Finding balance in life 

Using the wheel of life 

“It's about finding that balance where you have one foot in the familiar, one foot in the unfamiliar.

If you have two feet in the unfamiliar it's overwhelming.

If you have two feet in the familiar then there's just boredom.

It's about having both.” ― Humble the Poet

The idea of creating balance in our lives is certainly not a new concept. But I truly believe, that finding balance is so important for our modern day to day lives.

Finding Balance is key for our personal development, so that we take the time away from our busy schedules, technology, social media and learn to spend time with ourselves, and time working on ourselves, in order to benefit our mental, emotional and physical health.

Why am I struggling to find balance in my life?

The reason we struggle with finding balance is that we allow our busy schedules to take over our lives without being very conscious as to how we are spending our precious time.  Our current lives are filled with so much technology, so many distractions, therefore the ability to stay on top of everything, keeping up to date with our social lives and work lives is increasingly getting harder whilst the demands are getting greater. 

While some areas of your life 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.

So how do we obtain balance in our lives?

A balanced life requires achieving optimal health in all aspects of our lives. We all long to be healthy and happy, after all what is the point in working so hard towards a long and healthy life, if you cannot enjoy it?  Being overwhelmed – unable to connect and balance the essential dimensions of your life – can leave you feeling out of control and a bit miserable. A really wonderful way to find balance is by looking at your life through The Wheel of Life.

Picture your wheel of life as a wheel, each part of the wheel representing a crucial component.  Examples being: relationships, career, health, leisure, personal growth, spirituality etc. Creating the wheel is a great way to separate certain areas of your life, making you able to see which areas of your life may be thriving, and which areas of your life that may be being left behind.

What is the Wheel of Life?

This is an example of a wheel of life that you can create easily. I have chosen options to begin with, but if you have other areas that regularly use your time and energy, you can create a chart using these different options, whichever may suit your values and what is most important and relevant to you.

Examples would be - 

• Money & Finance
• Career & Work
• Health & Fitness
• Fun & Recreation
• Environment
• Community 
• Family & Friends
• Partner & Love
• Personal Growth & Learning
• Spirituality 

Albert Einstein said, “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

The Wheel of life Tutorial

The Wheel of Life is a great indicator of where your time and energy is spent. We can use this information to continue gathering data about who we believe ourselves to be, and where we want our lives to go.  We can also use our life wheel to make decisions that will bring our lives into a state of balance and harmony. 

This exercise requires an honest, non-judgmental assessment of where your focus is, most of the time, at this stage of your life. If you use the wheel of life regularly you will begin to notice which areas may need to be shifted, and you will start to notice the differences that making these shifts have on your daily life. It is about being honest with yourself with each section and really thinking about them individually.

The Wheel of Life is to help you with the first step of any transformation - awareness.  It is is not designed to make you feel bad about the areas of your life that you may score lower. It is a chance for you to focus on your core values and where you would like to see changes.

Tips on using The Wheel Of Life

• Think about how you satisfied you are with your life in each section and colour that in, making sure to be honest and realistic. Are your relationships fulfilling you? Does your work satisfy you? Are you happy with your level of personal growth?
• So if you feel really satisfied with work, perhaps colour that segment all the way up to 9.  If you feel dissatisfied with growth, perhaps colour that segment up to 3.
• You can then use a different colour to mark where you would like this to be - i.e be realistic, if you are at a 3 don't aim for 10! 
• Once you have gone through each section choose one or two areas that you would like to work on and make changes to. Then you can create 3 small goals to make this happen.  

Tip 1

to not feel overwhelmed - choose one area you would like to focus on each month and then focus on the 3 small goals that will help you with this.  So each month you are looking at a different area of your life. 

Tip 2

Do this with a friend!  Then you can hold each other accountable each month.

Journaling Questions for the Wheel of Life:

1.  What are my observations after creating my Wheel?
2.  What areas are my current priorities in my life?
3.  What areas do I want to be priorities in my life?
4.  What actions can I take to achieve this?
5.  Who could help me to make this easier?

The Mel Robbins Reset 

Mel Robbins created the reset idea, which you can use alongside these questions. You can look at each section of the pie chart and you can begin to ask yourself ‘How am I doing?’

Each section can be answered simply by this system - 

1. Depleted (Hopeless, Lost, Why bother?)
2. Meh (Low, You know what to do, but can’t manage)
3. Fine (Feeling of being on auto pilot)
4. Good (Have energy, Still room for improvement)
5. Energised (Totally filling me up, excited)

Once you have aligned a number to each of your pie sections, take some time to take them in and write down a little information on each one, describing why you may feel this way. An example of this could be: 

Health & Fitness - Good - I have energy to workout but could and should improve my diet. 

Career/Work - Depleted/Meh - Feeling lost and not sure what to do to progress my career, but not feeling completely hopeless.

So how can I begin to make changes to find more balance?

A great way to begin to make these changes is to start by plotting small achievable goals that you can focus on. For health and fitness, you could look at where you could make small changes to your day to day diet. Maybe you need to prepare food for your week so that you can make healthier decisions, rather than last minute grab and go foods.

Work could possibly be taking up huge parts of your life, you may be thriving in this area but perhaps you are not taking time out for your social life/relationships, and these parts of your life feel unsatisfied. You could perhaps look at how you are working - are you making the most of your time or are you distracted?  How could you work smarter not harder in order to find more time for loved ones?  What boundaries could you place on yourself to find more time to switch off.

To create a balanced life we must become self-aware. Most of us are pretty un-aware and we are living our lives full of excuses! "I just don't have time!"  or "I'll do it later."  By creating tools like the wheel of life, we are beginning to make meaningful changes to our lives. My blog post “Lack of self-awareness and how to fix it”, is a great way of understanding how making the tools to help our awareness, will bring this altogether. 

It's important to learn to embrace life’s fluidity. Your wheel isn’t and will never be fixed. It's a fluid reflection of your life’s journey. As your life continues, your needs and satisfaction levels will evolve, similar to your core values. It's something really beneficial to revisit once a year to be able to see what changes have occurred and which need working on. Its about nurturing a life of fulfilment and satisfaction.