I have written articles focussing on the cities of Vancouver, BC; Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and most recently Silicon Valley, California. I hope many of you in these cities have found the information useful. I write my articles so they are of relevance to almost any person in any city around the world. I hope those of you from other locations have also enjoyed reading my articles as much as I have enjoyed writing them. So, to all my readers, my hope is that I can continue to inspire you to improve your lives. The following article is no exception. I am confident you will find it to be informative and meaningful.

This article is meant to give you a taste of what the first assessment tool I use with clients looks like. During the first session, the client completes the ‘wheel of life’. It is a single piece of paper with a circle (or wheel) on it that has been divided into 8 equal parts. Each part represents an area of life. The areas are: health, money, fun and recreation, physical environment (meaning your home, neighborhood, city, country, etc), personal growth, career, significant other/romance, and friends/family.

The client then rates their level of satisfaction in each area from 0 to 10. 0 is no satisfaction, while 10 is extremely high satisfaction. The clients does this by drawing a dot in the middle of each segment, which corresponds to the satisfaction rating they’ve given it. We then have a discussion about why they gave each life area the rating they did. The next step is for them to connect the dots and voila, a distinct shape or image is created. The question then becomes, if this wheel really was your life, then how bumpy or smooth would the ride be?

Wheel of YOUR Life

The wheel of life also functions as a reference point to measure future progress against. As a coach, I get my clients to do a new wheel about every month and a half. The client can immediately see where they have improved, remained the same, or declined. Eventhough only one life area is the ‘goal’, making changes in one part influences the remaining life areas. It is like a domino effect.

I encourage you to contact me and try out the wheel of life. I believe you will be amazed, as so many of my clients have been, at how powerful this little tool can be.

Please send me any comments or questions you have.

To a smoother ride for all,

Anita

This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 6:08 am and is filed under Life Coaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.