Building the Life You Want in 2021- The Wheel of Life

Posted on January 13, 2021 by Judy Xu, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.

2020 has been a year to remember. Looking forward to 2021 we want to chart a new course for our life and set ourselves up for true happiness, deep satisfaction and higher purpose.

The Wheel of Life is one of my favorite tools to use during year-end reflection and new-year goal setting. It helps us to clarify what matters most and identify priorities for improvement.

I would like to introduce the Wheel of Life with you, so you can focus all your energy on getting what you want to achieve in life. Indeed, your attitude determines your altitude. With a strong sense of purpose and a positive attitude towards life and work, you can achieve anything you set your mind to.

Introducing the Wheel of Life

The Wheel of Life is a multi-dimensional tool that helps us to identify what is important in life, where we stand today and what our objectives should be.

We can use it in a simple 5-Step process described below but of course you can also play with it.

Step 1. Chart Your Wheel: What are your Top Life Priorities?

Our first step is to define the 8 most important topics in our life and place them as labels on the eight dimensions of the The Wheel of Life.

You can select from the list below or choose important topics on your own. Draw up a Wheel of Life (or print and cut it out from this blog) and place your topics around the wheel.

Career Fitness/Exercise Mission/Values/Purpose
Creativity Fun/Recreation Personal Growth & Learning
Contribution Family/Friends Romance/Significant Other
Environment/Sustainability Happiness Social Impact
Fulfillment Health & Wellbeing Spirituality
Financial/Wealth Legacy Self-acceptance
Of course, you can also pick one specific theme such as your career and break that down into eight sub-topics for a more granular review of a specific theme.

Step 2. Self-assessment: Where are you relative to where you want to be?

Using a scale of 1-10 on the wheel, mark both where you are now for each dimension and where you would like to be by the end of 2021.

Observe how many gaps there are and what some of the biggest gaps are for a given topic.

Step 3. Focus Areas

Through your developed Wheel of Life, take a holistic view and identify the 1-3 focus areas for your 2021. Take consideration of what’s important to you and where some of the biggest gaps are.

Step 4. Action Plan

What exactly will you do to improve alignment and move forward towards where you want to be?
⦁ What mindset will help you up to achieve your goal?
⦁ Where can you source a deeper motivation and inspiration to commit to the goal?
⦁ What might be the potential hurdles you need to overcome?
⦁ What are the external resources that can support you for your goals?

Step 5. Accountability

How will you track progress and hold yourself accountable?

⦁ Develop your own framework of daily, weekly, monthly and annual reflection. Reflection helps us to keep on track towards our goal and be more intentional in our choice of actions.

⦁ Borrow Marshall Goldsmith’s 6 Questions that he himself and his CEO coachees are using for super success.
1. Did I do my best to increase my happiness?
2. Did I do my best to find meaning?
3. Did I do my best to be engaged?
4. Did I do my best to build positive relationships?
5. Did I do my best to set clear goals?
6. Did I do my best to make progress towards goal achievement?

⦁ Find an Accountability Partner to support you and hold you accountable in a regular review session.

⦁ Find a coach to support you to achieve your goals in 2021 and become a better version of yourself every day.

In summary, the Wheel of Life is a simple, yet useful tool to help us in our year-end review and planning for the new year. As a coach I use it with my clients and have found it to be both practical and powerful in our conversations. I encourage you to try it.

References:

ACE Wheel of Life by 7 Paths Forward

6 Questions that Will Set You Up to Be Super Successful” by Marshall Goldsmith