Man : Wheel of Life (An Workbook to Instrospect Your Life)


 
    

It's all too easy to find yourself 'off balance', when your life is too busy, and all your energy is focused on the world for survival," not paying enough attention to important areas of your life. Too much drive and focus and getting things done, to the extreme can lead to frustration and intense stress.

If this stress and unbalance of life has taken its toll, need there is a need to look at life from a “helicopter view”, so that you can bring things back into balance.

This is where the Wheel of Life (or Life Wheel) can help. Commonly used by professional life coaches, it helps you consider each area of your life in turn and assess what's off balance. And so, it helps you identify areas that need more attention.

Figure 1 below shows an example wheel of life with example "dimensions.

The Wheel of Life is powerful tool because it gives you a vivid visual representation of the way your life is currently, compared with the way you'd ideally like it to be. It is called the "Wheel of Life" because each area of your life is mapped on a circle, like the spoke of a wheel.

Using the Tool
        a.    The tool is to used to create your Wheel of Life dimensions and assess
             your balance. (This allows you to define your own dimensions.)
       b.      The Wheel of Life worksheet which contains a blank Wheel of Life
             diagram as shown in figure 2, below. Example is at Fig. 1
  
      





The Wheel of Life Exercise – Instructions
Notes:
      
This exercise will help clarify priorities for goal-setting, to plan so that their life is closer to their definition of balance. 
    
Balance is personal and unique to each individual – what may be balance for some may be stressful or boring for others.
    
Balance must be assessed over time. So, a regular check on how balanced can highlight useful patterns and help them learn even more about yourselves.






Detailed Instructions:
   
  1.  Review the 8 – 10 areas on the Wheel of Life. The Wheel must, when put together, create a view of a balanced life for them. Re-label/categorise an area so that it is more meaningful for you. The  area:
1.   Family/Friends

2.   Partner/Significant Other/Romance

3.   Career

4.   Finances

5.   Health (emotional/physical/fitness/nutrition/wellbeing)

6.   Physical Environment/Home

7.   Fun/Recreation/Leisure

8.   Personal Growth/Learning/Self-development

9.   Spiritual wellbeing (not necessarily religion – can be sense of self)

10.      Others could include security, service, leadership, integrity, achievement or community.


2.       Think about what success feels like for each area.
·    Money – How are your finances at the moment?  Do you have savings, do you live from month to month, do you have plans put in place for the future, and do you have a lot of debt.

·    Family – How is your family life just now: Do you spend enough time with your family, do you make time for special days, is it quality time you spend with them, do you call family up often.

·   Personal development – Are you spending time on your own development: Do you spend time improving your mind with activities, reading books, going to seminars, participating in online courses J, feeding your mind with quality information?

·    Career – Are you satisfied with your chosen career path: do you like your job, could you do more at work to make you feel satisfied, are you studying the right course at university or college to get you to where you want to be, are you spending too much time at work.

·   Recreation – Do you spend enough time doing the things you enjoy in life: do you watch too much TV, do you read a lot, do you get out of the house enough, do you spend recreation time with your kids or family

·    Spirituality – how is your spiritual life: this is not necessarily to do with religion it’s to do with feeding your soul, your spirit, are you getting enough joy into your life, are you inspired.

·   Outcomes – Do you have aspirations for the future?  Are you actively working towards them?

·   Health – This is obviously to do with how healthy you are at the moment: do you get enough exercise, do you have any detrimental habits that could harm you, do you eat well, do you have a lot of energy, and are you stressed.
3.    Rank their level of satisfaction with each area of their life by drawing a line across each segment. Place a value between 1 (very dissatisfied) and 10 (fully satisfied) against each area to show how satisfied they are currently with these elements in their life.                                                                           
4.  Look at each area above and instinctively give yourself a score out of 10 for each area. There is no point in pretending that an area of your life is going okay with a score of 8,9,10 if you know there is a lot of improvement needed in that area; be honest with yourself and admit that there might be issues in that area, that is what we are going to rectify with this course, so be as honest as possible as you are the only one who is going to see your scores.
5.   The new perimeter of the circle represents their ‘Wheel of Life’. You can ask them, “Is it a bumpy ride?”
6. Now, looking at the wheel here are some questions to ask the client and take the exercise deeper:
1.       Are there any surprises for you?
2.       How do you feel about your life as you look at your Wheel?
3.       How do you currently spend time in these areas?
4.       How would you like to spend time in these areas?
5.       Which of these elements would you most like to improve?
6.       How could you make space for these changes?
7.       Can you effect the necessary changes on your own?
8.       What help and cooperation from others might you need?
9.       What would make that a score of 10?
10.   What would a score of 10 look like?

Tip:
  • You can use the Wheel of Life as preparation for goal setting or coaching. 
  • It helps identify the areas you want to work on and is a great way of visualizing your current and desired life. 
  • Once you are working on improving your life balance, it's also a useful tool for monitoring your life balance as it changes over time

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