BALANCE YOUR LIFE WITH THE WELLNESS WHEEL ASSESSMENT

Can you imagine a wheel that wasn't round, a wheel that had lumps and bumps in it and not enough air in other bits? How far do you think you'd get on your wheel? Most of us are rolling around life on lumpy, bumpy wheels and wondering why we're going nowhere fast, why things aren't as we'd like them to be, and why our well-being is anything but optimal.

Health, happiness, and well-being come from a balanced life. It comes from balancing several different dimensions of life rather than focusing on just a few. Naturally, as human beings, we tend to focus on the easier things in life and avoid more of life's challenges, leaving our lives unbalanced.

If you’re looking for a wheel of wellness worksheet, scroll down to download your free wellness wheel printable.

IS YOUR LIFE OUT OF BALANCE?

You know what I'm talking about, we're all guilty. Like when we focus on work instead of our family members or intimate relationships, they start to break down. Or when we prioritize our social wellness at the expense of our financial wellness and we find ourselves stressed at the end of every month. Our lifestyle decisions have an impact on our well-being.

Sadly, a large number of premature deaths in modern society is attributed to lifestyle factors that could be changed. It seems paramount that we address our lifestyle imbalances if we want a life of wellness and longevity. A lifestyle change can not only improve well-being levels but can have a preventative effect throughout a lifetime, promoting health and well-being.

WHAT IS A WELLNESS WHEEL

The wellness wheel describes eight wellness dimensions that can improve our well-being levels when balanced. It can support our self-care efforts by showing us our neglected and blind spots inhibiting our well-being. It also helps us in setting goals that foster healthier habits and sustainable practices. In short, it helps us take realistic steps to bring our lives into a more balance in ways we may not have found otherwise.

Imagine someone who's doing overtime and working their ass off, thinking that having more money and success will make them happier. Meanwhile, their physical health, emotions and social relationships are being neglected. Over many years, this person may miss out on the crucial development that happens during relationships and building supportive social networks.

They probably won't be enjoying the benefits of a healthy body either. By neglecting their physical health for many years, they could end up suffering from weight problems and other physical ailments.

The wellness wheel helps us look at all aspects of our lives and identify areas that are being neglected or areas where we overspend on attention, focus, energy or money.

DIMENSIONS OF WELLNESS

Wellness is not one-dimensional. If we over-focus on one area of our life, other areas suffer. It doesn't matter how much money we have, we can only enjoy health and wellness if our social and intimate relationships are good. Similarly, no amount of good physical health will make us happy if we're lacking meaning and purpose in life.

There are eight dimensions of wellness that we can reflect on, consider in our lifestyle choices, and design an action plan around. So let's dive in and discover where your wheel is looking a bit flat.

Physical Wellness

This dimension covers a healthy body and all things physical. It's about having a physically active life and honoring our body by eating healthy and living healthy. This dimension considers nutrition, exercise, sleep, and stress levels.

Are we physically fit? Have we got a strong immune system? Good skin? Healthy blood pressure? Is our blood count looking good? Is our health affecting other areas of our life? Can we walk as long as we'd like? Are we constantly in fight or flight mode, exhausted or lethargic, or are we more frequently energized, strong, and raring to go?

Emotional Wellness

Emotional wellness is all about how we feel. How do we feel emotionally? What's our prevailing mindset or mood? What is our emotional home? What's the quality of our relationship with ourselves? This dimension asks us to reflect on our coping skills, how we manage stress, communicate with ourselves and others, and speak to ourselves.

How frequently do we feel joy, love, compassion, awe, empathy, excitement, power, optimism, and confidence? And how frequently do we feel frustrated, annoyed, lonely, hurt, bored, anxious, depleted, depressed, perplexed, or jealous feelings?

Intellectual Wellness

The intellectual wellness dimension is scored on our ability and willingness to grow and evolve. It asks us to reflect on how open we are to new ideas and how willing and able we are to be open to opposing ideas.

Are we critical in our thinking or stuck and rigid? Do we challenge our belief system? Or is it dogmatic? Are we full of internal dissonance are we aligned with our values? Are we inspired? To what extent do we embrace the idea of lifelong learning lifelong learning? To what extent do we have a growth mindset?

Spiritual Wellness

This dimension is all about having meaning and purpose in our lives. It's about being self-transcendence and being connected to something greater than ourselves, whether a deity, Mother Nature, humanity, the cosmos or universe, or a community. It's about the transpersonal and within the larger whole.

It might sound a bit airy fairy but spiritual psychology is a rapidly growing discipline that is documenting just how important spiritual wellness is for our physical and mental well-being.

The spiritual wellness dimension asks us to reflect on the extent to which our lives are meaningful, whether our time is spent purposefully, whether we feel connected, and whether we experience moments of inner peace.

Social Wellness

Social wellness describes our connections with others. It asks us to reflect on the quality of our relationships, from intimate relationships, family relationships, and close friendships all the way out to our wider circles within our community.

Do we feel connected and nourished by various healthy relationships of varying distances? How are we communicating and engaging with those around us? Do we feel as though we belong? Are we reflected well in those around us? Have we found our tribe? And can we connect with those not like us?

Financial Wellness

Financial wellness is an exciting dimension because we all think about money a lot, but do we have financial wellness? This dimension is not about how much we have but how well we manage it. It's about finance-based knowledge and skills. And it's also about how healthy our relationship with money is.

Do we have healthy financial habits? Are our outgoings more than our incomings? Do we save and invest? Are we overspending on certain areas of our lives and scraping by in others? Do conversations around money trigger us? Do we need more education about money management? Are financial matters causing stress in other areas of our lives?

Environmental

When reflecting on environmental wellness, you might like to consider your personal environment all the way out to the planetary environment. First is our personal environment, our home, which is our foundation from which we go out into the world and return to retreat. Does it feel good to us? Or do you think it needs attention? Is it cluttered and dysfunctional or cozy and practical?

Moving outwards, this dimension asks us to reflect on our local environment and our relationship to it. Does it support us and provide us with our particular needs? Do we contribute in any way? Is the air clean, is the public transport good, is there nature, culture, and community?

Further out, we could reflect on our wider environmental health. To what extent are we taking care of the planet? Are our efforts towards sustainable practices evidence-based, or are we relying on clickbait headlines to inform our decisions? Are we really at one with our environment and Mother Nature, or do we want to virtue signal?

Occupation and or Contribution

This dimension asks us to reflect on how we're spending our time. For most of us, our occupation will take up much of our time. Reflecting on our job or career in this way can be helpful to our overall well-being. To what extent does our occupation support our life and needs?

Considering such things as to what degree our occupation provides financial compensation for our time, whether we are inspired at work, do we identify and believe in the greater purpose of the project, and whether the company goals are aligned with our values can be helpful.

Do we feel good about what we do at work, or is there tension between our own values and those of the company? Considering the time spent at work, if you feel uncomfortable with what you're doing deep down, this will eat away and negatively impact your well-being.

If you work fewer hours, are you contributing to society in other ways? What is your contribution to society, and do you feel good about it?

EXTRA DIMENSIONS OF WELLNESS

These are the most common dimensions of wellness found in wellness wheels. But in truth, we are all unique beings and have different needs. There may be other dimensions that resonate more with you that are missing. For example, creativity is linked to well-being.

Adding one or two dimensions to your wellness wheel is perfectly OK. Just use the wellness wheel printable PDF worksheet below as a wellness wheel template and decide what’s right for you. Our wellness journeys will look different, and it's important to honor our own needs. You might like to include dimensions that incorporate things like creativity, fun, celebration, sexuality, personal growth, recreation, or culture. What we’re looking for is balance.

THE WELLNESS WHEEL OF LIFE WORKSHEET

The wheel of life has been used for several decades as a tool for identifying areas of our lives that may destabilize our well-being and for developing personal wellness plans. It may seem like a simple exercise, but as we reflect on our lives through the lens of these dimensions, we start to make new neural connections and think about our lives from different perspectives.

This is really what coaches and therapists help people to do. We tend to go around in circles in our heads, but when someone else challenges us to reflect through a different lens, we start to look at ourselves and our lives differently, which can be very powerful.

Download my Wellness Wheel Worksheet PDF to get started, and follow the instructions below.

HOW TO USE THE WELLNESS WHEEL ASSESSMENT

It is easy to do the wellness wheel activity by yourself. But give yourself plenty of time and space for the self-assessment. Sometimes, challenging realizations can surface, or we can feel triggered. While this isn't particularly nice, it can be beneficial for identifying areas that may be inhibiting your wellness journey.

Sometimes, it's enjoyable and can be a pleasant eye-opener. I filled out a wellness wheel that included sections for fun and celebration once and realized I needed to do more celebrating in my life. I was working hard and achieving but not celebrating my wins.

You’ll see in the wellness wheel examples that each section has been divided up with rings that represent a score from one on the innermost ring to ten on the outermost ring. All you have to do is give each dimension a score and colour it in. This will give you an overview of which areas are getting the most attention and energy and which are getting the least.

WELLNESS WHEEL OF LIFE CASE STUDY

This is my favourite example of how asking one of my clients, we'll call him Chris, to do the wellness wheel assessment. It gave him powerful insights that had a profound effect on his life.

The Problem

Chris came to me because he was struggling with an intimate relationship and was considering breaking up with his partner. He was confused because, at one time, he thought they'd get married. Although the relationship was now falling apart and thwarted with arguments, my client recognized that they had once been in love and enjoyed each other's company, so walking away was a big decision. My client wanted to be sure about his decision to leave. There was a lot at stake.

Self-reflecting with the Wellness Wheel

During one of our sessions I suggested Chris did the wellness wheel assessment. In all the confusion, this brought a lot of clarity to the situation. In filling out the wellness wheel self-assessment exercise, Chris noticed the areas where he was focusing most attention and, therefore, achieving and succeeding.

He had a successful and meaningful career that he loved. This had a knock-on effect on his finances, so Chris scored high on these two dimensions of wellness. His job also stimulated him intellectually, which got a pretty high score. Another area that got a high score was the physical activity dimension of wellness.

But when it came to his emotional wellness, spiritual wellness, and environmental wellness, all the scores were in stark contrast. He started to sense why he was having problems. And why he was considering leaving the person he thought he'd end up marrying.

By engaging with the wellness wheel exercise and by having this visual guide, things started to become really clear. Chris recognized that he'd been throwing himself into physical exercise as an escape. Instead of going home after work, the gym seemed more appealing. Moreover, running and cycling took precedence over the weekend, too.

Instead of putting effort into the relationship, Chris had quite literally been running from the challenges of his intimate relationship. In the first couple of years, things were easy; they were in the honeymoon phase, but as time went on and the relationship needed a little extra care and effort, Chris started to focus on other things, which gave him all the happy hormones that the relationship had once given him.

He recognized that if they had done the wellness wheel assessment a few years before, his emotional, spiritual, and environmental dimensions on the wellness wheel would have scored much higher. He decided to redirect some of his focus from the physical activities towards making his life more balanced.

The Solution

Chris made an action plan and decided to

1. Spend less time at the gym during the week

2. Dedicate one day over the weekend to do nice things with his partner.

3. Do more self-reflection and personal development work around relationships and communication

In the end, Chris decided that the relationship was worth fighting for and put more effort into making it work. Had he not done the wellness wheel self-assessment, he probably wouldn't have noticed how little effort or attention he was giving to his intimate relationship, and, as a consequence, it was suffering.

I like this wellness wheel case study because, for Chris, doing the wellness wheel exercise was so powerful. He got so much clarity from reflecting on his life in this way. The wellness wheel exercise significantly impacted Chris' decisions, action plans, and the direction his life then took.

Through the wellness wheel exercise, Chris brought his life into more balance and kept on rolling at a time when it looked like his wheel was about to come off.

INSIGHT HIGHLIGHTS

There's a reason we look at wellness as a wheel. Can you imagine rolling through life on your wellness wheel? Would it be a smooth ride or a bit on the bumpy side? How far do you think you'd get on your wheel?

Remember, wellness is multi-dimensional, and for real, lasting wellness, we need to balance those dimensions. Wellness is also a process that we're actively engaged in. Download the wellness wheel PDF and complete the self-assessment. Once you have a visual picture of how balanced your wellness is, you can make an action plan and start developing your wellness wheel to be more balanced.

Save this page or the blank wellness wheel PDF so that you can revisit this exercise in 6 months or so. What we don't measure, we don't change. Keep checking in with yourself and your wheel of wellness for lasting change.

Thanks for reading, and as always, keep striving for growth and well-being, and never settle for less!

How I Can Help

I hope you found this blog post helpful and inspiring. If you have any questions about the wheel of wellness activity, please don't hesitate to contact me using the WhatsApp widget. As someone who’s deeply passionate about well-being and personal growth and development, I offer services designed to help you cultivate a life you love. I offer one-on-one coaching sessions online and on the Côte d’Azur.

Here’s to your growth and success!