See Yourself Through a Life Wheel: Free Graphic Coaching Tool for You at the End of This Article!

Feeling kind of off? Energy being sapped? Not as satisfied as you used to be?

Chances are one (or several) of the eight main areas of your life are not functioning as well as they could be. As a first step to realignment, may I suggest doing a Life Wheel on yourself. A handy little tool that will help you quickly and easily pinpoint what areas are out of whack and provide the inspiration and motivation to get you back on track.

 
What’s a Life Wheel? A Life Wheel (or what I call a ‘Focus on Me’ map) is a simple yet rewarding exercise I use with my own coaching clients. It is a visual tool that is broken into eight areas: each area represents a certain aspect of your life. You use it to literally SEE how satisfied you currently are in these eight main areas of your life. As seeing where you are is a first step in understanding your current crossroads and ultimately making the needed adjustments to bring more satisfaction, pleasure and enjoyment to your life.

The Eight Main Areas of Life: The eight sections to the Life Wheel are (in no particular order):

  1. Health
  2. Fun & Recreation
  3. Finances
  4. Career (right livelihood, business, etc)
  5. Personal Development
  6. Relationship
  7. Family/Friends
  8. Environment

Work Your Way Around the Map: You work your way around the map, asking yourself how satisfied you currently are in each area (your answer is based on a 1-10 scale, with a 10 being fully satisfied and a 1 being totally dissatisfied). In the map there is a built-in visual, to help you SEE the significance of your score — your low and high scores will jump out at you, making it easy to see what is working in your life and what isn’t.

For example, take Finances. How satisfied are you currently with the state of finances in your life? If you felt you were somewhat satisfied or neutral about the state of your finances, you would score 5. If you felt your satisfaction was pretty high, you’d give yourself an 8, 9, or 10. If you felt your satisfaction was really low, you’d probably rank yourself at a 1, 2 or 3.

You Don’t Have to ‘Have’ to Be Satisfied: One quick thing to note. The Focus on Me map is a satisfaction gauge not a ‘having’ gauge. You could have several areas in your map where you don’t ‘have’ and you are very satisfied with that. For example, in the financial question outlined above, you might not have much in the way of money or financial abundance, but you could be quite satisfied with that situation (some people just aren’t materially motivated). Or, to give another example – in the area of ‘relationship”. You might not ‘have’ a primary relationship (spouse, significant other, mate, lover, bed buddy – however you define it) – and, you could be completely satisfied with that situation. So, your score would be quite high, even though you don’t technically ‘have’ that thing in your life (make sense? – hope so, as it’s an important distinction!).

How Satisfied Are You?! So go ahead and consider your answers for the eight areas (how satisfied are you?). You can get good mileage from this exercise by just considering the areas for a moment and figuring out a quick answer (but if you want the map as an aid, see below on details on how to receive a complementary one).

How satisfied are you in this area?
What satisfaction score do you give it? (1-10)
What is your rationale for giving it this score?
What’s working in this area?
What’s not working in this area?

Step Back and Consider the Big Picture: After you have completed your Life Wheel, step back and take a look at it holistically.

What do you notice about your scores?
What areas of life have high scores?
What areas of life have low scores?
What do your answers tell you about the state of your current life?
How is your overall balance?

Whatever your answers, this is your present state. This is the place from which your visioning and planning will be launched and built from. If you’ve got a nice balanced, high score then congratulate yourself on pulling together a life that basically already works for you. Your adjusting from here is going to be a matter of sustaining and refining the great life you have already got going.

If you have a lower or more chaotic score, don’t fret, anything can be shifted and changed when the motivation and inspiration is there. Looking at and seeing things for what they are is the first step in transmuting them. Seeing your current situation accurately and really ‘taking it in’ is a god thing. This contrast will help you get clear about what you really do want – and that is the key to good personal visioning and planning work – getting off of what you don’t want and onto what you do.

Complimentary Map and Workbook: Do your own Life Wheel. To help you do your own Life Wheel I’ve made my Focus on Me map and its companion workbook available as a f-r-e-e download. Simply click here and you can also check out the Google Video that demos me facilitating my client Alan through his Focus on Me map – a good teaching tool to help you do your own. Enjoy!

© 2007 Christina L. Merkley

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this blurb with it:
Christina Merkley, “The SHIFT-IT Coach” and creator of the SHIFT-IT Graphic Coaching Process® is a Visioning and Planning Expert specializing in Graphic Facilitation and Law of Attraction techniques. Based in charming Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, she works deeply with individuals, couples and groups in defining and getting what they really want in work and life. For more information visit: www.shift-it-coach.com and www.makemark.com

[tags] Christina Merkley, shift it coach, see yourself through a life wheel, life wheel, graphic coaching process [/tags]

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