The Wheel of Life — The Framework That Helps Me Gain Better Clarity in Life (with Free Template)
This anxiety feeling kicked in as if I was stagnated, and not sure which life direction I was heading to. This was me in 2021, but I finally got more clarity in a call with a friend, it had changed my life since then.
About Andrew Chu — Founder and CEO of Outo, an outdoor experience online travel agency providing curated journeys empowering young professionals to save time and energy for the desired lifestyle.
Background
After my first blogpost My Year-End Review 2022 was published two weeks ago, I received messages from friends who wanted to learn more about the framework I used for year end review — the Wheel of Life. Therefore, I’d like to cover this topic in a bit more depth about the concept, and the powerful tool I use to help me track and reflect (which you could find the link of a free template down below). I will keep your reading time under 7 minutes this time, if you read fast, I promise.
Table of Content
1. What is the Wheel of Life
2. Identifying Your Priority
3. The tool to act, track, and reflect
4. Final Takeaway In mid 2021, I started WFH due to the Covid outbreak in Taiwan. I thought this was the beginning of achieving work-life balance given that I had more flexibility at home, until I ended up working non-stop as I knew how to excel in my job but wasn’t sure about the other end. An emerging anxiety began to grow louder, as I self-hypnotizing with my work accomplishments but knowing there’s a bigger picture I’m missing out there.
I finally find the answer after catching up with an old friend Rybo, who’s a certified Change Leader while running his successful coaching business. During the session, I was introduced with the concept the “Wheel of Life,” a widely used coaching tool designed to help one become aware of their current life situation and identify areas for improvement. It consists of eight distinct areas as follows:
The Areas in the Wheel of Life
- Inner: I often use the metaphor of “software” of the person to describe how we operate, and it refers to our inner thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
- Physical: The “hardware” of the person, and it relates to our physical health and fitness, such as diet, exercise, sleep, and lifestyle.
- Family: It covers a person’s relationships with family members, and loved ones.
- Career: It pertains to a person’s professional development, job satisfaction, career progression, and the relationships with stakeholders at the job.
- Economic: It refers to a person’s financial stability, money management on cash inflow and outflow, and investment portfolio.
- Community: It involves a person’s relationship with friends, participation in social activities, community projects, and volunteers.
- Adventure: It explains a person’s experiences in exploring new places, trying new things, and taking risks. E.g. traveling to a new country, or signing up for a half-marathon.
- Impact: It relates to a person’s positive impact on the world (community) through their actions and contributions. This could be as minimal form as an enlightening coffee chat with a friend, or devoting to volunteer.
- Growth: It focuses on a person’s growth in knowledge, and self-improvement on respective areas of life above. This could be learning a quote you read from a book, or learnings from the mistakes you made at work or investment.
Hold on a sec! Andrew, did you just write nine areas instead of eight? Correct. I believe the spirit of a framework isn’t just about framing your thoughts, but providing guidance tailored to your needs. That’s why I added a new spectrum called “Growth”. This allows me to reflect on the growth not just in the form of eight areas, but growth in general. After recognizing each area of the Wheel of Life, the next step is to identify your priorities.
“You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.” — Oprah Winfrey
Identify Your Priority
After recognizing the areas, I gave myself a rough score (from 0 to 100) on how well I did in 2021 (since it’s the beginning of 2022), and I was asked to reflect on the biggest challenges.
It would be very challenging to improve all the areas at once, so I needed to set a priority. Rybo asked me, “How do you think each area impacts one another?” I started drawing arrows to identify the relationship of each area (as seen below, arrows that point from one area to another indicate that it is impacted by another area), and I came to this priority.
Tier 1 Area: Inner and Physical — My ultimate foundation for life. Without mental and physical strength, I couldn’t build good relationships with my family, friends or stakeholders at work, let alone adventures in life.
Tier 2 Area: Family and Community — My anchor and support system, who accompany me through the ups and downs in life.
Tier 3 Area: Career, Growth, Economic — The resources I need in order to advance closer to my personal vision and goals.
Tier 4 Area: Adventure, Impact — My vision of pursuing various experiences in life, and to generate positive impact to people around me.
The definition of each area and its priority could vary from time to time based on your circumstances and life goals. And it’s okay to change. The most crucial thing is to understand “what matters to you,” so that it help us to identify the next step — taking actions and reflect on our progress.
The Tool to Act, Track, Reflect
To Act
Once having a better understanding of the priorities, I took action to start spinning the Wheel. I wrote down my desired state for each area on Notion and identified actionable goals to work towards over the next month. For example, I decided to meditate at least four times a week so I could overcome my horrible insomnia I experienced since the end of 2021 due to the stress from work.
🌀 Inner Area
Ideal state: I would like to harness my mind, live consciously and to achieve a sense of peacefulness.
- Action 1: I will start doing meditation every morning I wake up
- Action 2: I will record my feeling and thoughts every day
- Action 3: I will start reflecting on my day, my mood, and my thoughts
💪 Physical Area
Ideal state: I would start hitting the gym twice a week, and live a healthier lifesytle
- Action 1: I will start going to the gym every Tuesday and Thursday before work.
- Action 2: I will start recording what time I wake up and sleep
- Action 3: I will start recording what I ate for each meal.
To Track
I created a tracking sheet on Notion to help me record the new habit I wanted to build, and I would tick off the checkboxes once I completed it. I went a step further to quantify my mood by rating a daily score of 0 to 5. The key to forming this habit was to master the art of showing up, and after a month, my improvement plan evolved from planned rituals to auto-pilot routines. I gradually applied the same approach to other areas of my life and began to stack up 1–2 new habits, and the effects began to compound. I started to see my Life Wheel spinning.
To Reflect
At the end of each month, I pulled up the sheet to see how many days I had ticked off for the habits I wish to build. I analyzed my “show-up rate” from the previous month to identify the “small improvement” I made, and things that could have done better. Over time, I witnessed an interesting trend line of my mood score. Surprisingly my sleep quality got better, and my body weight had also decreased overtime. Witnessing the progress, I began working on other areas. I started seeing my Life Wheel spinning faster than ever.
Final Takeaways
To summarize, the Wheel of Life is a tool designed to identify the elements of your life, its desired state, and help you prioritize to take action accordingly. You could use free tools like Notion to track your actions, and help you reflect on your improvement overtime.
The best part? My anxiety faded away as I begin to work on the priorities and gaining more balances instead of just focusing on excelling at work. Moreover, I obtained five new habits by the end of 2022. As I tracked and reflected on my progress, I realized the same strategy could be applied on an organizational level. By understanding the priorities, act, track, and reflect, it help our business to improve toward our desired business goals.
How would you tailor your Wheel of Life? How does your priority looks like? Check out the free downloadable Notion template to become the curator of your ideal life.
Thanks for spending 7 minutes with me (shhhhh…), I hope you found this article useful. This year, I want to be more active in writing topics I’m passionate about, covering career, entrepreneurship, personal growth, and life in general. If you want to be notified by my upcoming articles, follow my medium account, or subscribe to my newsletter.
Call To Action
Check out Rybo Chen’s Instagram where he shares insightful Lifestyle Design & Personal Growth content that would enlighten you daily!
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