How off balance is your life?

Have you ever been in a presentation where the presenter uses graphs or charts to drive home a point? Have you noticed how effective it is at helping you visualize the results of something? Well, the Wheel of Life assessment helps you do that with your life.

It takes the major elements of your life (as defined by you) and shows you what they look like when you put them together.

The takeaway from this assessment is to see where your life is out of balance, which areas you’re unsatisfied with, and help you define what you need to do to bring your life into balance.

The way others have administered the Wheel of Life assessment is to give you a piece of paper and have you draw where you feel you are in each category.

I teamed up with a plugin coder and develop a more automated way to complete this assessment. The process is easier and faster. It all can be done through my website and your results will appear instantly on the screen and also will be sent to you via email so you have them to look back on.

Here’s how it works:

1) Define your categories – They can include love life, social life, friendships, leisure activities, career, finances, family life, health, spiritual life, home, community and any other categories that are important to you.

2) Rate yourself – Ask yourself questions to help you rate your satisfaction in each of these categories on a scale of 1-10. For example, to rate your health you could ask questions like: Are you satisfied with your weight? Are you happy with your level of fitness? How is your diet? Based on your analysis of these and any other questions you feel are important to this category, you’ll choose a rating and enter it into the drop-down field next to the category. Do a similar process with the other categories you’ve chosen.

3) Observe – Step back and look at your current life wheel. If you’re like most people, there may be a few areas where you feel satisfied and others where you’re not feeling satisfied. This usually results in an unbalanced-looking wheel.

4) Analyze – By looking at the wheel, can you identify any habits of yours that may be causing your wheel to be unbalanced? For example, are you excelling at work and finances at the expense of your health, leisure time and family life? What can be done to bring those elements into balance? Are you unsatisfied with your love life but haven’t made any efforts to go on dates in the past year? Are you unhappy with the community you’re living in? What steps do you need to take to find and/or move to your ideal community? What other issues may be affected by this change?

5) Repeat – After you make your first wheel, give yourself some time to make some adjustments and then go back and do another one. The interconnectedness of the wheel is very telling. You may find that if you adjust one area, it will affect another area. It’s a process to find the balance and certainly not without its challenges. Don’t get discouraged. Many people find this exercise helpful in illustrating areas they want to improve their lives. Perfection isn’t necessarily the goal. Life improvement and satisfaction are.

Want to get your own Wheel of Life assessment for FREE!

This article is a part of a series about how to successfully plan your year with intentionality.

Let me know your experiences using the Wheel of Life method in the comments section below.