The Wheel of Life is a powerful self-coaching exercise that gives a holistic picture of your life and helps you better understand what you can do to make your life more harmonious. Used by several influential self-help gurus, this tool has been around since the 60s and is today perhaps more popular than ever before.
Some of you might know the Wheel of Life by its other name: Life Balance Wheel. This name is often used during coaching consultations or as a self-reflection exercise when setting personal growth goals.
In this article you will find everything you need to know about the Wheel of Life, as well as a PDF template, Canva template and a totally free blank Wheel of Life template for download.
Download “Wheel Of Life Free Printable”
The-Wheel-of-Life-Digital-Hygge.pdf – Downloaded 81 times – 1.35 MBWhat Does a Wheel of Life Do?
The Wheel of Life helps you assess your current state of life versus desired state of life based on the key areas of life. This tool helps you reflect what areas of your life need more attention so you can create a successful life you want.
Even though creating your own Wheel of Life might seem as a simple exercise, it takes emotional energy to draw an honest picture of how you’re feeling about certain areas of your life. You have to be in the right mindset to do it.
The Wheel of Life gives a great visual representation of whether your life is balanced or not and what areas in your life need more attention. It shows how balanced your life is across 8 different areas of life and gives you the opportunity to reflect on how satisfied and fulfilled you are in each area.
If an area in your life is getting too little attention, you can work on improving these areas in order to bring more balance to your life.
Where Can I Download a Printable Wheel of Life?
To create a simple Wheel of Life, all you have to do is draw a circle, and divide it into 8 equal parts. Then, label each section with a life area. You can draw it yourself by hand or in any design tool.
However, if you want to save time, I have ready templates for you to download. Actually, I have three of them!
My two favorite Wheel of Life templates are for sale in my Etsy shop. Both of these are beautiful and will save you a lot of time. Here is a 20% discount if you want to purchase the Wheel of Life Canva Template. Apply coupon CANVAWHEELOFLIFE in my shop or click on this link to apply the coupon automatically.
I also would like to share a free printable pdf with you. It is a simple pre-filled wheel of life with 8 areas. You can download it at the end of this post. Just click on the download button and you will get access to the file. Here is a preview of the free template.
Wheel of Life Template Printable PDF – Blank and Pre-Filled
This Wheel of Life is a printable PDF that comes in two versions: one blank version and one with with predefined categories. A blank version is better for those who want to choose themselves which areas to assess. If you continue reading this article you will find many great ideas and inspiration 🙂
UPDATE: Now my Wheel of Life Etsy listing includes 3 types of wheel of life:
– four designs of 8-area wheels (pre-filled and blank)
– one 9-area wheel
– two variations of a 10-area wheel of life
Wheel of Life Customizable Canva Template
This 100% customizable Canva template is for those who want to design your own Wheel of Life, without having to start from scratch. Canva is a great design tool where you can edit literally everything you see from fonts and colors to text and graphic elements. Making a Wheel of Life with Canva is not particularly easy if you aren’t a designer, so by getting my Canva template you get a head start and can focus on the big picture without having to create the difficult and time-consuming parts of the design yourself.
UPDATE: Now my Canva Wheel of Life template includes 7 variations: four designs with 8 areas, one with 9 areas and two designs with 10 areas. Each template is fully customizable. You can change text, fonts, colors, add any text or graphic elements.
Both of these products have been created with care and are of the highest quality. Whichever one you pick, I hope you will be happy with it!
Here is a preview of the templates so you can see in full details what is included.
There is a special 20% discount for visitors of my website. If you are interested to purchase the Wheel of Life Canva Template, you can use coupon CANVAWHEELOFLIFE in my shop or click on this link to apply the coupon automatically.
Wheel of Life A4 by Digital Hygge8 Common Wheel of Life Areas
The classic Wheel of Life is divided into 8 key areas of life. However, you shouldn’t feel constrained with the predefined amount categories and their labels. It is a visual representation of YOUR life, of the things you value and care about.
If a detailed Wheel of Life makes you feel anxious and overwhelmed, you can create fewer categories so you can focus on bigger areas of life.
If you feel that you what more specific categories, you can either add additional categories or split existing ones into more narrow areas.
There aren’t right or wrong types of categories. The Wheel of Life (or Life Balance Wheel) is 100% your vision and not anybody else’s.
The classic wheel of life includes the following areas of life:
- Business & Career: Alternative labels include Vocation, Work, Business, Motherhood, Fatherhood, Parenting, Volunteering, etc.
Questions to ask yourself:
– How happy and fulfilled are you by your work?
– Is your business/career thriving or not?
– Where is it right now? Where would you like it to be? - Finances: Other label ideas include Money, Wealth, Financial Security and Financial Wellbeing.
Questions to ask yourself:
– How comfortable do you feel about your financial situation?
– How is your financial education?
– How does your bank/savings accounts look like?
– Do you manage your finances effectively?
– How would you like to feel about your financial status?
- Health & Fitness: Alternatives include Wellbeing, Fitness, Body, Physical. This category could also be split into Physical Health and Emotional Health, in addition it can include Spiritual Health.
Questions to ask yourself:
– How happy are you with your overall health?
– How do you feel about your energy levels and vitality?
– Do you exercise regularly?
– Do you think that you are at the athletics level that you would like to be?
– Are you happy with the general state of your physical body? - Family & Friends: Alternative labels might be Community, Social Life. Family and Friends category can be split into separate categories of “Family” and “Friends”.
Questions to ask yourself:
– How is your relationship with your family and friends?
– Do you spend enough time with them? Do you feel connected to them? - Relationship: Alternatives include Dating, Intimate Life, Significant Other, Significant Other, Life Partner.
Questions to ask yourself:
– How would you rate your life with your partner/your loved one?
– Is it a romantic life?
– Do you spend enough time together?
– Do you understand each other?
– Do you express yourself well enough to be understood?
– Do you love and feel loved? - Personal Development: Alternatives include Learning, Self-Development, Personal Growth or Spiritual.
– How do you see yourself growing as an individual?
– Do you think you are investing enough in your personal growth? - Fun & Recreation: Some other ideas for this category label include Leisure Time, Hobbies, Sports, Play, Creativity and Enjoyment.
Questions to ask yourself:
– Do you let yourself to spend enough time to rest, have fun and rejuvenate? - Physical Environment: Other labels for this category could be simply “Home”, “House” or “Apartment”. The category could be split into two for work and home environments. It is especially important right now when many people start working from home.
Questions to ask yourself:
When it comes to people, ask yourself a question whether the people you live with, work with or spend your time with make you feel good. Do you like what kind of people you are around? Do you feel nourished when around these people or do they drain your energy?
If you have never made your own Wheel of Life before and are a beginner when it comes to life evolution and self-assessment, you probably want to start with 8 predefined categories. With time, you might want to tweak the categories to better match your core values.
Remember that you can customize the categories by simply giving them other names that feel more right for YOU and/or splitting an existing category into two or more.
Additional Wheel of Life Areas
It is highly recommended that you put some extra thought into what categories you would like to see in your Wheel of Life. There are many assessment questions you might want to ask when considering your overall happiness. In addition to the commonly used areas, here are some ideas for additional areas you can assess:
- Contribution to Community
- Security
- Planning for Future
- Spirituality and Spiritual Growth
- Religion
- Mental State
- Sense of Self
- Creativity
- Attitude
- Lifestyle
- Leadership
- Achievement
- etc.
How To Use Your Wheel Of Life
Still not sure how to use your Wheel of Life? To make it easier for you, I have tried to create an easy step-by-step that should help you successfully complete your own Wheel of Life.
How to use the Wheel of Life
- Decide which areas of life you want to assess
When assessing the balance in your life you should start by choosing what areas, or categories, you want to include. See above for more ideas.
- Set priorities for areas of life
When you have labeled each part of the wheel, now it’s time to set priorities for your areas. Which area is the most important for you right now? Which one comes second? Which one third?
If, for instance, you feel that Family & Friends is the most important area for you right now, write number 1 close to the label. Continue until you have ranked all of the areas based on their importance in your life. - Rate each area of your life on a scale from 1 to 10
Now, evaluate on a scale from 1 to 10 where you are at for each area of your life. When you have thought of the score for a certain area, color in that section.
For example, if the score is ten, you color in the whole section. If the score is 1, then only color in the first part of the circle. - Set a goal for each area of your life
Now that you have assessed each area of your life, you are ready to set your goals, ie. where you want to be in the future.
Setting your goals makes it easy to see the gap between your current situation and the desired one. - Analysis
Try to establish whether there are any interconnected areas in your wheel. Are there areas that could be worked on at the same time? Are there poorly-balanced areas that affect other areas of your life negatively?
- Make an actionable plan
The final and most important step is to make yourself a simple action plan for each area. How can you improve it? What needs to be done to bring the score to the desired level?
Final words of advice: when filling in your very own Wheel of Life, the hardest part is to HONESTLY answer the questions when rating each area of your life. You should access each area based on the real life situation and not based on what you think you “should” answer.
Conclusion
The Wheel of Life, a.k.a. Life Balance Wheel gives a holistic view on where the person is in their journey and what needs to be done in order to make progress towards a happier and more harmonious life. It is no wonder that many self-help gurus such as Tony Robbins and Zig Ziglar have used versions of this tool.
Sometimes you might think that you have a problem in one area of life but the exercise shows you a totally different perspective.
Download “Wheel Of Life Free Printable”
The-Wheel-of-Life-Digital-Hygge.pdf – Downloaded 81 times – 1.35 MB
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