How to Use the Wheel of Life for Goal Setting

Table of Contents

Has life been bumpier than usual? Do you feel things are out of balance, causing an inconsistent ride through the journey we call life?

I get it. I truly do. Tony Robbins said, “Life doesn’t happen to you; it happens for you.” Meaning, it’s all part of the journey, and there are lessons to learn along the way to help you grow.

However, here’s the thing, you can help course-correct with your own inner GPS that’ll help smooth things out a bit and co-create your destiny. Don’t believe me? I was skeptical too, but once you dip your toes into the realm of possibilities, magical things happen!

How do you bring more awareness, mindfulness, and balance into your life to co-create with God (the Universe/Source/etc.) your soul’s purpose—your destiny

You say YES and take action!

There have been tumultuous times throughout my life. I had to learn hard lessons, experience pain, grief, and so much more, and without those experiences and the willingness to grow through what I was going through, I wouldn’t be who I am today.

One of the tools I utilize to help give me clarity and perspective is the Wheel of Life. I learned about the wheel when enrolled in my first coaching certification program. Immediately I was intrigued and saw how beneficial it would be to use in my life. It quickly became a resource that I would refer back to whenever things in my life felt off-kilter or as a check-in point as I worked towards my goals.

Perhaps you’re wondering who created this concept and why is it relevant? Well, let’s discuss!

WHO CREATED THE WHEEL OF LIFE

The late Paul J. Meyer developed The Wheel of Life concept, and he founded the Success Motivation® Institute in 1960. He was a trailblazer in the coaching industry by creating various programs to help people achieve their goals, manage time and improve their leadership skills.

The idea of The Wheel of Life is to help give you a “bird’s eye” view of your life so you can quickly assess how balanced your life currently is and can be utilized to determine areas for improvement when goal-setting.

HOW TO USE THE WHEEL OF LIFE

How you fill out and utilize the wheel is entirely up to you as there are some variations for you to consider, but don’t worry, I’ll provide you with one option that I have found to work the best for myself and my clients.

STEP 1

To start, you need to take inventory of your life and its important facets. Take a look at the areas of your life below that may be relevant to you, and choose the ones to add to your customized Wheel of Life wheel that we will create in the next step.

Money
Romance (Love or Spouse, Significant Other)
Emotional
Intellect
Health
Spiritual
Home (Physical Environment)
Career
Family
Friends
Philanthropy
Passions (Fun, Hobbies, Recreation)
Personal Development

Ideally, you want to choose 6-12 areas of focus. Either write down or mentally note which ones you’re choosing to use, and let’s move on to the next step.

STEP 2

Next, you need to create your customized wheel. To do this, you can grab a pen, pencil, and a ruler to draw one yourself, create one in Canva, or print out this free Wheel of Life tool from The Coaching Tools Compay.com.

To create one yourself, you’ll first draw a circle. If you have one lying around, you can use a math compass; otherwise, grab a bowl or plate from your cupboard to trace a circle from it to draw the wheel.

From there, you’ll need to create spokes, like a bicycle wheel, in your circle to represent each segment of your life that you are choosing to focus on to bring more balance into your life.

When done drawing the spokes, you’ll take one word from your list and write it on the outside of the wheel above the segment in which it represents.

Next, draw ten small dashed lines up each spoke, which resembles a ruler. Ideally, you want these dashes to be evenly apart vertically, and the same for each spoke going around your wheel.

The last part of this step is to number the dashes from 1 to 10. One will begin nearest the center of the wheel, and ten will finish towards the outer part of the wheel. When done, move on to the next step.

STEP 3

In this next step, you will need to reflect on your life. I recommend doing each segment separately to carefully consider how you feel about this particular area of your life.

Choose one section of the wheel and score how you would rate that area of your life on a scale of one to ten, with one being the lowest (very dissatisfied) to ten being the highest (very satisfied). When done with one segment, move on to the next until complete.

Some people like to connect the segments to form a visual similar to a spider web, and others enjoy drawing a line across where they rate the area of their life and color it in the spoke, like a pie chart. The choice is yours, but it’ll help give you a visual of how imbalanced your life currently is at this moment.

When done, let’s move on to the next step.

STEP 4

As you review your life using The Wheel of Life tool you created, you can see areas that are doing exceptionally well, others that are making progress, and, unfortunately, areas where more attention is needed.

Of course, continue to set goals in areas that are doing well as you don’t want to neglect them; however, when it comes to setting goals, you want to focus on the areas that are doing poorly to help bring more balance into your life.

Look through your Wheel of Life tool and choose which areas you are committed to improving and what score you are working towards when determining your goals. For example, you have a 3 in friendships but want to bump it to a 6 to start. Write the number you desire in the wheel segment to hold yourself accountable. Do this for each area of your life, and when done, we’ll move on to the final step.

HOW TO USE THE WHEEL OF LIFE TO SET GOALS

Let’s continue from where we left off and move on to step 5!

STEP 5

Now that you know what areas of your life are important to you, you have rated where you feel they are currently in your life and scored how high you would like to improve them over time, like the following year; it’s time to set goals.

This tool is such a powerful way to set goals and help you determine if you’re making any progress throughout the process. Something to consider is if you’re working towards a 90-day goal, then each month, reflect and do a new wheel of life to see how you would rate each area of your life so you can see the progress. If you’re not making progress or if you’ve gone backward (lower than you previously had), this will show you it’s time to change things up. Which could mean you need to get support from a coach, like myself, to help you achieve your goals, find an accountability partner, or modify what you’re doing so you’re seeing progress.

Author Profile

Sarah Meere

Executive Editor

Sarah looks after corporate enquiries and relationships for UKFilmPremieres, CelebEvents, ShowbizGossip, Celeb Management brands for the MarkMeets Group. Sarah works for numerous media brands across the UK.

Email https://markmeets.com/contact-form/