Having balance in life is important and a good work/life balance allows us to be more content, more alive and enjoy what we are doing. The wheel of life exercise allows you to determine whether you are focusing too much on one part of your life and neglecting others. The wheel is divided into sections which allow you to rate your level of satisfaction with each area of your life and then decide what to change.
Directions:
The eight sections in the Wheel of Life represent balance. The centre of the wheel represents 0 and the outer edge is 10. Rank your level of satisfaction with each life area, then shade in the appropriate number of sections. For example, if you rank your satisfaction with your career as 5, shade in 5 sections of the career part of the wheel. Once you have shaded each section, you will have created your own wheel of life. If you now view this as a wheel on which your life is running, how bumpy would this ride be if this were a real wheel?
You might end up with something a bit like this.
Your result shows you the degree to which you are satisfied with the level of balance in your life. The more shading there is, the more you are satisfied with your life. Imagine this were a wheel on your car – how bumpy would your ride be? What this represents is your life’s balance and our goal is to feel equally satisfied in each area so that we have a smooth journey.
Which are your low spots – the areas you are least satisfied with? Now make a list of them and rank them in order of importance to you right now. This will give you a better idea of where to focus your energies to improve your life. For example, looking at the above picture, you might decide that ‘intimate relationships’ is the most important thing for you to change, followed by the physical environment. As you go through life, you can revisit this exercise and you’ll probably find that things change over time.
But for now, try the exercise yourself as knowing where to start is always a good place to be!
RANKING
LIFE AREA
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
If you need help understanding or making sense of this, just ask.
Why not try our values elicitation exercise too, to find out what is really important to you.
Could you please help me understand this a little better. I’m kind of confused on what to do.
Hi William. Great questions and very happy to help. I’ve actually made some changes and additions to the page now so hopefully it is a little clearer.
The first thing I would do is to print off the wheel and colour it in. For example, if you feel satisfied with the family part of your life, then colour that in maybe 8 or 9 slots. Continue around the wheel colouring in the sections. You’ll probably end up with something that looks at bit like the example one I’ve now added above in the article. You can see that this person is not very happy with their physical environment or intimate relationships but they rate their friends and family higher. In order to live happily, we ideally want our ‘wheel’ to run smoothly. What you see here is that this person’s wheel is not balanced and it’s a visual indication of how ‘bumpy’ their current life journey is.
The next thing to do is to rank the areas your are least satisfied with (like the physical environment or relationships) in the order you would like to work on. For example this person actually ranked their intimate relationships as the number 1 thing they would like to work on, so that’s where we started. It’s really just a visual way of getting you to focus on how you feel about aspects of your life, and where you want to start to make changes.