How to live a balanced life self-assessment tool

February 29, 2020

Life can be a very hard thing to manage at times and you can often become unbalanced, trying to juggle all of your commitments and do you know what happens when we become unbalanced? you wobble for awhile and then fall flat on your face, leaving you down in the dumps and not wanting to get back on the bike that we call life. This is where you need to learn the wheel of life technique.

The wheel of life

The wheel of life is a way for us to assess each individual aspect of our lives, so that we can make gradual changes to improving them, to become more balanced. Imagine your life like one of those old wooden wagon wheels you see in wild west movies, the stronger your base and the smoother your edges, the easier your journey will be but, if you have chunks missing out of your wheel, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

How to create a balanced life

So, to start you are going to need to draw your wheel. Grab a pen and a piece of paper and draw a big circle, once you have done this you should draw 8 lines which come from the center of the circle, after this, draw 10 dashes (representing a scale) across your lines until you have something that looks like this!

Now that you have drawn this, you need to label each line with all of the aspects of life that you want to improve on in a balanced way. We recommend you to try and improve these 8 things that will help you to live the life you desire which you can see below:

Career
Family life
Friendships and socializing
Rest and relaxation
Health and fitness
Spirituality
Personal growth
Money

Once you’ve done this you should have something that looks like this.

Imagine the outer circle as your full potential, a nice and smooth, well rounded wheel! But let’s be honest, you’re not at this stage yet, you’ve still got things to Improve on so, what you need to do is draw your wheel, to do this you need to rate how satisfied you are in each area of your life on a scale of 0 to 10 and mark it with a dot on top of your dashes. Now for the fun part, you need to connect the dots to form your wheel.

You might end up with something that looks like the wonky wheel in the picture above but don’t worry, this is showing you the areas of life that you need to improve on, so that you can live your best life. You might be thinking “thanks for pointing out my flaws but, you’ve not given me any practical steps to improve them.” Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered, below we’ve got some tips and tricks to help you on your way!

Career

Your career is going to be a huge part of your life as you are going to be spending majority of your time working on it, this is why it is so important for you to do something you love. The school system and financial circumstances can often push you in to a job that you don’t desire, nor do you have any passion for which will leave you burnt out and run down.

One way that you can find your passion is by creating an ikigai. An ikigai is a practice which comes from Japanese tradition meaning “a reason for being“ this technique will guide you to choosing the career path which will suit you best. If you would like to learn how to make your own ikigai, you can do so by reading this blog post here.

Family life

Your family are one of your first support systems in life and probably one of the most important. No matter what you do or what you go through, your family should be there for you and in return you should be there for them to. You’ll probably go through some rough times together and have your discrepancies as you grow together but, you should always end up back together.

All families are different and are going to be interested in different things so, it’s quite hard to give you advice on what you can improve on. Some families socialize over food and others socialize over football so, it really can make a difference, however, there is one thing that brings us all together and that’s time. No matter what your interests are, giving your family your time is the biggest gift you could ever give them.

Friendships and socializing

Like your family, your social circle are very important to living your best life to. They say that you are the average of the 5 people that you spend the most of your time with so, make sure that you’re choosing the right people. Having close friends has even been seen to add years to your life in the study of the blue zones.

Making long lasting friendships can be a very tough task in today’s society, with loneliness on the rise, it’s no surprise that people are feeling that disconnected from the world that they have no friends at all! If you would like to learn how to make long lasting friendships, you can do by clicking on this link.

Rest and relaxation

If you’re on a journey of success, you’re probably grinding away at your passion which is great, however, you need to be able to shut your brain off, recharge and restart the next day feeling revitalized so you don’t end up burning out, although you might find it hard (as do I) you need to learn how to take time for yourself… and relax.

There are many different ways to relax from meditating to having a back massage but, one thing that seems to help me wind down before I go to sleep is by using binaural beats. The research on the benefits of binaural beats is in it’s very early stages but the concept is quite interesting. A binaural beat is when you listen to a sound through your headphones but, each ear is played a different frequency, depending on the difference between each frequency, it is said that it will put you in to different brainwave state, the brainwaves that are associated with rest and sleep are Delta and Theta.

Health and fitness

Your body is the vessel that is going to take you to the places which you desire to go, this is why it is so important to keep it in it’s optimal condition. I consider health to be more about what you put in to your body e.g. your diet and fitness to be what you do with your body e.g. exercise, both are usually categorized as the same thing, however, without one you won’t be reaching your full potential.

So, let’s start with your diet, there many different opinions out there, which I’m not going to get into today but, if you are trying to lose some weight that you have gained, a fad diet isn’t going to be the best idea and that’s why we wrote a blog on how to stick to your diet and lose weight sustainably.

Fitness is a funny thing because gym goers will preach that you need to pump iron every day and on the other hand, some studies suggest that to much exercise is bad for you so, the answer is probably the same as usual… BALANCE is the key! One trick that you can do is to put a piece of gym equipment next to a reward and every time you want a reward yourself, you have to use the equipment, for example, every time that you want your energy boosting smoothie out of the fridge, you need to do 20 dumbell curls before you can.

Spirituality

Before you run off if you are not religious, just know that spirituality doesn’t necessarily mean religion if you don’t want it to be. Being spiritual can mean many things, such as having faith that you are powerful enough to control your life, to having the comforting thought that someone or something is looking out for you every day.

Whatever your beliefs are, I believe one way that you can practice this is to start meditating. For a long time, meditation was seen as a thing that only bold headed, robe wearing, monks did in eastern parts of the world but, thankfully due to scientific research on the benefits of meditating, it has become a very popular practice in western culture. If you are a newbie to meditation, you might find that these tips will help you.

Personal growth

Personal growth is a very broad term to use but, what we mean by this is the improvement of your skills and talents. Personal growth is the thing that helps you in all the other categories of life, as you are equipped with how to handle all of the problems which you may face.

The only way to grow is by learning and that’s why we would advise you to download audible. Audible is an Amazon platform where you can listen to audio books anytime, anyplace, all at the touch of a button. If you’re interested in expanding your mind though audible, here’s a 30 DAY FREE TRIAL for you to enjoy.

Money

Some people say that money can’t bring you happiness but, some studies have suggested otherwise. Whatever the case may be, I think we can both agree that you need to have money to excel in life, whether you want to travel the world or just pay for hospital fees, you need to collect the golden coins.

No matter if you have a full time job or you don’t work at all, I think that it is important to have some form of side hustle, we live in a world where you can start something from nothing so, why aren’t you. If you have a skill or hobby which you are talented at, you can be paid at Fiverr to use it.

The bigger and smoother your wheel is, the more balanced your life will become. To start I would advise you to focus on one or two of the aspects of life at a time so you don’t become overwhelmed. You could even add more aspects to your life like romantic relationships and recreation, you can even break down the ones that we provided into separate entities for example, health and fitness could be two different categories if you feel like you need to focus on them individually. Whatever the case may be, you can use this formula to gradually improve all areas of your life!

Some of the links in this blog may be affiliate links which means you can purchase the product and I will make a commission of it but IT WILL NOT be at an extra cost to you, any money I money I make through this is put towards the upkeep and improvement of this blog. Thank you in advance, Jake.

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