How to Create a Personal Inventory

Becoming The Hero

Welcome back adventurer, to Becoming The Hero.

I’m your DM, Justin Lewis.

Together, you and I will implement the lessons from our favorite heroes (real or fictional) to help us add more adventure into our lives, create worthwhile memories, and level up in every meaningful way.

We’re here to help you become the hero of your story.

I love ensemble stories. I love a group of diverse characters with diverse skillsets coming together to pull off some job, heist or coup.

One of my favorite parts of ensemble heist stories is the planning montage.

I always enjoy seeing the characters come together to figure out who’s skills fit where.

The mastermind always sits down, writes a list of their assets, and makes a plan to minimize any liabilities. The mastermind connects the skills to the needs. The mastermind makes the plan come together and as Hannibal says from the A-Team, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

Well, time to put on your Mastermind Hat. It’s Montage time!!

You and I are going to do the same thing but for your life.

We’re going to map out assets, liabilities, strengths weaknesses, and so on. Together, we’re going to help you perform a personal inventory to know what state your “Home Base” is in and help identify the foundation upon which you can grow everything else.

But first a small anecdote.

When I was growing up, I loved playing Starcraft. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a real-time strategy computer game where you control a faction of military units and fight against an opponent controlling a similar faction. You can build buildings and train military units.

I remember playing Starcraft via a LAN connection (raise your hand if you know what that means) with my friend Ty. I looked with jealousy at his base and noticed that he had so many more units and buildings than I did. In an effort to catch up, I would click the build button over and over and over again and all I would hear was that Protoss voice saying “Not enough Minerals” or “Not enough Vespene Gas”.

At the same time, I would get alerts saying my units were being attacked. I lost continually.

I did poorly because I wasn’t mature enough to acknowledge the dashboard that showed me how many resources I had. I did not completely understand my situation.

It’s the same way in life. It’s very difficult to know what you need, how to get it, and how long it’s going to take when you don’t have an inventory telling you that information. That’s the point of creating a personal inventory. It’s almost a scoreboard you make to help yourself gauge and guide your efforts.

If you’ve played any sort of RPG you know that your inventory is what you have.

In video games and Tabletop RPG’s, it’s often your backpack, bag of holding, or other space where you hold stuff.

Generally, to make you look cool in the game and not like you’re carrying a bunch of stuff, you aren’t depicted with that stuff even though it is in your inventory.

Doing a personal inventory is very similar. You’ll write down some things that you have that you don’t quite carry with you. It’s a more comprehensive and slightly abstract inventory.

One other thing. A personal inventory is just that, it’s personal. I’ll suggest a few things that I recommend everyone put on their inventory, but yours will be different than mine. That’s good because we value different things.

So let’s get into it.

1. Write it down

I recommend you write this all down. In my opinion, on paper is the best option, but I understand that we live in a digital age. Writing it down helps it stick in your mind better and it helps you slow...