d like to work on in the next six months?
If you’re like most people, you have some idea of how satisfied (or dissatisfied) you are.
You have some idea of the changes you’d like to make.
You may even have some idea of what’s blocking you.
But it’s not super clear.
You may also have one area of your life that you blame for all of your unhappiness.
Like, ugh, if I could only figure out how to get promoted / how to get more clients / how to stop fighting with my partner, I’d be so much happier.
But would you, actually?
Or are there other problems that would step to the forefront as soon as you solved the first one?
If you know you want to experience more satisfaction and create a life and career that deeply delight you, I have an activity for you.
It’s called The Satisfaction Audit.
And it’s exactly what it sounds like.
It’s a way of reviewing what’s currently working, what’s absolutely not working, and what you’d like to do differently.
And it will help you go from vaguely unsatisfied and moody to WOW, my life is really fantastic and getting better all the time.
Want to know how it works, why it might show you some surprising things about your current life and career, and how to apply it to any area of your life?
Join me this week to find out.
Want to create a wildly delicious life and career? Let’s work together.
I have one-on-one coaching slots opening up soon. Click here to schedule a consult call with me so we can talk about how one-on-one coaching could support you in creating a magical life and career.
My small group coaching program, Satisfied AF, is officially open for enrollment! Click here to schedule a consult call for Satisfied AF and we can figure out what’s not working in your life and career as well as how to transform it into something that delights you.
Want something a little more extra?
I have just the thing.
My year-long coaching and mentorship program, Unhinged AF, is the most extra, extravagant offering I currently have. One-on-one coaching, in-person or virtual deep dive days, and special surprises. If this sounds like just the thing for you, book a consult call and let’s discuss a customized program that’s all about helping you break free from your current life and career to build something that truly blows your mind.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
What The Satisfaction Audit entails.
Why doing a Satisfaction Audit clarifies what you want and where you want to go.
How applying The Satisfaction Audit to your life and career might surprise you.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about the satisfaction audit.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey, y’all. Hello, hello, hello, happy Wednesday. I’m going to be honest with you, I am feeling very low energy today. But I’m very joyful and having a really good time also. So earlier this week I was in Guerneville, California, which is a few hours from my house. And it’s this area that I’m just absolutely obsessed with. I think it’s so beautiful. Beautiful redwood trees, it’s really close to the ocean. It’s a lot cooler than Sacramento so it’s a great respite when things are really hot here.
And I was there for a VIP day with one of my coaches, Susan Hyatt. And VIP day with her is basically like you go and you’re with her all day and you get coaching for like eight hours. But really more than that, because we went and walked in the redwoods, we had breakfast, we worked on stuff, we had lunch, we worked on stuff, we had dinner. It was super fun, super interesting and we made this really cool thing.
So I went into the VIP day knowing that I wanted to work on a document for my Satisfied As Fuck group coaching program. And so we kind of brainstormed the whole document, wrote it all up. And then I was kind of like, okay. And then Susan invited me to kind of take it all the way to fruition, to contact the person I’ve worked with before on design and to kind of just get the whole thing complete. Which was really interesting because I could feel myself being like, okay, we brainstormed the questions, it’s good to go. And she was like, it’s not done. And I was like, oh, okay.
So I think that’s always really interesting. I’m like this with my clients too. Doing the stuff we do in coaching, it can be a lot of work and the brain gets tired and we’re like, okay, I did a lot, I want to be done. But part of the beauty of coaching, especially a whole day coaching session like the one that I have with Susan, is taking something all the way through and kind of finding a way to navigate through that resistance that comes up.
And we’re not just going to slam through it. Usually we’re going to kind of unpack it and understand it. Although sometimes it is, just the coaching is just like open your email and write an email to the designer. Susan was even coaching me on what to say because my original email was very like, oh, if you could do this kind of soon. And Susan was like, you said you wanted it this week. Why don’t you just ask if you can have it this week? And I was like, oh. So I felt uncomfortable asking the designer for that kind of turnaround and stuff.
Anyways, I got coached up on it. We completed two workbooks, they both got sent to the designer. It’s been a few days now, so one of them I’ve already gone back and forth with the designer, and I have the final product. And that’s so exciting.
And the other thing that’s exciting is I’m going to be giving this to my current group of SAF and then my next group of SAF. But I’m also going to be doing a very special bonus call for you, for anyone who wants to sign up, where I will talk to you about the workbook that I made and how you can use it in your life.
Like I said, it’s for my group, but it’s such a powerful tool and I thought it was something that I should share more widely as well. So TBD on when that call will be, but stay tuned because it’s going to be fantastically useful. And I’m going to give you the document so you can sort of walk yourself through the process that I’ll be going through with my Satisfied As Fuck clients.
And if you want to be walked through it, you can just come join Satisfied As Fuck, because we still have room for a few wonderful people. And I would love for you to be one of them.
Okay, so what is the document we made? Well, the document we made is actually what we’re going to be talking about today, and that is the idea of a satisfaction audit. So if you don’t know what an audit is, an audit is kind of like when you kind of go through something and get all the facts and measurements. The actual definition is the official inspection of an individual or organization’s accounts.
But this isn’t accounting, we’re not doing an audit of your finances. We’re doing an audit of your satisfaction, right? And so there’s different sections in the audit, like career satisfaction is obviously one of them because I talk a lot about career. But there’s a bunch of other areas too, like what’s your satisfaction in your social life like?
So you’re kind of going through every area of your life and thinking about, what’s my current level of satisfaction, and why is it that level? And what would need to happen for it to be at a higher level? And I think what’s interesting about doing audits is sometimes what you find can really surprise you.
I was on a coaching call with a client recently and we were talking about this client’s legacy. Like what is the work that this person is leaving in the world? What’s the impact on the world? It’s a business owner, right, so what’s the impact of them having lived? What’s the impact of their business on the world?
And this client was kind of getting down on themselves, like are they having enough of an impact? And so we did an audit and we looked at the actual impact they’re having, and for this client once they saw and listed out all the impact that they’re having, they were like, oh, actually, I feel really good about this. This is solid. I’m happy with this.
The only thing that needed to change for that client was the story that they were telling themselves about their legacy. Once they looked at the facts, they decided the legacy is good. I just need to remind myself of that and not forget all the ways I’m creating impact.
For a lot of people, though, I think the audit is also going to bring up what’s actually not working. But it’s really important that we bring up both, actually. We really want to see, because as we talk about all the time on the podcast, the brain has a negativity bias, right? So if you’re looking at your career satisfaction, there might be lots of things about your career that are actually really satisfying to you that you don’t think about very often on the day to day.
So doing the audit and bringing those top of mind can actually feel really yummy and delicious and help you remember that so much is going well in your career. And that can be great fuel for making the other changes you want to make.
But also the audit will be like what’s not working? What’s the least satisfying aspect of this? What’s the thing that bothers you the most? And that’s also good information to know and to be clear about because sometimes we sort of go about life having this feeling of malaise, like it’s not working, or we’re just vaguely dissatisfied but we’re not 100% sure why.
Or we feel pretty good, but then when we dig into it with an audit, we’re like, oh, I feel pretty good, but I want to be doing more, or I want to be doing differently, or I want to be doing less.
I actually just posted this thing on Instagram, it was someone else’s post that I added to my stories about common deathbed regrets. And a lot of them are like not being yourself or not staying in touch with your friends. Or not going after the things you want to go after, like not pursuing your dreams. And sometimes they’re working too much, right? Or not putting my relationships first, whatever.
So something like a satisfaction audit is a great way for you to preemptively look at am I living my life the way I want to? How am I currently living my life in all of these categories and how do I want to be living my life? What’s already working? What’s not working? What would I like to do differently? And then the audit also kind of considers things like what skills do you need to be able to make the changes you want to make?
And the skills might be literal things, like we talked about this recently, I think, in the ecosystem podcast, like you need to learn some skills. But it could also be things like I need to set boundaries, which setting boundaries is a skill. But I mean there’s skills like learning Python, which is a coding language, and then there’s skills like learning boundaries.
And there could be all kinds of different things you need to do, like you maybe need to make some requests, you maybe need to set some boundaries, maybe you need to set expectations with other people. Or maybe you need to do some informational interviews. It could be anything.
So basically, though, the idea of this podcast is that if you want to live a wildly satisfying life and if you want to have a wildly satisfying career, getting really clear through an audit on what that looks like and where you’re currently at could be extremely helpful. It’s much easier to move forward when we’re clear about where we are, right?
And like that client, it’s like you might do the audit and be like, I’m in an amazing place. And then that might make it really easy for you to think wonderful thoughts about all the things you’ve already done and where you are. And then you might be in the exact same space but feel much more delicious about it, like my client.
Or I mean, sometimes an audit is kind of painful also. Sometimes it’s like when you look at your bank account balance and you’re like, there’s not as much money in there as I thought there was going to be. And that can be kind of painful, but it’s also good to know because then you know where you are. And you can go from where you are to wherever you want to go.
If you’re never looking in your bank account, it’s going to be hard to build up 5k, 10k in savings, or pay down your credit card or whatever else, because you have no idea what’s happening in there.
So what I want for you with this podcast is just for you to begin thinking about where am I? Where am I in my career satisfaction? Where am I in my life satisfaction and the satisfaction in every area of my life?
And again, we’re going to have a fun special bonus call where I will walk you through the whole satisfaction audit and you can do it for yourself and then we can talk more about it on the call. I’ll probably hot-seat coach a few people.
It’s going to be spectacular, and you will get a really clear idea of where you are and a clear idea of where you want to go and some action steps to help you start moving in that direction. And in the workbook I have some very specific categories, like career is obviously one of them, like I mentioned. But you can kind of do this for any area of your life.
Legacy is what I did with that client and that’s not even one of the specific topics that I have in the workbook, although I have a fill in the blank one. So you can pick topics that are important to you because sometimes we have really unique areas of our life that we want to do an audit in because we’re either not sure where we’re at or we’re feeling vaguely dissatisfied and we’re not 100% sure why.
But I really want to encourage you to dig in like this and get a better understanding of where you are, so you can get a better understanding of how to create something that is going to be much more satisfying and delicious for you.
Oh, and if my mention of my VIP day with Susan Hyatt has you yearning for a private coaching day of your own, I just want to let you know that deep dive in-person coaching days are something I’m going to start offering. And if you want to be the first person to know how to sign up for one of those, you should join my email list because my email list will for sure be the people who first learn how to get all of my offerings. And I would love to have you attend one of them, they’re going to be magical.
And like I was saying before, there’s so much you can do in a full day coaching session. So I’ve done this thing too in couples therapy where you go do an intensive and instead of one session that’s like an hour or 50 minutes, you do several hours back to back. And when Alex first pitched me on going to this, I was like I do not want to go do couples therapy for multiple hours in a row with a brand new therapist I’ve never met. That did not sound appealing to me.
But I’m so glad I did it because it was really interesting and it got us so much further, I think, than the same amount of hours if we had spread them out. It’s like when you’re there and you’re like, I guess I’m here for like XYZ hours, something shifts, I think, where you’re just like, I guess let’s just fucking do this because you’re in the commitment. And I think what you can get done is sort of exponential.
So if you’re looking for some kind of exponential leap in your own life or career, I think a deep dive coaching day together could be a really good way to achieve that. And it can work for business stuff, like if you want to kind of write some documents for your business, like that’s what I was doing on mine. Or if you want to come up with an entire marketing plan, or if you want to design the whole business, we could do stuff like that.
But it’s also good for life. Like if you want to come and talk through a situation that you’re working on in your life really deeply and kind of hash it all out, maybe write scripts for how you’re going to handle certain situations, that’s something we could do in a deep dive day too.
And if you have questions about the deep dive days, just join my email list and reply back to literally anything I send. They all come straight to my inbox, and I would love to talk to you about it.
And as always, if the group thing is more your vibe, we still have room in the next cohort of SAF. It’s my small group coaching program. It’s going to be starting in the fall, it’s for women and assigned female at birth non-binary folks. And it’s a magical community where people really unwind and unpack a lot of their socialization so that they can create lives and careers that are wildly satisfying to them, whatever that means for each unique person.
All right y’all, that’s what I have for you this week. Have a lovely week and I’ll talk to you next time. Okay, bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We’ll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you’re feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey, y’all. Hello, hello, hello, happy Wednesday. I’m going to be honest with you, I am feeling very low energy today. But I’m very joyful and having a really good time also. So earlier this week I was in Guerneville, California, which is a few hours from my house. And it’s this area that I’m just absolutely obsessed with. I think it’s so beautiful. Beautiful redwood trees, it’s really close to the ocean. It’s a lot cooler than Sacramento so it’s a great respite when things are really hot here.
And I was there for a VIP day with one of my coaches, Susan Hyatt. And VIP day with her is basically like you go and you’re with her all day and you get coaching for like eight hours. But really more than that, because we went and walked in the redwoods, we had breakfast, we worked on stuff, we had lunch, we worked on stuff, we had dinner. It was super fun, super interesting and we made this really cool thing.
So I went into the VIP day knowing that I wanted to work on a document for my Satisfied As Fuck group coaching program. And so we kind of brainstormed the whole document, wrote it all up. And then I was kind of like, okay. And then Susan invited me to kind of take it all the way to fruition, to contact the person I’ve worked with before on design and to kind of just get the whole thing complete. Which was really interesting because I could feel myself being like, okay, we brainstormed the questions, it’s good to go. And she was like, it’s not done. And I was like, oh, okay.
So I think that’s always really interesting. I’m like this with my clients too. Doing the stuff we do in coaching, it can be a lot of work and the brain gets tired and we’re like, okay, I did a lot, I want to be done. But part of the beauty of coaching, especially a whole day coaching session like the one that I have with Susan, is taking something all the way through and kind of finding a way to navigate through that resistance that comes up.
And we’re not just going to slam through it. Usually we’re going to kind of unpack it and understand it. Although sometimes it is, just the coaching is just like open your email and write an email to the designer. Susan was even coaching me on what to say because my original email was very like, oh, if you could do this kind of soon. And Susan was like, you said you wanted it this week. Why don’t you just ask if you can have it this week? And I was like, oh. So I felt uncomfortable asking the designer for that kind of turnaround and stuff.
Anyways, I got coached up on it. We completed two workbooks, they both got sent to the designer. It’s been a few days now, so one of them I’ve already gone back and forth with the designer, and I have the final product. And that’s so exciting.
And the other thing that’s exciting is I’m going to be giving this to my current group of SAF and then my next group of SAF. But I’m also going to be doing a very special bonus call for you, for anyone who wants to sign up, where I will talk to you about the workbook that I made and how you can use it in your life.
Like I said, it’s for my group, but it’s such a powerful tool and I thought it was something that I should share more widely as well. So TBD on when that call will be, but stay tuned because it’s going to be fantastically useful. And I’m going to give you the document so you can sort of walk yourself through the process that I’ll be going through with my Satisfied As Fuck clients.
And if you want to be walked through it, you can just come join Satisfied As Fuck, because we still have room for a few wonderful people. And I would love for you to be one of them.
Okay, so what is the document we made? Well, the document we made is actually what we’re going to be talking about today, and that is the idea of a satisfaction audit. So if you don’t know what an audit is, an audit is kind of like when you kind of go through something and get all the facts and measurements. The actual definition is the official inspection of an individual or organization’s accounts.
But this isn’t accounting, we’re not doing an audit of your finances. We’re doing an audit of your satisfaction, right? And so there’s different sections in the audit, like career satisfaction is obviously one of them because I talk a lot about career. But there’s a bunch of other areas too, like what’s your satisfaction in your social life like?
So you’re kind of going through every area of your life and thinking about, what’s my current level of satisfaction, and why is it that level? And what would need to happen for it to be at a higher level? And I think what’s interesting about doing audits is sometimes what you find can really surprise you.
I was on a coaching call with a client recently and we were talking about this client’s legacy. Like what is the work that this person is leaving in the world? What’s the impact on the world? It’s a business owner, right, so what’s the impact of them having lived? What’s the impact of their business on the world?
And this client was kind of getting down on themselves, like are they having enough of an impact? And so we did an audit and we looked at the actual impact they’re having, and for this client once they saw and listed out all the impact that they’re having, they were like, oh, actually, I feel really good about this. This is solid. I’m happy with this.
The only thing that needed to change for that client was the story that they were telling themselves about their legacy. Once they looked at the facts, they decided the legacy is good. I just need to remind myself of that and not forget all the ways I’m creating impact.
For a lot of people, though, I think the audit is also going to bring up what’s actually not working. But it’s really important that we bring up both, actually. We really want to see, because as we talk about all the time on the podcast, the brain has a negativity bias, right? So if you’re looking at your career satisfaction, there might be lots of things about your career that are actually really satisfying to you that you don’t think about very often on the day to day.
So doing the audit and bringing those top of mind can actually feel really yummy and delicious and help you remember that so much is going well in your career. And that can be great fuel for making the other changes you want to make.
But also the audit will be like what’s not working? What’s the least satisfying aspect of this? What’s the thing that bothers you the most? And that’s also good information to know and to be clear about because sometimes we sort of go about life having this feeling of malaise, like it’s not working, or we’re just vaguely dissatisfied but we’re not 100% sure why.
Or we feel pretty good, but then when we dig into it with an audit, we’re like, oh, I feel pretty good, but I want to be doing more, or I want to be doing differently, or I want to be doing less.
I actually just posted this thing on Instagram, it was someone else’s post that I added to my stories about common deathbed regrets. And a lot of them are like not being yourself or not staying in touch with your friends. Or not going after the things you want to go after, like not pursuing your dreams. And sometimes they’re working too much, right? Or not putting my relationships first, whatever.
So something like a satisfaction audit is a great way for you to preemptively look at am I living my life the way I want to? How am I currently living my life in all of these categories and how do I want to be living my life? What’s already working? What’s not working? What would I like to do differently? And then the audit also kind of considers things like what skills do you need to be able to make the changes you want to make?
And the skills might be literal things, like we talked about this recently, I think, in the ecosystem podcast, like you need to learn some skills. But it could also be things like I need to set boundaries, which setting boundaries is a skill. But I mean there’s skills like learning Python, which is a coding language, and then there’s skills like learning boundaries.
And there could be all kinds of different things you need to do, like you maybe need to make some requests, you maybe need to set some boundaries, maybe you need to set expectations with other people. Or maybe you need to do some informational interviews. It could be anything.
So basically, though, the idea of this podcast is that if you want to live a wildly satisfying life and if you want to have a wildly satisfying career, getting really clear through an audit on what that looks like and where you’re currently at could be extremely helpful. It’s much easier to move forward when we’re clear about where we are, right?
And like that client, it’s like you might do the audit and be like, I’m in an amazing place. And then that might make it really easy for you to think wonderful thoughts about all the things you’ve already done and where you are. And then you might be in the exact same space but feel much more delicious about it, like my client.
Or I mean, sometimes an audit is kind of painful also. Sometimes it’s like when you look at your bank account balance and you’re like, there’s not as much money in there as I thought there was going to be. And that can be kind of painful, but it’s also good to know because then you know where you are. And you can go from where you are to wherever you want to go.
If you’re never looking in your bank account, it’s going to be hard to build up 5k, 10k in savings, or pay down your credit card or whatever else, because you have no idea what’s happening in there.
So what I want for you with this podcast is just for you to begin thinking about where am I? Where am I in my career satisfaction? Where am I in my life satisfaction and the satisfaction in every area of my life?
And again, we’re going to have a fun special bonus call where I will walk you through the whole satisfaction audit and you can do it for yourself and then we can talk more about it on the call. I’ll probably hot-seat coach a few people.
It’s going to be spectacular, and you will get a really clear idea of where you are and a clear idea of where you want to go and some action steps to help you start moving in that direction. And in the workbook I have some very specific categories, like career is obviously one of them, like I mentioned. But you can kind of do this for any area of your life.
Legacy is what I did with that client and that’s not even one of the specific topics that I have in the workbook, although I have a fill in the blank one. So you can pick topics that are important to you because sometimes we have really unique areas of our life that we want to do an audit in because we’re either not sure where we’re at or we’re feeling vaguely dissatisfied and we’re not 100% sure why.
But I really want to encourage you to dig in like this and get a better understanding of where you are, so you can get a better understanding of how to create something that is going to be much more satisfying and delicious for you.
Oh, and if my mention of my VIP day with Susan Hyatt has you yearning for a private coaching day of your own, I just want to let you know that deep dive in-person coaching days are something I’m going to start offering. And if you want to be the first person to know how to sign up for one of those, you should join my email list because my email list will for sure be the people who first learn how to get all of my offerings. And I would love to have you attend one of them, they’re going to be magical.
And like I was saying before, there’s so much you can do in a full day coaching session. So I’ve done this thing too in couples therapy where you go do an intensive and instead of one session that’s like an hour or 50 minutes, you do several hours back to back. And when Alex first pitched me on going to this, I was like I do not want to go do couples therapy for multiple hours in a row with a brand new therapist I’ve never met. That did not sound appealing to me.
But I’m so glad I did it because it was really interesting and it got us so much further, I think, than the same amount of hours if we had spread them out. It’s like when you’re there and you’re like, I guess I’m here for like XYZ hours, something shifts, I think, where you’re just like, I guess let’s just fucking do this because you’re in the commitment. And I think what you can get done is sort of exponential.
So if you’re looking for some kind of exponential leap in your own life or career, I think a deep dive coaching day together could be a really good way to achieve that. And it can work for business stuff, like if you want to kind of write some documents for your business, like that’s what I was doing on mine. Or if you want to come up with an entire marketing plan, or if you want to design the whole business, we could do stuff like that.
But it’s also good for life. Like if you want to come and talk through a situation that you’re working on in your life really deeply and kind of hash it all out, maybe write scripts for how you’re going to handle certain situations, that’s something we could do in a deep dive day too.
And if you have questions about the deep dive days, just join my email list and reply back to literally anything I send. They all come straight to my inbox, and I would love to talk to you about it.
And as always, if the group thing is more your vibe, we still have room in the next cohort of SAF. It’s my small group coaching program. It’s going to be starting in the fall, it’s for women and assigned female at birth non-binary folks. And it’s a magical community where people really unwind and unpack a lot of their socialization so that they can create lives and careers that are wildly satisfying to them, whatever that means for each unique person.
All right y’all, that’s what I have for you this week. Have a lovely week and I’ll talk to you next time. Okay, bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We’ll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you’re feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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