Are you looking for the perfect work/life balance?

Have you seen the wheel of life?

This coaching tool can often be overlooked for its simplicity, but I love it!

If you’re looking for balance in your life, then using an all-on-one-page self-assessment ‘wheel’ of what is going on for you right now can be effective. The wheel in the photo is for demonstration purposes. It is pre-populated with the main priorities that people can bring to coaching, so you get the idea of how it works. The best wheels are of course blank, so you can decide, without agenda what is important to you without any prompts from your coach or anyone else. Get in touch here and I'll send you a printable version of the wheel.

Using a wheel can act as a good starting point for a more detailed discussion with a professional coach. It can help you prioritise where to start with your goals when everything feels important and urgent.

Seeing the centre of the wheel as 0 and the outer edge as 10, rate your level of satisfaction with each life priority by drawing a curved line to create a new outer edge.

Once you have moved through the eight priorities you should have a new, curved perimeter, depending on how you rated your satisfaction level. This represents the wheel of your life. If this were a real wheel, how bumpy would the ride be?

You can then start the discussion in your coaching session on what this means for you. You can of course set goals in all areas of your wheel. In coaching in can be useful to focus on your top 2-3 priorities.

The brilliant thing about the wheel for me, is it really helps to break things down into smaller steps. Say for example you rate yourself as a two for health (you can make the distinction between physical health and mental health if you like). Ten may seem a long way to go to make improvements to your health and this can be overwhelming – especially if you have a lot of two's! But what if we focused on what three looks like, (or even two and a half!) and not what ten looks like? A ‘smaller stepped goal’ for you could be walking to the next bus stop or doing a 30- minute workout three times a week. If this is what three looks like for you then this might seem more achievable - you could make it to three in no time at all

Another thing I’ve noticed with the wheel is that by setting a goal in one area can make changes in other areas too. Your physical health priority may improve your mental health at the same time, win win! And then you could feel so brilliant about yourself and on top of your game at work that you are allocated the project lead! Even, more progress overall by focusing on small wins, or marginal gains. Self-assessing in this way can help you keep track of what is changing for you, making it easier to be specific and get into the detail. Your wheel is unique to you, it is an holistic approach to life balance as everything is connected.

It’s a great idea to review your wheel every six months or so to keep track of your progress. Some of the best wheels I’ve seen are scribbled out lines, new lines in assorted colours, comments down the side, priorities changed or deleted etc. By talking things through in coaching, you can learn more about yourself and what is important to you. By celebrating your success and tracking your progress you make the connections that work for you to reach the balance in your life you have been looking for.

Try it now, you’ve nothing to lose and everything to gain. You can contact me here for a 30-minute call if you want to discuss this further, I can send you a printable version of the wheel too.