The Wheel Of Life And A Free Worksheet

If you are considering using the services of a coach, a good place to start preparing for your work together is self-reflection at a broad level. There is a tool called the Wheel of Life to help you in this. Keep reading!

In This Post

I cover the following in this blog post:

1. Self-Reflection Is Key In Coaching
2. The Wheel Of Life
3. The Evaluation Process
4. My Worksheet For You
   1. No Hurt Feelings
   2. Your Choice
   3. Dimension Suggestions
5. Getting Started
6. Alternatives For Recording Results
7. Wrapping Up

1. Self-Reflection Is Key In Coaching

In order to be successful when hiring a coach, you need to apply self-reflection several times during the process.

Not all of us do this as a regular part of our everyday lives, so using an external tool can be extremely helpful to get familiar with a new, deeper level of self-observation.

Observing ourselves is the healthiest when it happens without an element of judgement. Easier said than done! But there are tools such as the Wheel of Life, which can help keeping a moment of sitting with ourselves less critical, and more focused on “getting a status report” if you will.

2. The Wheel Of Life

So what is this Wheel of Life? It is a visual tool to evaluate how we view our life today, subjectively. We observe it through different perspectives such as health, finances, work or family.

The number of dimensions changes depending on whose tool you have decided to use, and is usually between six and ten. What areas of life are chosen also depends on the maker in most cases.

The original Wheel of Life is credited to Paul J. Meyer, founder of Success Motivation® Institute in the 1960’s, who chose the following six dimensions for his wheel:

1. Financial and Career
2. Mental and Educational
3. Physical and Health
4. Social and Cultural
5. Spiritual and Ethical
6. Family and Home

3. The Evaluation Process

Above I mentioned status report and not focusing on being self-critical. In order to assign a dimension a number on a scale of 0-10, we have to relate it to an ideal situation (value 10), which is possibly in the future as opposed to how things are today.

We may feel utterly dissatisfied with for example our career or love life, but the exercise also allows us to imagine something we could do to subjectively improve our lives:

• Create change by altering step by step what does not work.
• Incrementally introduce something new.
• Remove altogether something that no longer serves us (or never did but was part of it because of habitual behaviour).

If I can imagine an ideal situation, I can also imagine various steps to take in order to bridge the gap between today and said ideal scenario in the future. Humans are creative. I may have to deal with an issue such as imposter syndrome or fear of failure along the way, but those are obstacles, not hindrances. What do you think?

4. My Worksheet For You

I offer you freedom of choice in my own Wheel of Life. I don’t know what you value in life and it is not my place to tell you how you should structure it either.

Sign up here or at the bottom of this blog post for access to the worksheet through subscribing to my email list:

4.1 No Hurt Feelings

When using someone else’s wheel in the past, where one dimension was called Significant Other, my only thought then was that I as a single person didn’t fit into the chosen box, and that I was excluded immediately. As a result, the whole exercise was affected by my unexpected feeling of sadness, for no good reason at all.

What if you are single against your wishes, prefer a polyamorous lifestyle, or want no relationship at all? But the only dimension available is Significant Other, with the implication that there should be an existing relationship of this one type?

Sadness and other upsetting emotions are part of life, coaching sessions included, but active exclusion is unnecessary. The frame of mind moves from constructive to unbalanced, which is the complete opposite of how I view successful coaching (and generally showing up for others).

4.2 Your Choice

That same multitude in life circumstances and preferences applies to most other dimensions, too, so my worksheet contains empty dimensions only.

The choices are yours. I am not here to tell you about your life, but to help you take dreams to goals to finished projects.

I also give you a choice regarding the number of dimensions to track, either 6, 7, 8 or 10.

4.3 Dimension Suggestions

So which dimensions should you choose? You could go with the original six listed above.

Then there are the six dimensions of wellness that I have written about in my blog post A Primer To Medicine: The Complex Definitions Of Health And Wellness: emotional, occupational, physical, social, intellectual, and spiritual.

As concluded in that post, today there is also the expanded version of seven dimensions available: physical, emotional, intellectual, social, spiritual, environmental, and occupational.

You may have stumbled upon “A Miracle Morning” by Hal Elrod at some point, in which a so-called Level 10 Life is worked on. The ten dimensions are as follows: Friends and Family, Personal Development, Spirituality, Finances, Career, Fun and Recreation, Giving or Contribution, Physical Environment, Heath and Fitness, and Romance.

5. Getting Started

It definitely is personal preference how wide or not you want to keep your categories. Personally I don’t want to keep finances together with career, because to me the two are not at all the same thing. I am very satisfied with how I have structured my career right now, but as an entrepreneur the financial portion of my life is in flux for years still.

There might be something else important in your life that hasn’t even been mentioned yet, so before doing the actual evaluation, spend some time thinking about what matters the most to you.

Remember, your circumstances might change, too, so what you track today might be something else in a few years. Flexibility is key.

6. Alternatives For Recording Results

You can record your results in different ways. Here are a few alternatives I have created in the GoodNotes app. I used its different pen types with Apple Pencil; the ball pen of two different weights, and the highlighter:

Experimenting with the shape tool will allow you to draw straight lines, arcs and perfect circles. Its Fill Colour option lets you quickly fill the shapes you create, or you can fill manually with the pen for complete coverage.

Instead of filling the “pie slices” you can also choose a cross or dot approximately in the middle of a line, such as I did for the occupational dimension. Once you have given values for all dimensions, you can connect them with lines into a shape, which could resemble a spiderweb a bit. 10/10 for each dimension would create a perfect circle though.

7. Wrapping Up

If you feel weird about this exercise, maybe let it simmer for a while, then make some progress, take a break again, and so on. In Western societies we are used to a linear approach to a lot in life, as if we can “power through” anything as long as our determination and resilience are strong enough (which implies failure if not). However, all or nothing, chasing perfection, and other less constructive thought patterns have no true place in personal development. Whereas self-respect and acceptance of what is, a gentle approach, and curiosity are good ingredients to bring forth.

In my experience, the Wheel of Life can help me get an honest opinion in a very short time of how I feel about things. It is an interesting tool to reuse many times, whether amidst changes or once they have happened already.

If you aren’t yet on my email list, subscribe to my newsletters below and receive access to the Library of exclusive resources. There you will find this free worksheet, which includes tips on how to fill it out, too!

And now over to you. Have you used the Wheel of Life before? What are your thoughts on it? Please post comments and questions below!