Wheel of Life – Create a Map of Your Priorities
You may have seen the Wheel of Life (also called Level 10 Life) activity before. And maybe you’ve even done this exercise in the past.
The way most people teach and guide this exercise though is a little different than the way I suggest you work on it.
Because here’s the thing – there are only 24 hours in a day and we’re constantly changing and growing, leveling up and setting new goals as we achieve the previous ones. With those two points in mind, I think it’s nearly impossible (and unreasonable to expect) to have 10’s in every aspect of your life at all times.
The traditional concept behind this exercise is to examine different areas of your life and rank them on a scale of one to ten (with one being the absolute worst and ten being beyond perfect). I like to take this exercise a step further, not only assessing where you currently are in life, but also using it as a tool to create actionable steps to move toward where you want to be.
Using the Wheel of Life to find balance
Even though I don’t think it’s realistic to reach a 10 in every aspect of your life at once, I do think this exercise is really important in helping you find a happy and healthy balance in your life. By working through this exercise, you identify not only where you have room to grow, but also celebrate where you’re successful!
You’ll have to make some decisions about what’s most important to you as you work through this exercise. If you haven’t already, I strongly encourage you to first work through the core values worksheet to help you prioritize as you begin to build your wheel.
Preparing for Self-Work
As with any other form of self-work (you might refer to it as personal development), this can be a difficult and demanding process, but it’s so worth it! (If you need a refresher on what self-work is and how it’s different from self-care, check out this post.)
In an ideal world, set aside several hours free of interruption for this activity. Create an environment where you can get quiet and go inside to ask tough questions and truly listen to the answers. (If this feels edgy to you, check out my Intuition 101 course and learn how to harness your intuition to remove self-doubt and stop second guessing yourself.)
In order to shift from your everyday life into this deep work, consider creating some space by practicing asana and pranayama (yoga poses and breathwork), taking a walk, or meditating before working on your Wheel of Life.
Also, make sure you are working in a space where you feel safe and comfortable. This type of work is best done in the privacy of your own home, not in a coffee shop or on public transportation.
Put on soothing music, white noise, or celebrate the silence. Get a cup of tea, grab your favorite pen or pencil, and settle in to do the work. (You’ll also need the Wheel of Life Worksheet (grab your copy in the box below), scrap paper or a journal, and colored pencils/highlighters or water colors.)
If you have little ones, you’ll want to work on this while they’re out of the house or napping and you can get a little quiet time to yourself.
It might feel like a lot to devote that sort of time to this exercise. Consider it an investment in a more relaxed, joyful, and balanced version of you.
While this exercise is easiest done in one sitting, you can absolutely break it up if you struggle to get a few hours of uninterrupted time or feel overwhelmed by the process. The best place to plan on breaking this up would be after you’ve created your framework. After that, based on your available time and/or tolerance, you may want to tackle one category at a time, or a few in each sitting.
Before getting started
Grab your copy using the box above and print out your Wheel of Life Exercise. I suggest printing on cardstock or heavy paper since this will be a document you’ll want to refer to often over a period of several months to a year. (I refresh my Wheel of Life annually as part of my birthday retreat.)
If you’re familiar with the Wheel of Life exercise, you may be accustomed to seeing ten categories whereas here there are only eight. There are a few reasons for that. First, I go back to it being unrealistic to expect everything in your life to be a 10 at all times. That gets even harder when you have ten categories of life you’re trying to “max out”.
The second reason there are only eight categories on this worksheet is because I want you to have as much room as possible to write in each compartment on the wheel. (More on that in the next section.)
Finally, this is a living document that will change as you update it many times throughout your life. By only using eight categories you’re able to really focus on the areas and items that are most important to you right now.
Framing out your Wheel of Life
Once you have your Wheel of Life Worksheet printed, you’ll need to pick your eight categories.
If you’ve already done the Core Values exercise, you should have a good idea of what categories will be the highest priority for you. If you haven’t, either head over and work on that exercise first, or pick the categories that intuitively seem like they’re most important to the life you want to live (vs. the one you currently have).
There are several suggested categories on the Wheel of Life Worksheet, although you’re not limited to that list. The important thing is to make sure you pick eight that are most in alignment with your core values and the life you want to live. I’ve also given a few options for wording, again, the wording you choose should resonate with you.
Once you have your eight categories, write one between each spoke inside the outermost ring.
Making your assessment
Grab a few sheets of scrap paper or a journal. Working one category at a time, create two lists:
- everything in your life that’s bringing you closer to a 10 in that category (I’m doing it); and
- what would need to be added to your life to bring you from where you are to a 10 in that category (actionable items).
Once you have these lists there are a few ways to determine the level for that category. For example: if you were working on Physical Health and you listed 10 items in the “I’m doing it” list and 10 items in the “actionable items” list, you could use the number of items to determine you’re halfway to a 10 – therefore you would be a five in Physical Health.
However, you could also give each item on your lists weight. For example: your “I’m doing it” list includes – daily yoga practice, cooking/eating three nutritious meals a day 5x/wk, and sleeping 7-8 hours/night, and your “actionable items” include – cooking one more day/week, going to bed 30 minute earlier, and adding a five minute meditation each morning. In this case you might rank yourself at a 7 or 8 as the heavy lifting is already done and you’re just looking to make minor tweaks to deepen your already powerful habits.
No one is grading this work. So make sure any evaluation you give yourself feels right to you!
If you’re struggling with this process, check out my posts on: radical honesty and self-compassion to help you tune into the voice of truth inside you while tuning out your inner critic. You’ll also find my Intuition 101 course will provide you with tools to help you connect to your own inner wisdom and knowing while removing self-doubt.
Filling in your Wheel of Life
Using your notes, select the nine or ten (I usually give myself the innermost ring as a “freebie”) items which seem the most important to you in each category.
Again, if you’ve done the core value work in advance, you’ll have a framework in which to select the items from your brainstorm list that most resonate with your core values.
If you gave yourself a seven in a category, you should have three “actionable” items and six or seven “I’m doing it” items.
If once you chose the most important items they don’t align with the score you gave yourself earlier, reevaluate both the items you selected and the score you gave that category adding and removing as feels authentic to you until they match up.
Organize your list from – most ingrained in my life -> will require the most work to become a habit. Write them into your wheel under the appropriate category with the most ingrained closest to the center and the most work required at the outside edge of the wheel.
Then get a colored pencil (or highlighter or watercolors) and color in each “I’m doing it” item you wrote down. Take a little moment to celebrate your accomplishment as you color each one in. I like to use a different color for each category – it makes working with the wheel a little easier (and it’s pretty!).
Working with your Wheel of Life
Great job getting to this point! Now that you’ve completed your Wheel of Life, the work is just getting started.
Look at your wheel – remember, our goal is balance, not maxing out every spoke. Do you have 7’s and 8’s in six categories and a 3 and 4 in the other two? With that quick visual assessment, you can see where you have room to grow in order to find balance.
And since you created your actionable items as part of this exercise, you now have clear steps to take to bring those categories up to a 7 or 8 and bring you into balance around your wheel!
If all of your categories are at a 4 or 5, then look at the actionable items that would allow you to uplevel each category by one, bringing you to a 5 or 6 around the wheel.
And if all of your categories are a 9 or 10, then take a moment and honestly check in with yourself.
Did you tailor your categories to make you feel successful in this exercise? (This is just like those Cosmo quizzes – once you know the subject, you can get any result you want – but only if you’re honest with yourself will you get an honest result.) Or are you perhaps evaluating yourself based on something other than alignment with your core values? Check out my posts on core values and radical self honesty. And if you do all that and you are still at a 9 or 10 – then congratulations – you’ve been working really hard to build a life you love and it shows!
No matter how you determine which actionable items to bring into your daily life, it’s important you do not neglect other core values you celebrated on this wheel in order to make that possible. The last thing you want is to revisit your Wheel of Life in three months only to realize you brought Finances up from a 3 to a 7, but Relationships dropped from a 7 to a 4 as a result of those new habits.
In order to help you find the space (temporal, mental and emotional) to add in your new actionable items, check out my posts on boundaries, personal energy audit, and productive procrastination to help you reclaim your time and energy!
Taking actionable items one step at a time
Again, I can’t stress this enough – the goal is not achieve 10’s all the way around your Wheel of Life. None of us is perfect, and expecting your life to be all 10’s, is expecting perfection not only of yourself, but also of those around you. And that isn’t fair to anyone (including yourself).
Look at the actionable items immediately above your colored segments. Pick one or two that you think you can incorporate into your daily life without sacrificing other things which are important to you. If you transition one actionable item to I’m doing it each month, that means by the end of the year you’ll have 12 additional segments to color in!
However, if you try to introduce twelve new habits at once to boost two segments from a 4 to a 10, I’m guessing you’ll very quickly become overwhelmed and give up on making any changes. This is one of those instances of the tortoise and the hare – slow and steady definitely wins the race!
Revisiting your Wheel of Life
I like to revisit my Wheel of Life periodically to check-in and reassess. This is a living document, not one that you create and allow to remain stagnant.
If you created your wheel and decided that the first actionable item you wanted to tackle was keeping your cell phone out of the bedroom at night, then check back in once that’s become a habit. Color in that part of the spoke and move on to your next actionable item (in that spoke or another one).
It might be helpful to set a day each month (or week) to check in with your Wheel of Life. Do a quick (and honest) evaluation. Have you shifted any actionable items to I’m doing it? If you have – color them in and celebrate! Is there somewhere you’ve let a previously achieved habit slip? Take a moment and decide if that habit is still in alignment with your core values. If it is, use this check in as a reminder to focus on reviving that habit.
Periodically, you’ll want to redo your entire wheel. Some items you thought were a priority will no longer be in alignment with your core values. Those items will fall off of your wheel (and that is totally ok – growing and changing are things to be celebrated). And you might have achieved several items in one category and have your sights set on goals that you previously would have never thought of.
I like to take stock of where I am in my life each year as part of my birthday celebration. Creating a new Wheel of Life each year is part of that taking stock. This would also be a great activity to incorporate into your New Year’s traditions, or any tradition you have which celebrates the transition between seasons.
And I suggest hanging onto your old wheels as you progress into each new one. Make sure you put the date on each as you create them. They serve as an incredibly powerful snapshot of the way you and your priorities have changed over time.
Wishing you a life filled with balance and many successes to celebrate!
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