“The key to keeping your balance is knowing when you’ve lost it.”
Anonymous
As we approach the end of 2024, December offers a great opportunity to reflect on our achievements and challenges, consciously drawing questions like: Where are you now in your life, career or relationships? It is important to stop and reflect, because only then we can increase our self-awareness, develop critical thinking and apply what we have learned for the future. It also enables us to make a conscious decision to make changes.
To help you reflect, I would like to share a simple exercise – The Wheel of Life, which will quickly show you how balanced your life is. This coaching tool has been used probably since the 1960s and it is still very effective today. To complete this exercise, you can do it online here or if you prefer a pen and paper, have a look at the picture below follow the steps outlined.
- Draw a big circle and divide it into 8 segments.
- Name each segment. The suggested things to think about are: health, finance, family & friends, home, personal development, significant other and leisure. You might be tempted to re-name some of the categories or add a couple of new ones. You can do that. The only thing to remember is that we would like to see a representation of a balanced life, so for example, we cannot focus entirely on work, team, career progression etc, neglecting family, finances, health and social aspects of life.
- Create a rating from 0 to 10, where 0 is in the middle of the circle and 10 is on its edge.
- Give a score to each category (draw a dot) based on how satisfied you feel with it (0-not at all, 10-it’s fantastic).
- Connect the dots to see how balanced/ round your wheel is. And remember this is a tool to enable your reflection, not to judge or despair.
I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t also offer you a few questions to use while you are pondering upon your wheel of life:
- What springs to your mind when you look at your wheel of life?
- Looking back at your 2024, what happened or didn’t happen that made you choose your score in each category?
- What have been your biggest achievements this year?
- What are the proudest of? (You can write down your answers and capture your thoughts).
- If everything was possible, what would you like your wheel of life to look like at the end of December 2025?
- What would need to happen for you to give yourself this future score?
- What are your intentions about 2025 and what actions can you take?
This is a really interesting excerise to do as part of your reflections and goal setting for the year ahead. If you need support in working on some of the insight that you discover as part of your wheel of life exercise, please get in touch to arrange a no-obligation discovery call and we can discuss it.