Have you ever done a wheel of life assessment? How much clarity did you get from it? Did you score each area, note the lower ones and then move on or did you really analyse the results. I’ve recently done an assessment through a coaching course and discovered there is a lot more to discover about myself with the assessment than I’d previously thought.
What is the wheel of life
The wheel of life exercise aims to highlight the areas of your life which aren’t in balance so you can give more attention to those areas. It is a straight forward assessment that produces a graphic that clearly shows you how you feel about different areas of your life.
When reviewing the wheel the first step is usually to look at how you can increase the scores of the lowest areas so you bring the wheel into balance. If the wheel is already round another option is to increase the size of the wheel by improving each of the areas in the turn.
My experience with Wheel of Life assessments
I’ve been doing wheel of life assessments for years. The first one I shared online is June 2007, but I mention in that post I first discovered it while doing a management diploma, which must have been 2003 / 4.
I thought the exercise provided clarity and direction. I started doing them each month and ended up using it as a tracking tool to show I was going in the correct direction. Looking back now I can see I was overthinking the exercise and was too focused on the process of drawing the wheel than the meaning of the scores. For example, in my post on Tips for using wheel of life exercise I talk about assigning a description to each value 1-10.
However, despite my overthinking I do know the assessments did have an impact. For example, I chose to focus on my health last year as I’d got a low score.
Learning to go deep with Wheel of life assessment
A few months ago I signed up for the Reboot your life coaching programme. The first two exercises were connected to the wheel of life (or Clarity Wheel as Michelle calls it). Instead of simply asking you to score each area she had two pages of open questions you can use to help you think about each area. For example:
- What are you most committed to doing?
- What are you tolerating at the moment?
- How would you like for things to change?
Next, I had to go deeper still; taking the results and identifying where I wanted to take action. For example thinking what a score of 10 would look like for me, and how can I make space for the changes I’d need to make to get there.
What did I get out of the deeper assessment
Probably the first thing was to slow down. When I’ve done the assessments before I’ve mostly tried to do it on gut feeling. But the questions made me think, and some of them took a day or two before I had a real answer for them, so there was no rushing.
Secondly, although I identified lots of areas I’d like to improve, there were three interesting insights
- health – I want the results without the effort or time!
- money – I want to be doing more preparation for the future
- fun – there are several things I’d like to do for fun I’m not allowing them to play that role in my life. For example thinking my blog should be making money, which adds pressure and removes pleasure, and turning photographs and scrapbooking into a chore in attempt to do them.
I’m already starting to see improvements, because I’m implemented an exercise routine. I’ve started walking on alternate days, and on the other days do a mix of core, cardio or weight exercises. And to help with my accountability I’m sharing my experience on Instagram.
Although the wheel of life assessment looks simple, the more thought you put into it, the more value you’ll get out of it. I’d previously thought this was an identification exercise and you did the deeper thinking later, but I’ve now discovered you can do that deeper thinking as an extension to the wheel.
If you’re interested in the questions that pushed me to go deeper and get more clarity on my life you can download the workbook from the Michelle Reeves Coaching website.
How have you found the Wheel of Life assessment? Have you put the effort in to go deeper? Did you have any revelations?