First of all, it’s important to establish what’s realistic when aiming to improve your life. It isn’t realistic for every aspect of your life to be seeped in total happiness and success. Can you imagine how exhausting it would be to be over-achieving in every aspect of your life? Is there even enough time to fulfill every single area so fully and so perfectly? Just the pressure to aspire to that is enough to put you on a downward spiral of self-contempt. It just isn’t healthy.
But that isn’t to say that we must always be slightly disappointed in one area of our lives. Not at all. What we’re looking for is balance. We want a similar contentment across the board. When one thing is lacking you begin to feel something is missing from your life. You might feel discouraged, disenchanted or just generally unexcited by life.
Sometimes we know exactly what we need to work on and sometimes we do not. Either way, this exercise can help you!
STEP ONE
Welcome to the wheel of life!! I’ve drawn this out using my kids felt tips and a biro to show how easy it is to get down at home. You don’t need any fancy work sheet. It doesn’t need to be beautiful. You just need to draw eight equal(ish) lines to represent the eight main areas of life. BUSINESS/CAREER, FAMILY, POSSESSIONS, PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT, INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS, SPIRITUALITY, FINANCIAL and HEALTH/FITNESS.
STEP TWO
Rate out of ten how CONTENT you are with each area of your life. It’s important to look at how content you are and NOT how much you have of it. For example you might own absolutely nothing but be happy with that. We’re not striving to have an abundance of everything here, we’re striving to be content. Likewise, if you are someone who is not spiritual at all – don’t feel bad about that. It’s not important to be spiritual; its important that you’re happy with that. If you have a bit of a nagging sense that’s something you’d like to explore more of – then reflect that in your rating.
STEP THREE
Join up the co-ordinates and color in the wheel. Look at how your wheel looks. Is it greatly unbalanced? Is there a general sense of balance? Is one area vividly out of place? Write down the areas that scored the lowest on your wheel. Now you know what you need to work on.
STEP FOUR
Now it’s time to do the work and that involves questions. As always.
- What would it feel like to raise the number of my lacking areas? This question is important because it builds your motivation to make changes. It helps you establish what it is your lacking in this area and what it is that will improve your contentment. In the photographed example, the person might say to raise the number in health & fitness and personal development would boost their self-esteem enabling them to get more out of life. It would feel happy, exciting and wonderful.
- How would it affect other life areas? This is really important as it sets up your priorities and could possibly alter your entire perspective. For example, suppose you rated your career at 2 and your family life at a solid 9. Would improving your work situation lower your family rating? Are you prepared for that? At this stage you could become more content with your career situation raising the number instantly . This would create balance via new perspective rather than change. Likewise, if you think the family situation may lower by only 1 mark, but your business and career would rise by 5 – perhaps creating a step up in career would be your next step creating a broader scale of balance.
- What do I need to do now? This is the big question. It’s a question of establishing where you are now, where you would like to be next and the steps in between. It’s all about goal setting and SMART goal setting is our post in the next fortnight. So if you’re struggling with this stage make sure you tune in for our next post. Alternatively you can comment and ask for help or contact me via e-mail.
Best Wishes.
HAPPINESS ADVICE FROM A FOUR YEAR OLD
Being naughty makes you sad. Do the right thing to feel good.
MOTIVATIONAL SONG OF THE WEEK