The other day I shared in my newsletter that I am feeling as though my life has been compartmentalized.
Each facet of my life seems separate from the rest and it’s like they’re on a see saw. When one area of my life goes up, the others go down.
I just can’t keep all of my balls in the air at the same time.
I gave my newsletter subscribers a tool called The Wheel of Life. You can find lots of versions of it online.
Basically, you take the various parts of your life – home, family, work, partner, self care, etc – and assign each one a “slice of pie” within a circle.
Here’s an example:
Click on the picture to make it bigger.
Now the idea is that you choose your own areas of your life and then, starting from the middle, “cut” a slice that best describes how satisfied you are with that area.
For instance, if you are totally in love with your spouse or significant other and things are wonderful, then you would have a whole slice going all the way to the outer part of the circle.
But if you hate your job and want to find another one, that slice is going to be very small and much closer to the middle.
When you look at your slices as a whole, you can see how bumpy your road is. An ideal balanced life would have all of the slices out to the circle. (I actually know someone who has that life. I want to be her when I grow up. Maybe. Growing up is overrated.)
Once you’ve found your bumpiest parts – and you probably already know what they are – you can work on ways to fix them.
I think that the Wheel of Life is a good exercise that you should repeat maybe every 3 months to see if you’re making progress.
I also think you ought to keep a copy that you’ve worked on in a place where you can see it, so it will remind you to work on making your life better.