The Wheel of Life created by Paul J. Meyer, founder of the Success Motivation Institute, is a visual self-assessment tool designed to help individuals reflect on balance and fulfillment across key areas of life.

It is a coaching tool that can be applied to this week’s Sunshine Inbox where our member’s biggest stressor is for direction – personal and professional.

The purpose of The Wheel of Life:

It offers a gentle and visual way for us to reflect on our current life balance and explore where we feel most fulfilled or stretched. It’s especially powerful if we are feeling directionless or overwhelmed as it invites clarity without judgment.

How to Do the Wheel of Life Exercise

Step 1: Choose Your Life Categories

Here are 8 categories commonly used:

Step 2: Rate Each Area

On a circular diagram (like a pie chart), each category becomes a spoke. You rate your satisfaction in each area from 1 (low) to 10 (high), marking a point along the spoke.

Step 3: Connect the Dots

Once all areas are rated, connect the dots around the wheel. This creates a visual representation of your current life balance.

Step 4: Explore Insights

Step 5: Set Intentions

For the neglected areas that you would like to focus on, you can set intentional goals for example, if you had a low score for family and would like to work on that, an intentional goal could be: “I will bring my parents out for a meal each month”. Or if health was a neglected area, an intentional goal could be “I will gift myself 10 minutes of quiet each morning”.

When prepping for this Sunshine Inbox, I was delighted to observe that I now had a more balanced wheel. Previously when I did it, it was imbalanced with low scores for some areas for example, love (relationships) and personal finance.

As shared in previous Sunshine Inboxes, those were areas that I knew I had to focus on in order for me to lead a flourishing life. It set the direction for the steps I needed to take.

Direction doesn’t mean certainty as there were many more moments when I felt disheartened and lost even though I knew the general direction where I like to head to.

I look at these moments as meanderings to gain greater clarity for greater success and joy.

To me, direction often meant alignment to my values and dreams for example, to experience heart bliss.

The other insight I gleaned about direction is that each step is valid even if it’s small or slow.

Also, you don’t need to overhaul your life to begin a new direction. You can start by noticing which areas feel neglected to you. Focus on one neglected area at a time. What’s interesting is that by doing that, you may uncover the direction that you are looking for, guided by what matters most to you.

In closing, I like to encourage our member that “though some days may feel like you are groping and fumbling, take heart that you are discerning your way forward. The fact that you had the courage to take a break with a fixed schedule shows you are desiring to find the next pathway. That is a breakthrough as most would simply just go through the motion of day to day. Not because that’s what they want but because it is easier. “