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:
- 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.
- 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…
- What could be improved that I already have in this area?
- What more do I want in this area?
- 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,
A very interesting exercise Bekki.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I like this very visual approach to reflecting on our lives. Thanks for sharing the idea – I might give it a go today for fun and see if it feels right for me. One more sleep to New Years! Xo
LikeLiked by 1 person
There’s so many approaches we can take. I like this one mostly because it makes me look at all areas – the wheel I can actually leave myself, but I agree, different things work better for different people, so always goo to have a go. As for that one more sleep, don’t know where to be excited or scared
LikeLiked by 1 person
I love this idea Bekki, although on the whole I am very satisfied with my life there are definitely some areas that need attention! I like the idea of looking at all areas not just the one that we have goals for. x
LikeLike
I agree, I’m mostly happy and maybe the idea of goals feels odd for some areas, but asking how satisfied am I helps us recognise where we could go a little further or work a little harder. And yes, sometimes a lot harder 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
What a wonderful idea, I’ll havw to keep this around to try at sometime 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Glad you like it. Hope you find it useful when you give it a try.
LikeLike
Using this method would certainly give us a very comprehensive look at the many aspects of our lives. At my age, I’ve generally got where I want to be (children grown and pursuing their own careers/ my career over and done with etc.). But I do still have personal goals, and goals I’d like to see my children attain. I realise that ‘Health’ could well be an issue in the coming years, too. So I suppose I could use the model for some things. It’s an interesting idea, anyway. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I agree. Always important to have goals whatever age you are and the wheel is a good starting point, but we should all mould it to suit ourselves.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Will try to do that…
LikeLike