I am often asked the question, “How can I make my life run smoothly?”
Or another question is, “Why is it that I do not have time to do the things I like?”

The answer to these questions can some times be quite consuming for people to answer themselves. One of the main reasons for this is that they are to close to the issue, or never take time to step back and reflect on what is happening in their life. I would like to share with you an exercise that may help answer some of the above questions. The exercise is called Wheel of life and only takes 10-20 minutes and will allow you to take what I call a snap shot of where you are in this moment.

Step one: Break up your Life into 6 different areas as follows:

 1) Social and Recreational
 2) Mental and Educational
 3) Spiritual and Ethical.
 4) Financial and Career
 5) Physical and Health.
 6) Home and Family.

All the above areas are self explanatory, yet some people feel that spiritual and ethical means Religion. This is not necessarily correct; as it also means your values and beliefs (and religion, fallible as it is, can be quite deficient in both ethics and spirituality).

Step two: rate each area of your life on a score between 1-10, 1 being the lowest and 10 the most positive. Do not think about the answer - the instinctual first number that comes to you in each area is the one you go with.

Step three: Draw a circle and divide it into the 6 areas by drawing three lines inside the circle. With each line that you have used to break up the circle, mark the score for each life area using the inside of the circle as 1 and the outside as 10.

Step four: Join the dots from each line so that every dot connects to each other.
 Now take a look at how the shape of your wheel is. If you find your wheel is round, then life in this moment must be going quite smoothly and there is not a lot that would require change. If your wheel is out of shape I invite you to carry on with the following steps:

Step Five: Identify the 2 most important areas that you feel require some work, and that would bring your wheel back into shape.

Step 6: Spend 5- 10 minutes writing down some of the changes or things you would like to do that you are not currently doing in those areas.

Step 7: Ask your self these following questions:

Why am I not doing the above?

How could I start to do some of the above?

Who do I need to share this with?

What do I need to do differently to allow the changes to happen?

From this point on you can start to make changes to create a well balanced life. This is a tool that you can use on a regular basis to help create self awareness about yourself and your life. I recommend you do this every 2 weeks for 3 months and then have a look back at where you have come from to where you are now.

I have a saying:

 “FOR THINGS TO CHANGE I MUST CHANGE”

For more personal advice contact Jay on +64-9-815-7855 or you can email him.