How are you doing?
Take time to assess your life
It’s 3 a.m. You’re wide awake and you don’t know why. You’ve felt for a while that something is off. Things are going well at work. You feel physically healthy, but you just sense that there’s something that’s missing. “Why do I keep waking up at 3 in the morning? What’s causing this anxiety?”
Have you ever experienced that feeling of something being “off” in your life? Things are generally going well, but you sense that something is missing. Each of us lives a life that is multifaceted. Our lives consist of many spheres, including family, relationships, work, health, finances, and spirituality. If something is off in one area, it can impact the other areas of our life that are going well.
It's important for each of us to regularly check-in with ourselves and get a temperature check on all aspects of our life. It gives us the opportunity to assess how happy we are and whether it’s time to do some work to increase our overall satisfaction and fulfillment.
Sometimes when I start work with a new client, they struggle to find a specific topic for us to discuss. They know they want to increase their happiness, or enhance their performance, or be a better leader. But they aren’t quite sure where to start. There are many tools we can use to help them pinpoint where to begin, but one of the most popular for coaches is something called the Wheel of Life.
The Wheel of Life is a fantastic tool for quickly and easily assessing your level of satisfaction with each major area of your life. The wheel reflects the key aspects of a holistic life. You rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest level of satisfaction in any area. If one of these areas is lacking, it will impact the other areas of your life.
If you’re a 10/10 in Career but a 3/10 in Spirituality, you may start to sense something is off in your life. It’s because one part of your wheel is deflated, which throws the rest of the wheel off balance.
For example, the wheel below reflects someone who is satisfied with their relationships, spirituality, and personal development. But they are struggling with their career, finances, and health. The wheel looks lopsided. They are out of balance and need to work on those areas to increase their overall happiness and fulfillment. As a coach, I’d start working with them on balancing out their wheel in those key areas.
As a conscious leader, you could do a similar career check-in with yourself and your team. Perhaps the wheel would have categories such as:
Respect (How respected do they feel by colleagues?)
Achievement (Are they reaching their career goals?)
Work/Live Balance (Do they feel burned out or do they get enough downtime?)
Feedback (Are they getting the right information about their performance?)
You could even include some categories that cover important topics like psychological safety—which is essential for building a strong team—or Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—which is essential for employee engagement.
It's important to regularly do a check-in on how you’re doing in all areas of your life. Take some time this week to use the Wheel of Life to assess all aspects of your life. Be honest with your rating. Are there some areas where you’re less than ideal? If so, it’s time to do some work on yourself and balance out your wheel. Together, we can create a workplace and world that allows each of us to be well-rounded and thrive in all aspects of our life.
Work happy. Live happy. BE happy.
Meredith
The way we work and build teams is rapidly changing. Leaders often feel unprepared to navigate the transition. As a conscious leadership coach, consultant, and communicator, Meredith helps leaders and their teams create new ways of working and relating so they can prepare for the future by consciously co-creating it.
Contact her to develop your conscious leadership and transform your organization into the workplace of the future.
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