Wheel of Life

The Wheel of Life is a snapshot of how satisfied you are across eight areas, scored one to five, drawn as a wheel. There are no right answers. Give the score that is honest today, not the one that you might defend later on. It came from Paul J. Meyer, who founded the Success Motivation Institute in Waco, Texas, in 1960, and it has been in coaching practice ever since. Most coaches you will meet will have a version of it. Two numbers come out. The average across the eight areas is your Life Balance Index, which tells you how you're doing overall. The spread between them is your Balance Variance, which tells you something the average hides. You could score everything exactly the same, and you would come out with an average that is the same as scoring a number of them higher and a number of them lower. We tend to pour effort into the areas we already score well in, because it feels good. The wheel makes that visible in a way that a list doesn't. Pick one low area, not all of them, one for the next three months. Then retake the Wheel of Life quarterly. Your Yearly Vision uses the same eight areas, so the two can be read together.