When I first did one of these posts last week, I had a hard time deciding what to include. This time, I’m a bit more prepared. I decided to take a look at the Wheel of Life. There are multiple ones out there but this is the one I’m using.
It divides your life into 8 categories:
- business/career
- finances
- health
- family/friends
- romance
- personal growth – I’m including spirituality and self-love in this area
- fun/recreation
- physical environment
I like this breakdown a lot. It’s simple and easy to remember. The purpose of the Wheel of Life in coaching is to examine each area of your life and assess where you are at on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the most satisfied with that area of your life. While you want to have 10’s in all areas, having a “wheel that rolls” is the first step. So if there is one area of your life that is really low, that’s the area you would focus on first…as the areas become more equal in terms of satisfaction, you would work to expand satisfaction in all areas. The site this is from, Start of Happiness, has some great information if you are interested in learning more about the Wheel of Life.
For the purpose of this post, I don’t think I’ll be including how satisfied I am in each area in the post. I will definitely be looking at it personally as I do frequently anyway but, for now, I’m going to focus on sharing what I’m up to in the post and where I’m at in terms of satisfaction as a private assessment…of course, as I type this, I’m considering whether there is value to myself and to you if I share those numbers…I may change my mind on this one…we’ll see.
Business/Career
Things have been very busy on the business front. I truly enjoy what I do. Right now I’m gearing up for three complete site redos and I’m really excited. All three of these will be different from what I’ve done in the past and I’m looking forward to the growth and opportunity that provides. I have over 90 sites I do maintenance for each month and it’s another one of my favorite things to do. I love doing my part to keep people’s sites secure and stable. While there are no guarantees in the cyber world (or any other part of the world for that matter), doing what I can to make sure the content isn’t compromised gives me great satisfaction.
I’m also launching (or re-launching) my online course, Creating Engaging eCourses. This is one of my favorites. I love both teaching it and creating ecourses so it’s a perfect fit for me. I just wrapped up the Show Me Some Love Challenge with a group of people and now have a self-paced version available as well.
I’m blogging like crazy on a variety of topics but all about living an inspired life. I can’t believe how my writing has taken off. My posts may contain some grammar or punctuation errors but they are truly posts from my heart and blogging is a great form of expression for me.
And for those who don’t know or are wondering, I work 3 days a week. I care for my grandchildren two days a week and I keep my nights and weekends free for me, for my family and for my friends. It’s a wonderful balance and the schedule, I believe, helps me to stay focused and productive because I have a life around my work also that I enjoy very much.
Finances
I opened a special savings account this week for the money I’ve been setting aside as a part of the money challenge I’m doing. When we were discussing what type of account, I started to say I wanted just the basic one because the next level one required quite a significant balance to make a difference in the interest paid but then I realized that was old thinking and I was ready to expand and grow so I chose an account that provides that space.
Health
The sleep monitoring is going well. I seem to be getting a fairly good balance of motionless sleep (deep sleep) each night and I’m proud of that. I’m also having one or less sodas a day still. This is down from 7+/day so I’m pretty proud of that. I haven’t had a soda at home in over two weeks even though there is plenty around. I’ve switched to plain water and these:
I am not as proud of my eating habits. I haven’t defined what’s most important to me yet and I think that’s part of the problem. Plus we’ve gone out to eat several times and I’ve just done whatever I felt like in the moment. And then throw an Easter dinner in there too! I’ll keep at it…watched a wonderful video today from Super Soul Sunday’s on conscious eating. Been thinking about it a lot…more to follow on this one I think.
Family/Friends
I’m heading out of town for the night to hang out with some friends and I’m hoping to get a good game of Texas Hold ‘Em, tournament style going. It’s nice to spend time with friends. I had a “meeting” with another friend earlier this week that turned into a 4+ hour gab session (with a meeting and breakfast mixed in there too). I’m also looking forward to a house concert next weekend along with a night out with our camping group at a casino hotel for some fun. I’m not much of a gambler but I do enjoy going out of town, I enjoy spending the night in a hotel, I enjoy time with friends and some good food so it should be fun!
Romance
Chip and I have had some nice times this last week. I so enjoy spending time with this man. For those of you who don’t know, we were together for 22 years, married for 20 of those and then separated. We lived pretty separate lives and didn’t get along much at all during that time – not to mention thinking we had little in common. Of course that’s the condensed version but fast forward to 3 years of separation which brought us back together in a completely new way. It isn’t the “same old comfortable feeling” kind of thing at all. I am amazed at all I realized I didn’t know about him or he about me in all that time together. I think we were both pretty shut down to exploring anything and it took the time apart to shift that. I love that we now can sit and chat about anything, we can communicate about the hard stuff, we have all kinds of things we enjoy doing together, etc. It’s wonderful. Truly wonderful.
Personal Growth
I’m about to start reading the book The Desire Map by Danielle LaPorte. I’m not reading it for the reasons one might imagine but more to explore my deeper mind and what I think about her process. The foundation of the book is to identify your core desired feelings and use that as a roadmap for your life. While it’s true I am where I am today because of a similar process, my process wasn’t quite the same. My process was more of “this feels good so I want more and this doesn’t feel good so I’m going to move in a different direction now.” I also think desired feelings are really important in the manifesting process…but as a road map for life? I’m not so sure. In the group I’m in, I see a lot of core desired feelings relating to safety and security, and while absolutely valuable information, might it be valuable for a different reason? It might indicate that someone is in the lowest portion of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and working on a prosperity mindset specifically might be a better route. I’m saying might a lot here because, as I said, I haven’t read the book and I’m guessing there is a lot of information I don’t have to really assess how I feel about the process. These are just the random thoughts popping into my head as I type this and as I’ve considered her process in the past. We’ll see where I’m at when I’m done with the book.
Fun/Recreation
It’s supposed to be 66 and sunny today. The sun is out and the temp is on the rise! The birds are singing and my feeders are full. I’m heading out to get a pedicure soon and then off on a bike ride. This will be my first solo ride of the season and I’ll be bringing my camera and just enjoying the journey.
Physical Environment
I had dishes in my sink this morning. I hate that. And they’ve been there for 2 days. That’s so unlike me now and caused me pause for why I allowed it. It takes less than 10 minutes to empty the dishwasher (which is why the dirty ones were in the sink) and for two years I’ve been on top of that like nobody’s business. They are taken care of now so things are back to normal. I have some cheap shelves in the garage that were here when I moved out. My mom is gutting her kitchen (along with a laundry room and bathroom) so I’m getting some of those cupboards to install in the garage. I’m excited to have a cleaner look out there. I will be using them for some tools, my canning supplies along with a few other kitchen items that aren’t used every day. This seems like a great use and a much better solution!
Well, that’s my life for the last week or so. It’s fun to take a moment to reflect on each of these areas and share with you this way. Thank you for taking the time to stop by.
What an interesting read – I enjoy these peeks into each other’s weeks. But I’m betting this is also going to be a useful tool for you at some point in reviewing progress/shifts/changes you’ve made over longer periods of time. So it’s really nice to have these observations and reflections organized into those clear categories.
Hi Michele,
Thanks for playing along. This is fun! I loved reading your updates. Your idea of using the Wheel of Life is a good one. I am really liking how each person who is responding to this challenge is doing their own unique thing. That makes it personal and not just following along. I love it.
I’ve had those True Lemon/Lime drinks too. In giving up sugar, they were about the only pre-made drink we were able to have besides tea and coffee which Eric doesn’t drink. He went with strictly water and milk for about 3 months before we found those. My sister found another one called Skinny___ (something) and they are good. I will have to find out the actual name of them because I’ve never seen them before. The sugar content was very low.
Great post. Looking forward to what else you have in store!
What an Awesome post! Sounds like you have a pretty balanced wheel of life. Be sure to keep us posted on your thoughts of The Desire Map.
I read it years ago when it first came out (before it was publicly published) and absolutely LOVED it. It kind of sounds like you are already living your life guided by your core desired feelings, you just don’t call it that. It will be interesting to see what you think of the book.
Elda, Perhaps I am and you are right, I just call it something different. I prefer a focus on values rather than feelings but I absolutely pay attention to what feels good and what doesn’t. I also notice that what feels good is generally aligned with my values and what doesn’t isn’t aligned. I’m hoping to set some time aside to read to day 🙂