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Norton: Rounding out our wheel of life

A couple of weeks ago I had written about the wheel of life and making sure that we try and find balance in all areas of life. The feedback from the community has been awesome and a lot of fun as I had a chance to engage with many of you. And in 100% of the conversations, everyone I spoke with had a wheel that was either not quite round, or in many cases, the wheel looked like a flat tire.

If you missed it, here was a part of the column where I shared how to view your wheel of life. Draw a circle, or at least imagine a circle. And in that circle, there is a hub with seven spokes. Go ahead and draw them in your circle so they look like the spokes of a wheel. Label each of the seven spokes: Family, Personal, Mental, Spiritual, Physical, Financial, and Career. Now consider that the outside of your wheel, the furthest part from the hub, represents a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. And at the hub, that represents a 1 on the scale of 1 to 10. The 1 is low, and the 10 is high.

Next, draw a dot on each spoke based on where you believe that you are in each area of your life on a scale of 1 to 10. Now, connect the dots. If you are like most of us, your newly drawn wheel looks like a flat tire. Or maybe, your wheel still looks like a wheel, but it’s a small wheel with your ratings lower in each category. Either way, with a flat tire, or a very small wheel, we will not get where we are really trying to go.



Why am I revisiting this? Because you are not alone. Everyone I spoke with or exchanged emails with became aware of one or more areas of their life where they wanted to see an improvement. And in most cases, until they completed the wheel, they had not even considered why they might have been feeling out of balance. And for some, their first feeling was concern that they have been overlooking something for a long time and not realizing what it was that they were missing. And if that was you too, don’t worry about it, as we all have room to grow and improve. Including me, my wheel is still not quite as round as I would like it to be.

When we do recognize where we would like to make an improvement in our life, we can connect that to the goals and dreams that we are pursuing. And if we identify an area of our life that is holding us back from the achievement of our goals and dreams, we can draw upon that as our motivation to make those improvements.

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This is the right time to evaluate our performance in each area of life because of the ever-changing world that we are living in, however the truth is that this wheel of life philosophy is a tried and true, proven strategy for achieving success in any season of life, especially in the sea changes of life that we are living through right now.

Now maybe you just read the previous column and didn’t give it a shot, or you are reading this one right now and just cruised past the idea of actually identifying where you are personally on the wheel of life. Either way, I would encourage you to at least give it a try and to let me know what you find, as you may just find out how to use your wheel to get you on your way to where you really want to go.

And when you do complete it, I really would love to hear how you are planning to round out your wheel of life at mnorton@tramazing.com. If you need a little help with figuring it out, let me know that as well. And when we do improve a little bit in each area of life, it really will be a better than good week.


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