The Wheel of Life is a great tool to help you improve your life balance. It helps you quickly and graphically identify the areas in your life to which you want to devote more energy, and helps you understand where you might want to cut back.
The wheel of life can help you think about each area of your life and figure out where it might be off balance. The wheel of life is a picture of your life as it is now and as you’d like it to be.
Each area of your life is 1 spoke of the wheel. Think about 6 to 8 dimensions of your life that are important to you. These might include your role as parent or manager for example and aspects such as education friends or health. Some ideas are:
- The roles you play in life, for example: husband/wife, father/mother, manager, colleague, team member, sports player, community leader, or friend.
- Areas of life that are important to you, for example: artistic expression, positive attitude, career, education, family, friends, financial freedom, physical challenge, pleasure, or public service.
- Your own combination of these (or different) things, reflecting the things that are your priorities in life.
Once you have your list, write each item on a separate spoke.
Next, assess how much time and attention you’re giving to each dimension use a scale of 0 to 10 where 0 means you’re ignoring it and 10 means it dominates your life. Mark your scores on the wheel working out from 0 at the centre to 10 on the rim. Then draw a line from score to score working round the wheel until all the points are joined together.
What does it look like?
Are any parts clearly out of balance?
Remember different dimensions will need more or less attention at different times in your life so there’s no one right answer. The goal is not to make a perfect circle, but to think about how much attention you’d like to give to each part of your life.
Plot your ideal scores on the diagram too and visualise how things could be for you. Now create some goals for yourself that will help you focus more on what’s important to you. Look at any neglected areas as well as those that take up too much of your time and think about what you can do to regain some balance.
The challenge now is to transform this knowledge and desire for a more balanced life into a positive program of action and this is where I can help. For more information about the programs I offer, contact me yvonne@beeleev.co.uk