How to Tell Whether You’re Living the Life You Want

A simple but honest check-in with yourself can change the direction of your life. 

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Tracy Stewart loved her government job. She had a good salary, a top-notch retirement plan, and professional respect. But when a speaker at a work event asked her to write down where she wanted her life to be even a year later, she felt something shift. Her heart wasn’t in her career; it was at home, more than 500 miles away.

“I didn’t want to be at this conference away from my babies, my husband back at home,” Stewart told The Epoch Times. “I wanted to be with them.”

Among the challenges of her job was frequent overnight travel, and the speaker’s question at this conference made the cost of that impossible to ignore.

“I wrote, ‘I want to work from home,’” she said. “‘I want to be at home with my kids.’”

She wasn’t sure how it would be possible. She'd been praying about it for several weeks and finally asked God for a sign. When she dropped her daughters off at day care the following day, something unexpected happened that she now considers divine intervention.

The day care providers told her that they were moving out of state and encouraged her to open her own day care since she had a degree in early childhood education. By the end of the day, she had requested a packet on how to license her home for the day care she’s now operated for two decades.

Stewart found happiness by being honest about the future—a simple tool anyone can use when deciding whether they are on track with the life they want, according to Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, board-certified internal medicine physician and founder of Restorasis, a company dedicated to restoring well-being in the workplace.

3 Questions Worth Asking

Dalton-Smith told The Epoch Times that she has a simple three-question formula for determining whether the life you’re living is on course to become the life you desire down the road.

She developed the questions as a simpler variation of a survey that she uses to assess burnout. The following questions, she said, can be used as a weekly check-in to avoid veering too far from your goals.

1. Is the Work I’m Doing Building What I Want?

There’s a meaningful difference between doing work that is in line with your mission and doing busy work that lacks value or distracts from your core desires.

How you categorize your work can change depending on what phase of life you’re in. For example, if you’re raising small children, putting more creative or time-intensive projects on the back burner can be a legitimate choice, not a failure.

2. Is There Something I’ve Been Doing That I Don’t Need to Keep Doing?

This question can extend beyond career. It captures board positions, volunteer roles, and relationship obligations that may need to be reevaluated if they are leading to burnout. Some things simply need to have an expiration date, Dalton-Smith said.

3. Do I See Myself Doing the Same Thing in 5 Years the Same Way I’m Doing It Now?

If the answer is no, ask yourself why. Then get clarity on what you don’t like about how you’re doing things now, and how you can ensure it doesn’t carry over into the next five years.

Strife, struggle, and personal sacrifice aren’t necessary ingredients to a life of success, Dalton-Smith said. Many become accustomed to mindlessly riding the tide of life without stopping to evaluate where it’s taking them.

“It becomes its own trap to maintain levels of accomplishment that they’ve become accustomed to without really evaluating, ‘Do I like what I’m building and producing, or am I just caught in the cycle of building and producing?’” she said.

Stewart found herself mulling over similar questions as she wrestled with the future. She was talking to friends, her spouse, and to God, and she positioned herself to listen.

Why Honesty About the Future Matters

Research supports what Dalton-Smith has observed in her practice. Being honest about questions related to current feelings and future goals can affect our overall well-being.

A study published in Journal of Research in Personality in 2024 found that future self-continuity—the degree to which you connect your present self to your future self—was associated with greater meaning in life. In various experiments, participants who wrote about aspects of their lives that would remain the same from present to future showed increased future self-continuity, which in turn elevated how in line they felt with their true self and life’s meaning.  Those who feel like they are their authentic selves and connect to their future tend to make better ethical, financial, and academic decisions.

Conversely, low future self-continuity can be a cause of depression, the study authors noted.

Dreaming About What Comes Next

Next year, Stewart’s youngest child will graduate from high school. She recently earned a master’s degree and is once again asking herself questions about the future so she can be ready for the next season of her life.

She has some ideas—teaching early childhood classes at a college or providing in-home developmental therapy—and is giving herself permission to dream and be open to the possibilityies of change within the next five years.

“I truly feel like day care has been my calling at this time of my life,” Stewart said. “I don’t think that means it has to be my calling until I hit the grave. Now it’s time to move on to something different.”