There’s always something pulling at our attention: work, kids, social media, aging parents, the list of life categories goes on. In our fast-paced society, it’s easy to lose the balance that we crave. As a result, it’s easy to neglect important areas in our lives that bring us meaning and fulfillment. This is where the Wheel of Life can help us out.
Table of Contents
What Is the Wheel of Life?
The truth is that without learning how to mindfully monitor our daily lives, we can end up focusing all our time and energy on a single area and neglecting other important parts.
This is where the Wheel of Life can serve as a highly useful and informative resource. It helps us look at each of these different life categories and identify which areas are doing well and which areas we need to allocate more attention to.
It does this by graphically representing the different life categories as they are now, compared to how we would ideally like them to be. Then, you can identify gaps and where you need to spend your time.
Through understanding this, we can then identify what steps we need to take in order to live a life of happiness and success.
How Does the Wheel of Life Work?
Every “slice” of the Wheel of Life represents one of many life categories. Each of these categories is rated by you on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being poor and 10 being excellent.
Once you’re done rating where you feel each of the different categories are right now, you’ll be left with a diagram with a mosaic-like wheel appearance, something like a spider web. This will allow you to visualize which areas of your life you’re currently lacking in right now.
Here’s an example of the Wheel of Life[1]:
Then, you can go around the Wheel of Life again and indicate where you would ideally like each of these categories to be. This visual representation will show you which areas of your life require the most effort and attention at this moment.
Remember that every aspect of the Wheel of Life has an important role in your life. Your goal should be to answer the questions as honestly as possible. This will provide you with the most accurate representation for your current life.
The Wheel of Life Categories
No life is exactly identical to someone else’s. As such, it’s possible that different categories of living will be included in the Wheel of Life for different individuals.
What’s important is that the categories you choose to include provide an accurate representation of the important areas of your life that will help you achieve overall life balance.
That being said, there are some common ones:
Health
In this category, you aim to rate how physically and mentally healthy you are. You can ask yourself questions like:
- How do I feel?
- How regularly do I exercise?
- What is my diet like?
- Are there any changes I’d like to make to live a healthier lifestyle?
Career
In this Wheel of Life category, you are beginning to think about the job you’re currently working at and rating how satisfied you are with it.
Are you happy where you are, or would you rather be working a different job, potentially in a different field? Does the career path you’re currently on bring you happiness? Can it support the lifestyle you desire?
Personal Development
This category on the Wheel of Life looks at how you are investing in your personal growth. Are you pursuing opportunities that open you up to new experiences? Are you eager to learn new things? What are you doing to evolve and develop into the person you hope to be one day?
Finances
The financial category encourages you to reflect on whether or not your current income supports your basic needs, as well as the lifestyle you are hoping to live
[2]. Are you going to be happy with the progression of your income over the next 5 years, or are you going to have to make changes?
No, money is not the only thing that influences our happiness, but it’s certainly one of the key players.
Life Enjoyment
Here, think about what kind of activities you engage in to bring yourself life satisfaction and a sense of life enjoyment. Whether that’s sports, reading, writing, or any other hobby doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you are engaging in some things that bring you happiness on a regular basis.
All work and no play makes for a dull day, and eventually a dull and unsatisfactory life. You can analyze your level of life enjoyment a bit more using this article.
Societal Contribution
This Wheel of Life category asks you to reflect on what is it that you are giving back to others. How are you giving back to the people around you or the communities that you are a part of? Do you volunteer?
Do you help out with local sports or clubs? Are you engaged in political issues to make your community a healthier and safer place for everyone?
Relationships
Now you’re going to evaluate your relationships with other people, including family and friends
. As you do this, ask yourself whether you feel these relationships are built on a good foundation or not? Do you trust the other person in the relationship? Do you each support one another?
Can you build on the relationship that is currently established in a positive way? Are these relationships having a positive influence on your daily life?
Romance
Now you’re going to ask yourself a few questions about a specific relationship, the one you have with your partner. In the Wheel of Life, this is one of our most important relationships.
The most important question that you can ask yourself here is if you have a partner who is committed to you and who you can build an amazing relationship with. Are you supporting each other’s growth? Do your values align? Are you able to make each other laugh?
It’s very rare to find all these things in another person, so if you find someone who checks a lot of these boxes, you’ve probably found a special someone worth keeping around.
Reflecting on Your Results
If you feel like you would now go and create your own Wheel of Life that you can use in order to improve your own life, then check out this Wheel of Life assessment tool.
This is a free version of the wheel that asks you to provide your current and ideal category scores and then creates your Wheel of Life for you. It’s free and only takes a few minutes to complete.
Once you’ve completed your Wheel of Life and accurately and honestly identified the current and ideal scores for each category, you can move forward with these insights in order to improve your life.
You might ask yourself questions like:
- Why do you currently have a low/high score in a given category?
- Which categories have the largest gaps between their current position and your ideal score?
- What can you do in order to move the category score from it’s current position to where you would ideally like it to be?
- Which categories on your Wheel of Life are the most important to you?
- Which categories are currently having the biggest impact on your life?
- Are there categories that you would like to dedicate more/less attention to?
These are all important questions that you can answer to provide yourself with useful information moving forward as you improve your life.
By taking a look at your entire life like this, you can also begin making connections between different areas. For example, how is your career impacting your personal development, or how are your relationships impacting your finances and life enjoyment? These are all things that the Wheel of Life allows you to consider and visualize.
Applying the Wheel of Life to Your Life
Remember, we are always capable of change and improvement. If you aren’t satisfied with certain categories on your Wheel of Life, or the entire wheel in general, then get motivated to make changes!
Start to think about what plans, strategies, and steps you can begin taking in order to get where you want to be.
Something that I know has helped many people is keeping track of their progress. Through these actions, they can begin to understand what works for them and what doesn’t. Then, over time, they can tweak how they are pursuing their goals and increase the frequency of their successes.
Final Thoughts
Do your best to think of your life in terms of the big picture so that you can understand how the different aspects of your life influence each other and impact the overall quality of your life. This will help you in finding balance and working on goal setting for success.
By understanding the big picture, you can then take action towards bringing the life you’ve always wanted into reality!
More on Living Life to the Fullest
- The Best Way to Create a Vision for the Life You Want
- Do You Want to Know the Secret to Living a Fulfilling Life?
- How to Live up to Your Full Potential and Succeed in Life
Featured photo credit: Jean Gerber via unsplash.com
Reference
[1] | ^ | CodeScale: Wheel of Life |
[2] | ^ | Forbes: Five Things You Can Do Right Now To Improve Your Financial Wellness |