How Well Is Your Wheel Rolling?

Using the Wheel of Life to identify the areas that need the most attention

This is part of a series of tools and techniques that form my operational philosophy. This is not part of my book-length memoir AN ORDINARY DISASTER—but if you dig my writing you should be sure to check that out!

The Wheel of Life

Especially when life isn’t going quite so smoothly, it can be handy to have a way to visualize the whole picture all at once. One tool that I learned long ago is what is often called the Wheel of Life.

A rather lumpy Wheel of Life

This simple tool is a way to see how well you are aligned with your personal core values, and how all of those values come together to form a ‘wheel.’ If your chart is lumpy like the example above, then your wheel isn’t going to roll very smoothly, and it would be probably be good to put some specific energy into those areas that would smooth out the wheel.

If, as in the example below, your wheel is smoother but still just kind of small, you may be rolling along, but desiring of overall growth.

Smoother, but small wheel of life

If your wheel comes up all 10’s, you might consider switching up the values that you’re looking at, to focus on those that need more attention—and checking in with yourself to see if you’re being fully honest about how well things are really going.

The wheel can also be used to look at the relationships between any system of values, for example, the four traditional Jungian masculine archetypes of King, Warrior, Magician, Lover (not that these are by any means the full spectrum of archetypes or aspects of masculinity! Perhaps I’ll update this later with a more multi-faceted example):

…or any other group of aspects, such as these examples of embodied wellness:

Build your own wheel

I’ve built a spreadsheet in Google Docs that you can use to make your own wheel.

1. Open this spreadsheet and use File | Make a Copy to make a copy for yourself.

2. Choose five values from the list on the first tab, and combine those five with your own top three personal passions to form the eight aspects of the wheel—or, choose from any other list of values, as long as you end up with six to ten aspects.

3. Enter the aspects you’ve chosen in column A of one of the Example tabs.

4. Score each aspect on a 1-10 scale, and you will see the resulting "wheel" graph take shape (this type of chart is a “polar” plot, by the way).

Keep the wheel rolling

I’ve used the Wheel of Life over the years to check in with myself and my values. Often I find it helpful to do this on a quarterly basis, saving the wheels for each quarter in different tabs, so I can go back, compare, and see how my wheel is evolving—and hopefully, growing and getting smoother.

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Further Reading

Questions for you

1. What does your wheel look like? Smooth or lumpy? Large or small?

2. What aspects did you choose for your wheel?

3. Which aspects need the most attention in your life?

4. What else comes up for you when you look at the shape of your wheel?

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