Tag Archives: Exercise

Recently, I posted the Wheel of Life exercise I use in my personal development workshops. It prompted me to start thinking about my own life. It has been quite a long time since I did that exercise for myself and I started thinking that it might be a good idea for me to do my own analysis as an example.

When I originally did this little exercise, many years ago, I had not figured out my life purpose. But, these days, I know exactly what I am here to accomplish and I also feel I have a strong vision for where I want to be over the next three to five years – a horizon I find very useful for working with, as a life coach.

But, the wheel exercise deals with the whole of your life and sometimes, completing it can lead to insights into where you should be focussing your energy as far as personal development is concerned. It is an excellent exercise to use for life coaching and if you would like to use it, please see my previous post for full details.

So, I sat down and thought about each of those four dimensions (body, mind, sprit and interpersonal) and then plotted my results on the wheel.

Here they are:

Looking at the wheel, it does not look at all like the one I did, way back. As I said, I understand my life purpose; it is to encourage others. More specifically, I have my own purpose and my website’s purpose properly defined in my mission statements.

Personal Mission Statement

To walk humbly with God, live a balanced life and focus my lifework around the principle of encouraging others.

Website Mission Statement

White Dove Books exists to help people develop their own unique talents, abilities and passion in order that they may lead more meaningful, joyful and fulfilled lives.

Some people might shy away from the idea of creating a personal mission statement, but I do feel it is a very useful thing to do. You don’t have to call it a ‘mission statement’ if the phrase has negative connotations for you. But, since I managed to work it out, I have found it to be a useful compass indicating the direction of, what Stephen Covey would call ‘true north’.

With regard to my vision, again, I am fairly sure about where I am going. But I scored myself slightly lower on that scale because I realise that opportunity has been playing an important part in the accomplishment of my mission. Since providence operates to provide opportunity, I cannot fully know, in advance of events, exactly what the future looks like.

For expertise, I marked myself quite high. I have been teaching the subject I write about for the past eleven years or so and I have been studying it for much longer. I am not arrogant enough to think I know everything. But I know I can make a useful contribution in my chosen field. Perhaps it might be better said that I do not feel lack of knowledge is an obstacle for me.

Integrity is also something I feel comfortable about. Anyone who has had business dealings with me knows that I will keep my word and the feedback I get from my subscribers leads me to believe that they know they can trust me too. Sometimes, honesty does get me into trouble. There are times when, after the event, I wish I had been a little more diplomatic in my replies to people when asked about my opinions. I have finally come to realise that not everybody actually wants to hear an opinion when they ask.

My health is pretty good, I think. I feel fit and healthy but I do have a slight medical problem that has been on my mind recently and I am soon to go into hospital for a second colonoscopy. It’s no big deal, but it’s there. In addition, the specialist informed me that I have the early signs of a hernia and they can’t do anything about that at present. So, whilst I am not worried about these things, I know I am not in optimal shape at present.

Energy levels seem good, but I stopped jogging when I had problems with kidney stones (excruciating pain) and have never started again. This is something I am planning to rectify over the next few weeks. My wife and I used to jog 5Km every day and 10Km at the weekends. Now we are both ready to get back into the swing again and, naturally, this will work wonders with my energy levels.

That brings me to where I can see my current difficulty is. Since moving to the seaside, where I now do all my writing, we have a lot less contact with our friends. They do come to see us but, of course, it is an occasional thing. We have friends where we live, but I do miss the circle of close friends we left behind.

With regard to family, I feel I just have not been doing enough to stay in contact with some of the most important people in my life; in particular, my sister and my son. When my Mum died, I was in regular touch with my sister and now that things have finally been mopped up, I feel I have just not been diligent enough about our relationship. The same applies to my son. Like my friends, he still lives in our old home town and I need to do more to stay in touch.

So there are my thoughts having completed my own wheel of life. I hope you can see why it is a great exercise for you to complete.

In life coaching, it can be used as a stimulus for conversation and you can then discuss the issues you identify with your life coach or mentor, if you have one, or a close friend if not. Of course, don’t just leave it there with a conversation. Resolve to tackle the issues you identify and you will soon be able to get your own life back into balance.

Recently, in a conversation with one of my mentees, I suggested she might use the Wheel of Life exercise in her Life Coaching business. It is an exercise I often use myself in my Workshops. I got the basic idea for this exercise from Jack Black, but I adapted it for my own purposes because I wanted it to fit in better with what I was teaching, particularly in relation to the 7 Habits.

The Wheel of Life is an analysis tool and the idea is simple. Take a look at the picture and imagine that each of the radial lines are axes representing a scale from zero (the centre of the wheel) to ten (the perimeter). For each of those scales, you need to think about how you feel and then give yourself a mark somewhere between those figures on each axis.

To complete the exercise – a very useful thing to do - you could print out this page and then give yourself a mark for each of the categories. Let’s briefly discuss them.

On a scale of 0 – 10, give yourself a mark for each of the following:

Heath: are you a perfect human specimen in the peak of condition (that would be a 10) or a complete couch potato who is overweight (or underweight) and completely out of condition (a zero)? Actually, nobody is a 10 and nobody is a zero. So give yourself a mark, somewhere between those figures.

Expertise: ask yourself how you feel about your professional expertise. Do you need to go back to school, so to speak, to upgrade your knowledge and skills or do you feel you have all the ability and knowhow you need to accomplish your goals?

Friends: what is your relationship like with your friends? Do you participate in a large network of mutually supportive inter-relationships or are you a Billy No-mates? Again, these are the extremes of the scale – you will be somewhere in between.

Purpose: do you feel you have your Life Purpose worked out yet or do you think that we are all here by accident and it does not matter, one jot, what you decide to do with your life? How do you feel about the prospect of living your life according to your calling?

Energy: when you get home in the evening, are you still brimming with energy and ready to get stuck into whatever else you want to do or do you feel completely exhausted and always seem to be ready to chill-out with that glass of wine?

Integrity: what is the opinion you hold about yourself? A person with high integrity is one who’s actions are consistent with their beliefs. Generally, we feel much better about ourselves when we can do this. Are you the kind of person who walks their talk or are you an unreliable witness? Do you say ‘yes’ when you really mean ‘maybe’?

Family: how do you feel about your relationship with members your family? I think it is well to recognise that all families are, to some extent, dysfunctional. But how do you feel about yours: do you feel loved and do you, in turn, love unconditionally?

Vision: have you got it worked out? Related but distinct to purpose and mission, but essentially, do you know where you are going with your life?

When you have marked yourself on all of these scales, join up the dots and you will be looking at a visual representation of how you feel about your life. Ideally, it would be a large round circle. But, often it is not. You would be amazed at how often I get results like the one below at my Workshops.

If your wheel looks a bit like the one above, don’t worry too much – you are perfectly normal. But, if your wheel does look something like that, perhaps it may be an indication of why you are having such a bumpy ride as you make your way in life.

There are two things to particularly take note of, in your own analysis:

• The Roundness of the Wheel – indicates balance
• The Size of the Wheel – indicates happiness

An unbalanced life is a life that is very likely to be full of stress. Getting the balance right in these dimensions is a wonderfully effective way of proactively dealing with stress. A happy life is the result, not only of living life in balance, but also putting the effort into each of these areas. So your wheel should, ideally, be both round and large.

You remember that I mentioned I had designed my version of the wheel to fit in with the teaching on the 7 Habits? Well, here’s how that works: the four straight lines represent the four dimensions Stephen Covey mentions in his books on The 7 Habits and The 8th Habit.

They are the three dimensions that constitute what it is to be human (body, mind and spirit) and the fourth dimension represents our interaction with other people (interpersonal).

• Body (Health and Energy)
• Mind (Integrity and Expertise)
• Spirit (Vision and Purpose)
• Interpersonal (Friends and Family)

Once you have your analysis complete, you can then begin to work on your weak areas. Perhaps we can discuss how to do this in future posts.

This exercise is a very good starting point for personal development. If you are a life coach, please feel free to use it in your own life coaching sessions. You need not attribute it to me (though a link to my blog is always very welcome).