The Wheel Of Life, A Technique To Evolve
The wheel of life is a coaching tool . Its main objective is to detect the conflictive areas that must be reviewed in order to improve. This tool is highly valued for the ease with which it is applied and for the clarity it brings once it is applied.
Human beings have ideas and feelings that are often very complex. This complexity is based on the fact that each of us develops in different areas and in each one of them brings into play multiple dimensions of ourselves. Sometimes we feel that we are not progressing as we should, but we have a hard time identifying exactly which domain or which dimension is failing.
Ultimately, the wheel of life is an instrument of self-analysis. It helps to specify what is diffuse and to develop awareness in those areas that often go unnoticed.
You can apply it at any time in life and it will always be useful to you. We will soon learn how to work with it.
Graph the wheel of life
The first thing to graph the wheel of life is to paint a circle. Then divide it into segments, so that each of them represents a particular area of your existence. At this point, you should try to be very precise: the better the wheel of life is parceled out, the easier you will be able to do your self-analysis.
What follows is to manually write what aspect of your life corresponds to each part of the wheel of life. It is very important that you do it manually, as this facilitates your awareness process. On the Internet you can find examples of this graph; however, even downloading it, it is best to name each area in your own handwriting.
The most usual thing is that the wheel is divided into aspects such as health, family, couple, friendship, work, economy, studies and personal success . Aspects such as fun and leisure, relationship with oneself, personal development, etc. can also be included. It all depends on each one.
The following steps
The next step to apply the wheel of life is to score each of the areas that you have defined in the previous point. This score must be numerical, on a scale of 1 to 10. What you are going to rate is your degree of satisfaction in that particular area.
Lower grades obviously represent a lower degree of satisfaction; the tall ones, major. Now that scale of score must also be represented on the wheel of life. To do this, mark ten points on the line that connects each plot with the center of the circle. Make sure that the distance between one point and another is balanced.
Once this is done, mark with an “X” the point that corresponds to each of the scores you have given to each area. For example, if your degree of satisfaction is six in the health area, mark the “x” at point 6 of the line that joins that area with the center of the circumference.
Self-assessment
When you have completed the previous steps, what follows is to join all the “Xs”, thus forming a new graph inside the circle. This new chart will give you a general idea of how your life outlook is. Immediately, you will grasp the points of balance and imbalance.
It is best to start a brainstorm to establish how you can improve the area in which you detect more limitations. The objective is that you formulate specific purposes. For example, if in the health area you had a very low score because you have noticed that you catch a cold very often, the objective should be to consult the doctor or adopt concrete measures to improve.
The wheel of life shows its real effectiveness when, after a while, you repeat the exercise and you see changes in the final graph. This allows you to contrast and establish whether you have really advanced or not. In this way, you maintain a rational observation about your actions and especially the whole of your life.
Obviously, this tool doesn’t work if you aren’t completely honest in scoring the different areas of your life. Remember that it is not about rating your performance, but your degree of satisfaction. Therefore, the wheel of life will ultimately be a tool to increase your well-being.
