How to Create Your Own Wheel of Life
Posted on September 25, 2012 by Laura McGrath, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
I created my own version of the Wheel of Life coaching tool. Unique, individual, and more fun.
The Wheel of Life is a tool often used by life coaches. For the first year or so that I used it, I loved it. After that, I got a little restless and decided to mix it up. I created my own Wheel of Life, which is more individual and more fun.
Wheels of Life: What’s Already Out There
If you’ve never seen or used a wheel of life before, a quick google search can show you a number of different versions. I’m partial to the ones provided by The Coaches Training Institute:
Personal wheel – http://www.thecoaches.com/res/pdf/Personal-Assessment-Wheel.pdf
Professional wheel – http://www.thecoaches.com/res/pdf/tc-profwheel-Final.pdf
Creating Your Own Wheel of Life
If the categories provided on the standard wheels of life don’t speak to you, then I encourage you to create your own wheel. Here are some ideas to help you get started.
—What are the important areas in your life? What matters to you?
—What areas do you want to track and check in on?
—Pick ten adjectives to describe the life you dream of: perhaps each of those adjectives can become an area on your wheel of life.
—Pick ten images that capture how you want your life to be. Each image becomes a section of your wheel of life.
—Pick ten songs that express the different energies you want in your life. Each song can hint at a wheel of life area.
Using inspiration from what’s really important to you, music, images, etc., you have the tools to create your own wheel of life.
My Wheel of Life
My wheel changes over time. I check in on it once a month and journal a bit about each of the areas, where they’re at, and what I’d like to see change.
Right now, my wheel of life categories are:
—Joy and Doing Good in the World – to what extent is my life’s work bringing me joy and filling me with a sense of purpose, contribution, and service?
—Debt vs. Savings – what’s the financial picture my partner and I are seeing this month? In which direction is it moving?
—Sense of Possibility – do I feel like things are bubbling? Am I sensing opportunity? Is there enough space in my life for new ideas to arise?
—What’s My Part in this Partnership? – how well am I engaging with this ongoing inquiry of what it means to me to be a wife and a partner?
—Future Self – the future me, the woman I am becoming — where in my life am I sensing her presence? Am I continuing to move towards her essence?
—Here and Present, Being – am I showing up to my life? Or am I caught up in my thoughts, or caught up in the internet, or otherwise distracted in a way that keeps me from being alive and present to myself and those around me?
—Energy and Initiating – how are my energy levels? Do I have it in me to be the one who suggests and initiates activities? Am I active, or just reactive?
—Open, Honest, Loving, Caring Relationship – are my partner and I continuing to create and maintain this gorgeous love of ours?
—Mystery – am I willing to be surprised? Am I open to the synchronicities, beauty, and mystery around me? Am I engaging with the sacred and the unknown?
For me, the beauty of creating my own wheel of life is that this wheel inspires me and lights me up. It connects me again and again to what truly matters to me right now, and reminds me of what I am creating in the world.
What do you use to remind yourself of what matters to you? How do you engage, and re-engage, with the questions of how you want to live?
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Laura McGrath is an Ottawa-based life coach and therapist who works with clients all over the world. If you’d like to have a chat about how working with a coach can help you reconnect to what’s most important to you, Laura is more than happy to pick up the phone and have a conversation. Visit www.readyforchange.ca for more information.
