Using the wheel of life

Not to be confused with circles featured in Sir Elton John’s smash hit from The Lion King, the Wheel of Life is a simple but ingenious tool that will show you in an instant if you’ve got a grip on your home and working environments.

It’s an immediate way of understanding where you need to improve parts of your life and gauge if they’re not being given enough attention.

The Wheel is a very simple but effective concept, that is used by many different cultures around the world, it has around six to eight different sections in it (you could add more but it can become hard to focus). These represent areas of your life that you are the most important to you.

Each wheel is unique to the person creating it and it’s never a ‘one size fits all’ situation. What you may want to achieve is unlikely to be exactly what the person next to you wants. For example, depending on what stage we are at in life or looking at the kind of year we want to enjoy, we all have different emphases on the importance of work, keeping track of finances, and being present and engaging with our family and friends.

The Wheel of Life makes it simple and fun (if you’re into dot-to-dot and occasional colouring then this is a dream come true) to see what areas need attention and then you keep track of it to ensure that you edge up, or down, the wheel sections to get a decent balance.

 So how does it work?

First, if you don’t have a printed template to hand, create your own Wheel of Life on a piece of paper or computer. You just draw a large circle, representing the wheel, and then create six to eight different areas inside the circle to section it off so that it looks like an orange, bicycle spokes or that white-knuckle ride of a Big Wheel that we rush to at the local funfair.

Then you write a short list of the different areas of your life that you would like to track, examples could be health, career, sleep, friends or skills development and you then jot down the names of each of these areas on the outside edge of the wheel.

In every section of the Wheel’s ‘spoke’ you put the different areas and from the inside of the wheel to the outer edge you write the numbers from one to ten.

Number 1 represents that you give an area you care about, absolutely no love whatsoever and 10 is that it has clearly taken over your life (whether you want it to or not).

The 10 zone is where a lot of people will place work so it’s often a good idea to break that area down further if you can, you could have something like ‘meetings’ or ‘skills development’ – just so you can be sure what needs to be worked on more, and less, of course.

When you have plotted the circle add coloured dots to sit next to the numbers in each section that represent each area of your life. To do this you just need to work out honestly how much  time you think you offer to each area and place a dot next to that number (ie ‘work’ could be a 9 and ‘family’ is a 3) and then when you’ve put down dots for each of the sections, join the dots on the wheel using a pen and see where you are.  

Ideally, the shape on the wheel, when you join the dots, would come out as a balanced full circle but that would be quite rare because then we’d all be perfect, which we are not.   The shape will show you instantly where more attention is needed.

Then in a different colour, you place a dot to mark where you would like to be on the wheel in relation to where you are and at a quick glance you can see where the areas don’t coincide so that you can work out you need to do to redress the balance.

For example, if there is a big gap between what you’ve written for ‘health’ as it is now and how you’d like it to be in the near future (i.e. you’d love a score of 8 but it’s coming out as a 2 at best) then to make any difference you make a commitment to change that immediately

This doesn’t mean you need to hurl the laptop out of the window and sign up to a triathlon but it does mean pushing ‘health’ up on the day’s To do list and giving it more devotion, even if it’s gradual.

Then every week, keep checking where the dots are moving on the Wheel and keep a track of why you think things may be falling into the lower number categories.

Say you have low scores for ‘friends’ and ‘family’, which is because it’s difficult for you to see them due to seasonal heavy workloads, are you planning and making time in the diary to see catch up with friends, even if it’s six months in advance?  You’ll feel relieved you’ve made the effort to make plans with them, will have something to look forward to that is fun and relaxing, your friends will be impressed with your commitment and it’s basically another guilt layer you can peel from your shoulders.

If you are consistently scoring a 3 in an area that you’d like to make an 8 – getting a good night’s sleep for example – then instantly set aside time to put a simple programme in place so that you get the hours that you feel you need to get jumping into things the next day.  If reasons at home don’t allow for that then speak to whoever may be involved or get better yourself at setting a timer so that you shut off the computer at a certain time to give yourself enough hours to unwind.

If you’re not sure where to start in getting your Wheel of Life in motion then speak to a trusted friend, family member or coach so that you can first work out what is really important to you and then really be able to score so that you’re not pushing yourself too hard, and also not letting yourself off the hook when you need to give an area more focus.

 If you would like further information about the accredited coaching that I offer, and how you could be supported and coached in all aspects of your life then please get in touch here.