An Introduction To The Circle Of Life

January 14th 2008

lion king circle of life No, I’m not going to talk about The Lion King! Instead I am going to introduce a common self improvement tool, called the circle (or wheel) of life. I’ve always found it to be a very clear-cut, visual approach to analyzing how satisfied you are with different areas of your life, something that is not particularly common in the self help field. Oddly, it’s not a technique that seems to have much explanation on the internet. Hopefully this post (and potentially the mini-series that will follow it) can go some way to clearing that up. Let me know if you try it out out and whether it was useful.

Start off my printing out my circle template (A4 or A5 size, check out more templates here). Then along each spoke, write down the eight areas of life that are detailed below (vision, career/job, entertainment/hobbies, family/friends, relationship, health/fitness, personal, health). With the circle drawn out, consider what rating system to use. I would personally recommend using a 1-to-5 score but it’s up to you, the chart allows for anything up to 10 and I have written a post covering this issue if you need more information. Next, you need to give careful consideration to what score to give each area of your life. You are determining how happy/satisfied you are with each of the areas. Below I have provided example questions to consider when working this out. When thinking about this don’t compare yourself to others or analyze yourself too harshly. There is such a thing as too much self evaluation. For instance, if you are honestly happy and satisfied with your family life give yourself an high score, even if you don’t compare favorably to other people.

Vision
Do you have a clear vision detailing what you want from your life? Are you heading in the right direction with a well defined vertical map? Or are you happy with the situation in your life at the current time? Are you content to live in the here-and-now and not worry about what lies ahead in the future?
Career/job
Is your current job fulfilling and is it really what you want to be doing? Do you enjoy spending time with your colleagues? Is the work you do satisfying or boring? Are you stuck in a dead end job with a terrible boss to deal with, yet you’ve not taken any action to deal with the situation?
Entertainment/hobbies
No work without play, after all! Do you have plenty of hobbies and interests to keep you occupied outside of work or are you content to lounge on the sofa watching TV every night? If you do have special interests do you put as much time as you’d like into them?
Family/friends
Do you keep in touch with your relations as often as you really want to or are you content with the occasional phone call to your parents? Do you spend as much time with your children as you’d like? What about your friends and acquaintances? Do you have a productive social life?
Relationships
Are you satisfied with your relationships? Is your partner who you really want to be with and if so, do you give the relationship the attention it deserves to make it work? If you are single are you happy that way, and if not are you being proactive in finding someone?
Health/fitness
How happy are you with your health and fitness? Do you feel good about yourself and go to the gym regularly? Or are you content with eating well and going for the occasional jog to break a sweat? Perhaps you are unhappy with your physique and health yet you’ve done little about it.
Personal
If you are reading this blog you will no doubt put some attention on your personal development, but do you spend as much time as you want on it? Do you find time for yourself in your day or are you constantly rushing around and dealing with other people’s problems?
Wealth
Are you constantly struggling to make ends meet or do you get plenty of money coming in that you invest wisely? Are you content with your spending habits or do you wish you were more frugal?

Do note that you shouldn’t take down your results and immediately begin planning on how to improve your life. The intention of this approach is primarily to evaluate where you stand on different areas of your life. It’s best used purely for your own information and to provide some focus. Beyond that though, if you intend to take action on the results bear in mind the circle covers eight areas and it’s very bad practice to focus on so many goals. When I originally did this method I made the mistake of coming up with a detailed action plan covering the entire circle. It unsurprisingly fell apart. Concentrate on one area at a time and if you are satisfied with a particular area of your life, there is no need to focus on it.