Have you ever felt that something in your life was just missing? Something that seemed to “get away” from you after months or even years of neglecting a specific aspect of life.
We’ve all had moments in our lives that have been overrun by stress of work, the pressures of parenthood, the daily struggles of maintaining a healthy life or those times when our relationships could use some TLC.
What if I told you that there’s a tool that can help you physically see how all aspects of life intertwine and see what parts of your life are lacking.
This is the path to true happiness, to fully living your best life and understanding what it is that is missing in your life.
Today I want to talk about the “Wheel of life”, an activity that can help you to break down what it is that is going really well, things that are just going okay, and things that need some major improvements!
What is the wheel of life?
In the 1960’s a man named Paul J. Meyer invented what we would refer today as the modern day coaching tool, the wheel of life.
You might even recognize what this wheel of life is - maybe you’ve seen it at school, at a medical office or even on your own searches on finding out why you feel so out of balance.
To put it simply however, the wheel of life is a tool that can be used by anyone to help understand the different life aspects, and to visually write out what is going great and what is missing.
The wheel of life can be pie shaped with each “slice” being a different category. You might have also seen the “spider web” version of this as well.
Now you can create your own specific categories that would reside in this wheel but for simplicity sake, I’ll outline the major aspects of the wheel of life according to the original wheel by Paul J. Meyer:
Family and Home
Financial and Career
Mental and Educational
Physical and Health
Social and Cultural
Spiritual and Ethical
These 6 topics include many different aspects of life which I’ll go over next - but keep in mind that these can range from 6 - 10 different topics. Sometimes it’s helpful to break down these topics into 2 separate ones to gain deeper understanding. (I’ll give some examples!)
Why is this important to you?
Before moving on to how we can define and use this tool, let’s figure out WHY we would even want to do this.
During our day to day life we need to focus on our current situation, our current life event. If you are at work and have a deadline coming up within the week - I can bet that much of your focus on the day to day basis will go to work.
However what happens when work starts to take over your time at home when you are relaxing with your spouse?
It’s all too easy for us to let other aspects of life slip by the wayside simply because of lack of attention, awareness, and care.
Have you ever felt that you were missing friends/family because of being so consumed with work?
Have you ever felt like your physical health was being sacrificed because of finance stress?
Have you ever been so consumed with being morally and ethically perfect only to find that you haven’t been able to enjoy an activity such as art, or reading?
If you feel out of balance you will be less likely to perform your best. The reason why this wheel of life can be so eye opening is because we as humans are multi-faceted, complex creatures that need different areas of life to harmonize.
When you are able to give each area the attention it deserves, you feel more full of life, connected to yourself and others, and can bring your best self to work and finance while also taking time to enjoy leisure and social endeavors!
Think back to a time that you felt in tune with all of these things, when life felt like it was flowing easily, steadily, and in line with who you are.
How to use the wheel of life
Now that you know why we might want to use the wheel of life, let’s talk about HOW to use it.
The wheel of life is a tool to gain deeper understanding by simply labeling on a 1-10 scale, how much you feel that category is being represented in your life at the moment.
A score of a 1 means that you are not putting any time into this category.
A score of a 10 means that you are fully engaged in this category.
You can use your own scale of 1-10 and what that actually looks like, but for the most part as long as you know the extremes you’ll be able to select numbers that reflect how fulfilled you feel in these categories.
There are no right or wrong answers here - use this as a tool that can help you to gain clarity and some insight as to what you are missing.
Oftentimes we might not realize how “bad” we feel about a specific topic until we actually put a number to it. Sometimes we don’t even have the time to THINK about how we feel in different areas of life.
Keep this scoring in mind as we start to go over the different topics on this pie!
The different slices of pie
As stated above I’ll be using the standard wheel of life but will suggest alternative topics that might better align with how you interpret these life sectors.
Let’s get this wheel rolling!
Family and Home
How are your relationships with your family members?
Do you feel like you are connected to your spouse, kids, parents?
On a scale of 1-10 how engaged do you feel with your family?
You can also think about specific relationships within your family and home life. For example you might feel you are a 7 out of a 10 with your spouse but a 9 out of 10 with your kids. If you feel like you need to boost up your relationship with your spouse, having this insight can ignite some action!
Alternative topics: Dating, significant other, love, communication
Financial and Career
How do you feel about your current job?
How much passion/drive comes from your job?
How comfortable do you feel with your current financial situation?
This piece is all about your connection to your career and finances. How specifically do you feel when you think about this topic? Do you feel you can perform better in your career, or invest/save more money then you currently do?
Alternative topics: Money, Financial Freedom, security, accomplishment, success
Mental and Educational
How much do you feel you are committing to learning new skills and challenging yourself?
How much time do you spend working towards personal goals?
Are you working on growing your internal world?
Personal growth would fall into this category - we all know how important it is to continue to work on yourself in order to learn and grow to be better. Is this an area that has taken a backseat to taking care of others? This is a good opportunity to reignite the passion for learning and growth!
Alternative topics: Self actualization, competency, personal growth, self-esteem, self-confidence
Physical and Health
How physically fit do you feel?
How much time do you spend working on your health?
How do you feel in your body (any lingering injuries that need to be worked on?)
How much time goes into your nutrition planning?
Obviously this one is one of my favorites! Think about how your physical body feels and where you are on your own 1-10 scale. If you feel like your body has been sacrificed for other areas of the wheel, you might need to consider starting some exercise routine or nutrition change to aid in feeling your best physically.
Alternative topics: Energy, Vitality, Strength, Nutrition
Social and Cultural
How much time do you commit to seeing friends and going out to social events?
How connected do you feel to your culture?
Are there any friends that you have lost touch with that you want to regain?
This category speaks about your relationships outside of the home. It’s important for all of us to have friends that have common ideas/thoughts and enjoy spending time together in an activity. Schedule a night out with a friend, set up time to have a party at a house, or simply call a friend to reconnect!
Alternative topics: Recreation, Enjoyment, Play
Spiritual and Ethical
How connected to your belief system are you?
Do you feel that you are living in line with your code of ethics?
Are you working towards staying connected to nature?
Here we can think about how our religious beliefs are being catered to. For some this might mean being connected to nature and those animals around us. Also it’s important to consider if you are living a life of authenticity. One in which you feel you are morally good and just.
Alternative topics: Acceptance, Joy, Vision
The biggest takeaway from the wheel of life
This activity is certainly fun to do...or at least for me, I love thinking about what my different areas of life look like! Thinking more deeply about your life and the many different facets can help give clarity to what is going well, and what’s not going so well.
For example, for me at this current moment one of the pieces of pie that I know is ranking lower than it should is my Spiritual and Ethical piece.
Specifically, my connection to nature is a bit low right now as it’s something that is important to me. With the winter months, it’s easy to just stay inside and stay warm while it’s freezing outside!
If I had to rate it on a 1-10 scale, I would probably rate this around a 2 or 3 currently as I’ve only taken a few trips to the park or beach over the past 3-4 months!
This can give me the necessary push I need to schedule something for myself to reconnect with nature. I certainly don’t feel comfortable KNOWING that I am ranking this area of life so low!
And truthfully, I feel that something in my life is a bit off centered and needs to be set back on the right path. It’s an uneasy feeling, a disconnected feeling.
The same goes for you - what topic above is shoving itself front and center? Is there a topic that popped out immediately as one that isn’t quite up to par with how you want to live your life?
The best takeaway - become aware!
Awareness is half the battle - once you can see and understand with certainty that you are missing out on an important part of your life you can start to set up a plan of attack to slowly introduce it.
I hope you use this tool to help repair whatever it is that you feel is out of line with what is important to you. Again this wheel can be customized to what is important to you, use those alternative topics to substitute in if you feel like one speaks to you more than the other.
Gain that clarity, become aware and make a plan of action to get your life back on track. It’s up to you to do this - no one else can do this for you!
PS: If you want a printable wheel of life click here to download a free PDF!