Ironing out the bumps with the wheel of life

The Wheel of Life was one of the first coaching tools that I was taught when completing my training. It is a very easy exercise to help clients identify the “bumps” in their lives.

The idea is that you split your life up into eight sections. You then “grade” each section with a value from one to ten. One means that you are incredibly dissatisfied with this aspect of your life while a ten means that you are very satisfied. A life that is “running smoothly” has a wheel full of tens. A mildly difficult life has a mixture of eights, nines and tens. Very stressful and unfulfilling lives have sections with huge differences in values.

 

 

 

Why is the Wheel of Life useful?

The Wheel of life is a great personal development tool that helps you to map out each area of your life. You then evaluate that area to discover whether it is in line with where you want it to be.

As we know there is a direct correlation between happiness and how fulfilled you feel your life is. The closer you are to being where you want to be, the happier you feel. Unfortunately, many people struggle because they have only a vague understanding of where the gaps are and how big they are.

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.” 
Thomas Merton

The Wheel of Life increases your self-awareness. It helps you focus on the areas of your life that are causing you the most unhappiness or stress. IN order to work on how to improve our lives we need to know exactly where we are now. Only then can we move forward to where we want to be.

I use the wheel of life is to ensure that, as I move forward, all sections of my life are in balance. After all we know what happens to an unbalanced wheel.

What are the sections?

There are six life themes that make up the most important areas of a person’s life. These are:

• Relationships
• Career
• Health
• Finances
• Interests
• Growths

These are increased to eight sections as relationships are usually split into “significant other” and “family and friends”. The “home environment” then makes up the last of the sections.

However, these are only a starting point. Before you complete the Wheel of Life it is important to ensure that the sections reflect what is important to YOU. For instance, if you are retired then “career” is probably no longer a significant part of your life.

An unbalanced wheel

There are a number of reasons why a wheel of life can become unbalanced. It may be that you no longer feel in control of an aspect of your life.

Due to the ongoing impact of my endometriosis my “health” section scores very poorly at the moment. Recently I have been making some changes to my lifestyle which means that “health” is no longer bumping along at a one or two. It’s probably crept up to a five or six.

Yet eating more healthily and losing some weight can only get me so far. There won’t be significant improvements in my health until I have more surgery. This is currently outside of my control. The frustration that this causes means that I may not be able to increase the value further even as I get nearer to my ideal weight.

The aim is NOT to strive for a perfect ten in each of the sections. Recognising that a particular section needs attention or development is far more important.

It’s OK to neglect one section as something else becomes more important. For example, I am neglecting certain aspects of my health because working on CANBACE projects needs to be a priority. I am foregoing siestas every day in order to get ahead of myself which will make future work easier.

The Wheel of Life and Values

Another reason that people find life more stressful, and bumpy, is that there is a mis-alignment in their personal values. As that is a completely new topic Andrew is writing about values as I type. His blog will be published tomorrow, and I will insert a link when it is ready.

Important reminder

The Wheel of Life is NOT a shaming tool. Do not use it to make yourself feel bad about any aspect of your life. Instead use it to empower you. Let it help you identify the biggest contributors to your happiness and ensure that they are being nurtured.

Practice makes perfect

It’s all well and good writing about things in theory: however, we need to start applying what we learn. I’ve created a downloadable document so that you can work through a Wheel of Life exercise. You can download the document here. On Friday my blog will be asking some useful follow-on questions to help you delve a little deeper into the results.

To help you keep track of all your work for the daily activities mentioned, we have created a Monthly Diary for you to record your progress. To download your copy of “My February Canbace Diary” please click here.

Be kind to yourself …

In CANBACE friendship!

 

If anything I have written resonates I’d love to hear from you in the comments. I appreciate that this can be a difficult subject to speak openly about. If you don’t want me to publish your comment on the website, please let me know. I will keep your words private.