The Wheel Of Life

• Spin The Wheel - If you're not in, you can't win.
  

Hi everyone,

The 'Wheel Of Life' is an exercise commonly used in coaching. It will give you a 'bird's eye view' of your life and a snapshot of your level of satisfaction with areas like career, money, relationships, and health. The 'Wheel Of Life' will help you to look at these different areas and see where you are in balance and what areas might need more attention.

Do you really enjoy your career and family life but have no time to enjoy your hobbies?

Perhaps you are working hard or undertaking extra study but neglecting your life at home?

Are you ignoring your health and paying more attention to other areas such as your finance or career prospects?

You can use the 'Wheel Of Life' as a way of understanding what you want in your life, what you have to build upon, and where you want to focus your energy.

Working with the 'Wheel Of Life' is a very easy process. When you identify the important areas and score yourself on how satisfied you are with each area, you will be able to see how much your life is in balance. Let's look at the different steps.

Step A.

Draw a circle and divide it into 8 wedges.

Step B.

Label each one with one of the following. You choose based on what is most important to you and you may even come up with different categories.

• work/study/career/life purpose
• health
• personal growth
• community/support
• family/friends
• fun/recreation
• home/physical environment
• creativity
• money/finance
• spirit
  

Step C.
For each area, identify where you are in your life at this point in time. How satisfied are you? Using a scale of 1-10, with 1 being little or no satisfaction and 10 being fully satisfied, place a dot on the approximate point in each wedge. (The centre of the circle is 0; the outer edge of the circle is 10, therefore a satisfaction level of "5" would be right in the middle of the wedge.)

Step D.

Now join all the dots together and draw a line from one wedge to the next to create a 'circle within the circle'. This is what it might look like.

Step E.

Look at the 'Wheel' again and ask yourself the following questions.

How round is your inner circle?

Would your wheel make for a smooth or bumpy ride?

Did any area jump out as being out of balance?

How much time do you spend in each area?

What area is most important?

What improvement do you want to make?

Step F.

You will now want to make a plan of action. Pick one of the sections that you would most like to see change in and brainstorm 5-7 things that you could do today or tomorrow to start changing this area for the better. Once you have this short list, choose one action, however small, and do it right away. This will help you to get momentum and move you in the right direction. Then take the rest of your list and prioritise your ideas. Decide what would be the most useful/effective thing to do next and set yourself a timelimit. Work through the different areas of the wheel, prioritising and mapping out your action plan as you go along.

• A few quotes

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving." - Albert Einstein

"Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance." - Brian Tracy

"Balance is the perfect state of still water. Let that be our model. It remains quiet within and is not disturbed on the surface." - Confucius

I've learned that you can't have everything and do everything at the same time." - Oprah Winfrey

"True balance requires assigning realistic performance expectations to each of our roles. True balance requires us to acknowledge that our performance in some areas is more important than in others. True balance demands that we determine what accomplishments give us honest satisfaction as well as what failures cause us intolerable grief." - Melinda Marshall

Make it a great week. It's your choice.

My best

Séamus