The Wheel of Life is a flexible coaching tool that offers a 360-degree view of your current life situation. It quickly identifies areas of imbalance and helps you to create goals and set priorities based on your life vision.
While some areas receive all of your attention, others get none. Perhaps your career is on track, but you no longer have time for your family and friends, or your work is unfulfilling, and you are not growing or learning.
You are not alone. Harmony in life – relationships, career, health, spirituality, finances, and beyond – is hard to achieve and seemingly impossible to maintain.
Achieving a balanced existence is essential.
After all, your mental well-being is underpinned by finding high levels of meaning within your daily tasks and activities. If the many aspects of your being find balance, then life satisfaction, the fulfillment of basic psychological needs, and contentment usually follow (Eakman, 2016).
So, how do you find balance in your life?
What often holds people back is a lack of conscious awareness regarding their lifestyle.
Life coaching can help by focusing on where you are now and where you want to be.
In this article, we look at the Wheel of Life, a tool that continues to prove popular in life coaching and self-help. It offers enormous insight into aspects of your being that are flourishing or struggling and helps guide you to the changes needed to remove barriers and push forward.
What Is the Wheel of Life?
Being overwhelmed – unable to connect and balance the essential dimensions of your life – can leave you feeling out of control and unsatisfied.
But how does it happen?
According to Eakman (2106), your life moves out of balance “when the fulfillment of basic psychological needs has been thwarted within ongoing patterns of day-to-day occupations” and it causes harm to your wellbeing.
Put more simply, your life is out of balance when your basic psychological needs, including autonomy, relatedness, and competence, are no longer being met (Ryan & Deci, 2018). Perhaps you are focusing too much on your family while your relationship with your partner slips away, or you are prioritizing your finances over your spiritual growth.
And yet, this can cause real harm to both your body and mind, including high levels of stress.
To lead a more fulfilling existence and achieve your life goals, you must regain equilibrium.
An appropriate work-life balance will enhance your overall wellbeing by identifying and aligning the many facets – family, friends, health, work environment, and spirit – of your life (Byrne, 2005).
Performing the Wheel of Life exercise will support this process by balancing factors that influence overall wellbeing while identifying areas of life where support, guidance, and additional focus are needed.
Introducing the Wheel of Life
The original idea behind the Wheel of Life came from industry pioneer Paul J. Meyer in the 1960s to help people realize their goals.
While the wheel today has many different forms and names, including the Life Balance Wheel, Coaching Wheel, and the Wheel of Success, they share a common purpose: transformation.
The Wheel of Life exercise is widely used in coaching and beyond and offers a practical and flexible tool for clients to assess their needs and set goals aligned with their core values.
Its beauty is its simplicity.
The wheel typically consists of between eight and ten categories essential for a fulfilling life.
Segment names vary, but the themes are usually similar, for example:
- Money & Finances
- Career & Work
- Health & Fitness
- Fun & Recreation
- Environment (home/work)
- Community
- Family & Friends
- Partner & Love
- Personal Growth & Learning
- Spirituality
A score is placed in each segment to reflect the current level of satisfaction, usually represented using either of the following two designs:
“Pie” style
Using a pre-drawn diagram, such as the one below, a number is circled (or filled in) next to the appropriate dimension.
If a template is not available, create a hand-drawn version. The user writes the score against each empty, named segment, and a line marks the outside of the wheel.
“Spider web” style
It is typically generated by online coaching tools.
The markings are drawn automatically in response to input from the client.
What is it for?
The Wheel of Life provides a snapshot of your well-being and the level of satisfaction in your current circumstances.
At a high level, the exercise provides insight into whether or not your life is in balance. From a more detailed perspective, it captures whether individual areas of your life are either meeting your needs and making you happy or leaving you dissatisfied and discontented.
By scoring each category, you identify areas that need support and improvement to reach individual and overall life goals.
The process of writing down, reviewing, and agreeing upon ratings not only provides input to the goal-setting process but also offers insights into areas of your life that are causing you difficulty.
The Wheel of Life can be used by anyone, with little or no training, but is commonly completed during coaching sessions to identify and agree on priorities for future exploration.
How to Use It in Life Coaching
While there are plenty of online versions of the Wheel of Life, it may be less distracting for a client to have a physical copy in front of them and complete the exercise in pen or pencil.
Alternatively, coaches might consider inviting their clients to complete the Wheel of Life digitally before a coaching session. Then, they can explore their ratings for each particular domain during their in-person discussion with the coach.
For a great tool for the job, check out the coaching app Quenza, which includes the Wheel of Life in its library of coaching and psychoeducational activities that coaches can share directly to their clients’ Android or iOS devices.
When completing the Wheel of Life, the client scores each category on the wheel between one and ten (or sometimes one and five) to represent their level of satisfaction.
For example, a fit young person may give health and fitness a seven, while money and finances may receive a relatively low score, such as two.
By rating each segment, the client and the coach can identify areas that need attention and improvement.
Often, based on the scores, the wheel will appear ‘bumpy,’ but this is natural, and offers a quick view of overall life satisfaction. The priorities, and how they rank in terms of importance, subsequently feed into a goal-setting exercise.
The Wheel of Life exercise can be repeated at regular intervals to understand progress along with potential changes in focus resulting from evolving circumstances and new priorities.
Importantly, the scoring provides a permanent record of successful personal transformation and a clear insight into the value of life coaching.
Steps involved in the Wheel of Life exercise
The following steps describe a typical interaction between a coach and a client. The detail will vary depending on whether it is the first time that the client has used the tool or if it provides an ongoing focus on a more specific area of life.
Step one – Introduce the Wheel of Life
- Provide the client with a printed copy of the Wheel of Life.
- Explain that the wheel captures a snapshot of how the client feels about their life.
- Review and discuss the meaning of the following categories, along with the scoring method:
- Money & Finance
- Career & Work
- Health & Fitness
- Fun & Recreation
- Environment
- Community
- Family & Friends
- Partner & Love
- Growth & Learning
- Spirituality
- Rename, remove, or add new categories, as appropriate.
Step two – Rank the categories
- Ask the client to score each category by drawing a line through or adding a number, where one is not satisfied at all and ten is fully satisfied.
- Explain that this part of the exercise provides an overview of the level of satisfaction in their life.
Step three – Review the wheel as a whole
Once completed, look at the outside of the wheel, discuss its overall shape, and consider the total life balance.
Ask the following questions to open up a discussion on life satisfaction:
- When you look at the shape of the wheel, how do you feel?
- How would you like to change the shape of the inner wheel?
- What surprises you the most?
- What would a score of ten looks and feel like?
- Which category would you most like to improve?
- What category would you most like to start with?
- At present, how do you spend time in each area?
- What do you need to improve the score in each area?
- What small steps would have the most significant impact on your satisfaction?
- Could a single action improve more than one area?
Step four – Review each section
Coach your client in the learnings and actions required based on the exercise.
Begin with areas that the client observes as being particularly interesting:
- Why does this area need attention?
- What would it take to increase your satisfaction by one score?
- How balanced do you feel in this area of your life?
- Why did you give this score?
- Is there anything missing from this area of your life that may affect your score?
- Is there anything that might add value to this area of your life and change the score?
Also, consider and discuss the relationships between the categories.
Step five – Identify actions
- Identify an activity for each category that when completed, will change the client’s level of satisfaction.
- When the action is over a more extended period or is relatively large and complex, define a goal – ideally one that is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART)
- Each action, once completed, should add to the overall goal to improve their life balance.
Step six – Revisit and review
Over time, revisit the wheel and re-score it to understand the changes made and the actions outstanding. This is especially useful for clients to understand the success and benefits of the journey in coaching.
Ongoing check-ins are also helpful to understand overall patterns of behavior and any negative thoughts or emotions that are blocking the changes.
Also, remind the client that balance is rarely retained for long. Circumstances and priorities change; the aim is to continue the journey toward balance and avoid entering a fixed mindset that prevents transformation.
As Dr. Carol Dweck explains in her book Mindset (2017), it is also essential to maintain a growth mindset. Otherwise, successful transformation is at risk of being lost, like a rubber band regaining its shape after tension is removed.
Alternative uses for the Wheel of Life
Tailored wheels can be especially valuable to explore specific areas or problems within your life:
- Work: for example, a project or promotion
- Education: studying for a degree or certification
- Family: strengthening a marriage or parenting children
Choose a set of appropriate segment names – but to keep it manageable, don’t go higher than ten – then repeat steps one to six.
Examining Life Roles
One way of using the Wheel of Life is to examine the most important roles that you play in life and measure your performance or contentment in each one. Roles might include:
- Spouse/Partner
- Parent/Child/Home-maker
- Leader/Manager
- Team Member
- Community Member
- Employee/Employer
- Creative/Artist/Musician
- Student/Learner
- Sports Person/Games Player
- Steward of Finance/Environment/Resources
This list is not exhaustive and it is important to pick the roles that are most relevant and important to you.
Steps for using roles in the Wheel of Life:
- Start with a blank wheel and then add in your most important roles.
- Score each one and reflect on which areas you need to work on most.
- Set time-bound goals to improve in that area
- At the end of the set time period revisit the wheel and re-score yourself to measure progress.
Segments of Life
Another way to use the Wheel of Life is to think about aspects rather than roles in life. These generally include:
- Family/Relationship/Romance
- Community/Social/Friends
- Health/Wellbeing/Fitness
- Life Planning/Management/Financial Security/Money
- Career/Work/Vocation
- Spirituality/Morality
- Fun/Recreation/Leisure
- Personal Growth/Development/Learning
You can follow the same steps, as used for roles in the previous section but replacing the roles with the 8 key areas using the words that resonate most with you.
Questions to help with the Wheel of Life
To help delve deeper into how you are doing at each spoke of the wheel or in each segment you can consider the following questions. You could rate each one on a 0 to 10 scale and then take an average to get your overall score for each section:
1. Family/Relationship/Romance/Significant other
- How would you rate your romance, intimacy and quality time with your spouse/partner/significant other?
- What score would you give the quality and quantity of your time and communication with your closest family members?
- What score would you rate your relationship with your children and/or parents?
- How content are you with your relationships with your extended family?
- How would you rate the quality of your home environment?
2. Community/Social/Friends
- How would you score the breadth and depth of friendships that you enjoy?
- Do you feel like you have sufficient quality time with your most important friends?
- How would rate the time you have to socialise and make new friends and connections?
- What value would you give to the support you get from friends and your community?
- How would you score your contribution to your community and the environment?
3. Health/Wellbeing
- What would you score for the quality of your eating habits and diet?
- How content are you with your health and fitness?
- What score would you give to the quality and quantity of your sleep?
- How would you score your emotional health and mental wellbeing?
- How would you rate your impact on the environment?
4. Life Planning/Management/Financial Security/Money
- How financially secure do you feel on a scale of 0-10?
- What score would you give to your ability to set and keep to a budget?
- How free of debt are you? (10 being completely free of debt)
- How would you rate the quality of your savings, investments and pension to support you in the future?
- What rating would you score yourself in terms of financial independence or freedom?
5. Career/Work/Vocation
- How happy and fulfilled do you feel in your career or vocation?
- How content are you with the hours you work?
- What score would you give to your ability to prioritise and manage your time?
- How effective and skilled would you say that you are in your job?
- How content are you with your work prospects, progression or promotion?
6. Spiritual/Moral
- How aligned do you feel to an overall vision, purpose and direction for your life?
- How aligned would you say you are – in thought, word and deed – to your moral values and principles?
- What score would you give to the time you have off-line for personal reflection, prayer or meditation?
- How happy are you with the legacy you are building and will leave behind?
- How accountable do you feel for your spiritual or moral direction?
7. Fun/Recreation
- How would you rate the quality of time you have each week for leisure and recreation?
- Are you content with your ability to pursue your passions or hobbies?
- How would you rate the time you have for fun and laughter?
- Do you feel you are getting enough holiday or vacation time?
- How energised do you feel?
8. Personal Growth/Learning/Development
- How would you rate your continued education and personal development?
- Are you content with the time you have for reading, listening and learning?
- How self-aware would you say that you are?
- Are you content with your opportunity to develop existing strengths and learn new skills?
- How effective would you say you are in setting and achieving personal goals?
7 Useful Templates and Tools
With the wheel of life being such a powerful intervention, below is a selection of related tools and templates.
Goal-setting worksheet
Coaching sessions typically focus on growth and transformation.
The client wishes to move from their current state to a new one, ridding themselves of unhelpful ways of thinking and behaving or escaping a difficult situation.
Goal setting is the perfect tool for delivering change. It works by clearly defining goals that are time-bound and measurable, relevant, achievable, and realistic.
Downloadable Wheel of Life template
There are many versions of the Wheel of Life; they vary in the number and naming of segments and whether scoring is represented using a pie or a spider-web style.
Our version of the Wheel of Life provides an ideal tool for capturing client satisfaction across the domains of their life and targeting areas for improvement.
Online Wheel of Life versions
While there are benefits to having a physical copy of the Wheel of Life, online versions can be valuable when used solo or coached remotely.
The following tools generate visual copies of the Wheel of Life, based on the individual’s input:
Two apps
For those who prefer to complete, review, and maintain their Wheel of Life on their phone, there are apps available for both Apple and Android:
While the picture created by the Wheel of Life exercise is crucial to the process, the act of completing and reviewing it is equally important to move forward, achieve balance, and progress toward life-long goals.
A Blueprint for Your Ideal Future
You now know what is important for you in this area of your life, you know what is working well and what resources you already have in your toolbox. You have a clear future vision for this area and can feel what it will be like to be fulfilled and in balance. You know what you want and you have the first positive steps for change towards your vision.
Congratulations, you now have a blueprint for your perfect future.
Keep daydreaming about this vision! This is a tried, tested, and much-reported method for success. Top athletes report on competitions won through the power of visualization and pushing themselves through the hardest times by visualizing crossing the finishing line first, feeling the elation of winning, hearing the cheers, seeing the crowds, and holding the trophy, or medal. If you Google ‘Visualising Success’, prepare to be overwhelmed by articles and studies supporting this idea.
Allowing yourself to be guided by your desired future is a powerful first step to getting exactly what you want. Take the Wheel of Life challenge with this in mind. Use it to shine a light on what is going on in all areas of your life and compare this to what you want to be happening. Notice where the imbalance lies, visualize your ideal future, recognize areas for development and do what you need to do to bring yourself closer to your goal.
What next?
Taking Responsibility
This is Principle One in Mark McGregor’s 10 Principles of Leadership and Life and for good reason. ‘If it’s going to be, it’s up to me. This means taking the initiative and feeling like the driver in your life (with well-balanced wheels). This ultimately means taking responsibility for your future and driving it in the direction of your vision. Responsibility is your ability to respond to your Wheel of Life insights so, while the exercise is still fresh in your mind, ask yourself the following set of questions:
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Voila, you now have a clearer life vision!
So why would I still need a coach?
You can certainly work through this exercise alone, but if you want to see awesome results a good coach will:
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5 Exercises and Examples
Practical applications and examples of the uses of the wheel of life.
Explore the uses of the Wheel of Life
The Wheel of Life is one of life coaching’s most valuable tools.
Part of its strength is its flexibility; the wheel can easily be tailored to the client (Byrne, 2005).
Once ready, it can be used in sessions or alone to:
- Build trust — between client and coach to share personal issues
- Create a picture — of overall life satisfaction
- Prioritize and set goals — based on client scoring and client-coach reviews
- Demonstrate coaching success — to understand what has worked well and what requires additional focus
- Perform a check-in — during or outside of a session to understand the current position
- Understand problems — ongoing or temporary issues and sources of stress
- Open the session — either with individuals or a group
- Review goals — the client has set over the short or long term and ask if they enhance overall life satisfaction
Applying the Wheel of Life
Professor Greg Whyte describes using The Wheel of Success in his book Achieve the Impossible (2015).
As a sports coach, Whyte has worked with many high-profile British celebrities, including David Walliams, Davina McCall, and John Bishop, to prepare them to embark upon endurance challenges, raising essential money for the UK Comic and Sport Relief Charities.
Working closely with his ‘athletes,’ Whyte prepares them physically and mentally for the challenge ahead. He used the wheel to “quickly and easily identify areas of strength and weakness and track how they change throughout a challenge” before clearly defining what success looks like (Whyte, 2015).
Set short-term goals
Rather than reaching for long-term goals, it can be useful to set shorter-term ones.
The Wheel of Life can capture and display not only where you are now, but where you want to be at a future date.
For example, the green line added to the diagram below defines a mid-way point to longer-term life goals.
Use Socratic questioning to explore levels of satisfaction
The Wheel of Life works on multiple levels. Firstly, it allows the user to focus on how life feels. Secondly, it provides a means to understand each category, what is wrong, and what can be improved.
Use your coaching skills to work through what the completed Wheel of Life means at both levels.
Socratic questioning – using focused, open questions to unpack beliefs – can be an ideal way to challenge why a category receives its score and how it and overall life satisfaction can be changed.
Mindfulness
A brief mindfulness session can root the client in the present and ensure readiness to objectively review the scores in the Wheel of Life before identifying the next steps.
Our 3-Step Mindfulness Worksheet can help attain a suitable state of mind, ground yourself, and prepare for exploration.
How to Use The Wheel of Life (Instructions)
- Ask your client to review the 8 categories on their Life Balance Wheel. If necessary they can split or rename category segments to add in something that is missing or make it more meaningful for them. See this Wheel of Life Categories article for ideas and examples.
- Ask them to rank their level of satisfaction with each area of their life by drawing a curved line across each segment (see image for example). Scoring is between 1 (very dissatisfied) and 10 (fully satisfied). TIP: It can be helpful to demonstrate how to draw the line and add each score to their wheel.
- The perimeter of the circle represents their “Wheel of Life”. Ask your client to look at their completed wheel and ask, “If this was your Wheel of Life, would it be a bumpy ride?”
- Coach your client around their learnings from their Coaching Wheel.
- Identify at least one action for your client to work on to improve their score in one area of the wheel – and thus improve their life balance.
So, how does the Wheel of Life Coaching Tool Work?
In this busy world, it can be hard to know how we feel. We may look at our lives and say, “Oh yes, I’m happy”. But when we get into the detail, there are often dis-satisfactions and areas that can be improved.
This tool works because it gives a fast overview of how satisfied a client is with their life. The visual scores enable both client and coach to see which life areas the client feels good about—and which may need some work.
Ideally, the coach will then dig deeper into the results using coaching questions to discover what specifically is getting in the way of a client’s ease and happiness. The next step is often to brainstorm and come up with an action plan.
Then, when action planning, a client can prioritize and begin with the areas of their life that have the lowest scores. The goal is to identify actions to raise their satisfaction levels.
How to use The Wheel of Life in Coaching (with 11 examples)
I believe the Life Balance Wheel is the most flexible tool in any coach’s toolbox. It demonstrates first-hand the power of coaching. And it can also be used as a check-in tool throughout the coaching relationship.
The wheel also makes a great handout for workshops and can be adapted (through labeling the wheel segments differently, or simply asking coaching questions to delve deeper) to almost any coaching situation—and there are many more ideas below.
Here are 11 ways to use the Wheel of Life in your coaching practice:
- With a prospective client. Often potential clients are unclear on exactly what they want a coach to help them with. Sometimes prospective clients may be shy to share personal issues with someone they’ve only just met. The life balance wheel is a great tool to build trust in the coaching process. It gives an overview of how satisfied the client is with their life and also demonstrates the power of coaching and self-inquiry.
- To set and prioritize goals. Help clients decide which areas they’d like to set goals around. These are usually, but not always, the life wheel areas with lower satisfaction scores. The satisfaction scores can also be used to prioritize which goals to work on first. You may also like this SMART Goals Special Report. PDF
- Demonstrate progress and the power of coaching. I do a Wheel of Life with all new clients. Then I do another Coaching Wheel with them after about 3 months. The client’s life satisfaction scores have almost always increased, sometimes dramatically. This makes the life wheel a great way to demonstrate progress in a coaching relationship! For more details read A Simple 3 Step Process to Measure Coaching Progress.
- As a Life Check-in. The Life Balance Wheel makes a great tool to “check-in” with how people are doing. This can be how they’re feeling about their life today, this week, or month. And once the client knows how to complete the Wheel of Life, they can use it themselves to see what areas of their life might need a tweak.
- As a diagnostic tool to look for sources of stress or dissatisfaction. When a client feels unhappy, frustrated, or down, the Wheel of Life scores makes a great starting point for discovering what might be bothering them.
- In a coaching program. Any time you start a coaching program with a client – whether it’s a group or individual coaching – the Life Balance Wheel is a great way to “take stock” of a participant’s current life situation. For example, we use a version of the coaching wheel called “Brighten Up Your Life” at the beginning of our Renew You, Love Your Life Coaching Program.
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- Use it in Workshops. The Life Balance Wheel makes an excellent introduction to any life coaching workshop. It’s also a great tool to help clients understand where their stress is coming from in a stress management workshop. You may like this article that helps coaches run a short workshop using the life wheel.
- Use the Life Balance Wheel to help a client envision how they would like their life to be. Using the 8 key Wheel of Life categories, your client can write in each wheel segment what they would like their life to look like. They could also draw or cut out and paste pictures into each life wheel segment.
- Include a Life Wheel In your new client’s welcome packet! The Life Balance Wheel makes a great tangible coaching tool for clients to complete before starting their coaching sessions with you. Coaches can then review the life wheel results and coach clients deeply in the very first session! That’s why we include the Wheel of Life (with instructions) in our top-selling Coaching Welcome Packet!
- The Coaching Wheel can be used as a way to “test” which goals are most meaningful for a client. Ask the client to score each of their goals according to whether it improves their satisfaction in each of the 8 life wheel categories.
- Customize the Wheel and adapt it to whatever thorny problem your client is having! Simply grab a blank coaching wheel and ask them to add the 8 biggest things stressing them out right now. Then score out of 10 on how stressful each thing is. Or try asking your client to label the segments with 8 key things that make them a good mom/dad/leader/friend. Then they score themselves according to how well they think they are doing in each area and wrap up by creating an action plan to move forwards.
Coaching Questions for The Wheel of Life
There are endless ways to explore the Wheel of Life Exercise results with your client. You could choose to look at their life overall and how it feels. Or you can delve into one or more specific segments to get to the source of any issues identified. And/or you can also brainstorm actions to raise their scores – for just a few ideas.
Simply use your coaching skills to coach your client more deeply around their answers. It can be helpful to use the GROW model. Ask your client for a G – Goal for the wheel segment/area you want to improve. Then explore the R – Reality of that situation. Next brainstorm some O – Options and finally agree on what client W – Will Do.
Here are 12 Wheel of Life Coaching Questions to Help:
- How do you feel about your life as you look at your Wheel?
- Are there any surprises for you?
- How do you currently spend time in these areas?
- How would you like to spend time in these areas?
- What would make that a score of 10?
- What would a score of 10 looks like?
- Which of these categories would you most like to improve?
- How could you make space for these changes in your life?
- What help and support might you need from others to make changes and be more satisfied with your life?
- And what change do you want to make first?
- What is the smallest step you could take to get started?
- If there was one key action that would begin to bring everything into balance, what would it be?
How and why to customize the Life Balance Wheel?
Often what holds our clients back is a lack of conscious awareness about a situation. This might be how they feel or how they’re getting in their way. So, while the Wheel of Life Exercise is usually used for life balance; a blank wheel can be used to understand almost any situation more deeply. And once your client is more aware of how they feel – and the factors at play in their current situation – you can coach them to identify actions or goals to improve it.
How to Customise the Coaching Wheel:
- First get yourself a brandable, free version of the customizable Blank Coaching Wheel.
- Next, decide the topic you’d like to explore with your client.
- Then, using a blank coaching wheel, ask your client to add a title to the top of the page eg. My Stress Wheel, Leadership Wheel, (Find a) Relationship Wheel, etc.
- Then ask your client to label the 8 blank wheel segments according to their topic. Some ideas include:
- The 8 most important things to remember in this situation.
- The Top 8 contributing factors to the situation.
- 8 outcomes they are hoping for.
- The 8 areas they need to—or would like to work on.
- Then ask your client to rate each segment. What they rate will depend on the topic – some ideas include the level of importance/satisfaction/dissatisfaction/comfort/progress, etc. with each of the 8 areas.
- Then choose an area to explore more deeply, or brainstorm actions with them to move forwards.
3 Specific Examples of How to Use the Coaching Wheel Differently
- Promotion Wheel: Help your clients get that promotion!
- Ask your client to identify 8 key areas they need to get their promotion.
- Tip: Your client may need to do some pre-work to identify necessary skills/knowledge. For example, online research, talking to their boss, or reviewing the job specification.
- Next, ask your client to score how close they are to being seen as fully competent in each area.
- Then help your client devise an action plan to
- Raise their competency levels in the areas they fall short and
- Highlight their competence and strengths in areas where they already excel.
- Stress Wheel:
- Help clients identify their sources of stress by labeling the wheel with 8 sources of stress in their life.
- Next, ask your client how much out of 10 each area “stresses them out”.
- Finally, wrap up by brainstorming an action plan, or identifying 1-3 actions they can commit to, that will reduce their stress.
- Parenting Wheel: Help clients prioritize which areas of their parenting to focus on.
- Ask clients to label a blank wheel with 8 things they consider important to be a good parent.
- Then ask them to score how well they are doing in each area.
- Finally, develop an action plan starting with those with the lowest (or even boosting the highest first!) scores.
A Take-Home Message
We all deserve balance in our lives. We need time for family and friends, motivation to learn and play, and energy to develop our careers and passions.
When we are knocked by the changing situations we face, it is vital to find a way back and seek equilibrium.
Although an imbalanced life can provide a path to excellence or mastery in a specific segment of life, it cannot persist without impacting enduring life goals and overall wellbeing.
Life coaching can restore that balance by building a bridge between where you are now and where you want to be. The Wheel of Life provides an excellent tool to visualize the gaps that require focus and attention and the changes that need to happen.
Set personal goals that take you toward your hopes and dreams and give the Wheel of Life a try by yourself, with a life coach, or with your clients. Use it to build a balanced life based on your unique and distinct desires, passions, and loves to provide a sense of completeness, satisfaction, and deep happiness.
Revisit the wheel over the months to come and update where you are and the goals you set. See it as a health check to understand the well-being of your life.
