Using The Wheel of Life to Boost Your Achievement and Satisfaction
Well-being involves different components, including satisfaction, positive judgments of our life, and experiencing pleasant emotions and moods. If you want to continue being a great fundraiser and nonprofit leader, it’s worth taking time to think about your overall well-being.
The Wheel of Life is a simple but powerful tool that helps define your satisfaction with important life domains.* It helps you evaluate and rate your level of satisfaction and then provides opportunities for you to boost your achievement and satisfaction in those domains. The goal of the Wheel is to increase your sense of life fulfillment.
The Wheel can be helpful in goal setting. It can be used to define where you are at this snapshot in your life, and where you’d like to be. It can help you define your wants for the future and develop a path to achieve them. Over time, you can use the Wheel to monitor your progress, highlight helpful patterns, and support behavior change.
The Wheel and How It Works
Download a PDF of the Wheel of Life.
The Wheel of Life allows you to take a snapshot of your satisfaction with life. There are 10 domains on the wheel:
Money & Finance
Career & Work
Health & Fitness
Fun & Recreation
Environment
Community
Family & Friends
Partner & Love
Growth & Learning
Spirituality & Faith
The Exercise
Think about and rate your level of satisfaction with each domain on the wheel. A score of one means you are not at all satisfied in that domain, while 10 means you are very satisfied. Place a dot or mark on each domain to show how you feel at this moment.
Which domain draws the most attention for you?
What specifically can you do in this domain to raise your score and your satisfaction?
For example, if you rate Health & Fitness a level five, what would it take to raise your score to a six?
What changes could you make that would increase your score?
What would life look like if the score in that domain was a 10, and neither time nor money were an issue?
What is one thing you can do this week to help that score increase by one?
The Reflection
Using the wheel helps you clarify your priorities and reflect on your current life versus your desired life. The goal is not necessarily to be sure all the domains are in “balance.” Not everyone will want their domains to be in balance.
The Wheel of Life is a useful exercise that you can keep and do periodically to check in with yourself.
I encourage you to use it in this new year to measure where you are with being satisfied in life, and where you want to go.
Learn More
Now that you’ve checked in with yourself, please reach out to me to discuss ways to align your wheel and raise your satisfaction levels. Contact me via email or schedule your free call.
*Positive Psychology Toolkit 2021; Whitworth, Kimsey-House, & Sandahl, 1998; Dean, 2004.
Get in touch
Let’s develop an effective fundraising plan, boost the performance of your team, ensure your organization’s sustainability, and overcome your leadership challenges by examining your mindset now. Contact me today!