While my reflections on the last year have identified many goals I want to pursue in 2016, I’m also finding goals in other ways. In the past I’ve been asked to share my methods, and since so many of us are thinking about goal setting at this time of year, I thought I’d share the other major tool I use to identify goals; the wheel of life.

The wheel of life

The wheel of life is used to create a visual representation of our current life balance. Personally I like to modify the standard wheel (shown below). The changes I make will depend on why I’m using the wheel, but, for example, I often split the friends and family area into three: friends, family and my children. I also have a separate segment for creativity.

To create a visual representation of your current life balance:

1. Score on a one to ten scale (10 = totally satisfied, 1 = totally dissatisfied) how happy you are with each life area identified on the wheel – or area that you have chosen. When you do this, score how fulfilled you truly feel, not how content you think you ought to be with what you have.
2. Considering the centre of the wheel as 0 and the edge of the wheel as 10, plot your satisfaction scores on the wheel.

3. Shade in the inner wheel, you have now created, to create a visual representation of how smoothly your life is currently running.

The idea is, of course, that we work towards creating a nice big smooth wheel. But I confess I never draw a wheel, just use it to remind me of the different areas. However, if you’re using this idea for the first time, or are a very visual person, creating the wheel and shading is likely to be far more beneficial than just making a list.

Using the wheel of life to identify goals

To use the wheel of life to identify goals, I first do the life balance exercise above then for each segment I ask…

1. What could be improved that I already have in this area?
2. What more do I want in this area?
3. What do I want less of in this area?

These three simple questions usually throw up a whole heap of possibilities of goals I could set. Even if specific goals aren’t obvious, it’s obvious when an areas needs improvement – so the goal becomes to work out how to improve it.

I hadn’t done this exercise for ages and it was interesting to see my scores this year and very helpful identifying possible goals. Let me know if you use it, I’d love to hear how you got on.

Wishing you a Happy, Healthy and Successful  2016,