Essential Coaching Tool: The Wheel of Wellbeing
What is the Wheel of Wellbeing Framework?
The Wheel of Wellbeing framework is an assessment tool. It’s helpful for understanding whether your priorities are steering you in a beneficial direction, and whether your actions are truly aligned with your priorities. (Here, you can think of actions as any behavior that describes how you spend your time, your energy, or your resources, e.g. money).
Imagine your life as a wheel with spokes. The spokes divide the wheel into 6-8 different sections: these are the areas of your life that bring you happiness and fulfillment. The wheel rolls along the ground (which represents our experience of daily life) and encounters the occasional bump in the road that disrupts the smooth, even rotation of the wheel. The bump might represent something negative, like an unforeseen obstacle. Or, it might represent something positive, like a new opportunity. But here’s the important part: whether or not the wheel is in alignment will determine what happens next after that chance encounter with the bump. Either the wheel is propelled forward, or becomes very, very stuck.
And, like the wheel, the extent to which we’re aligned will determine whether we keep moving forward, or whether we stand still in our tracks.
How do I apply the Wheel of Wellbeing to my life?
First, let’s talk about the sections within the wheel. Broadly, these sections are categories within your life. These sections might look something like the following:
Mental: Your mental health and wellbeing, e.g. moods, emotional resilience, thought patterns, etc.
Physical: Your physical health and wellbeing, e.g. sleep, exercise, overall health, etc.
Relationships: The overall health of your relationships, the balance of what you give vs. receive, etc.
Financial: Your financial wellbeing, e.g. whether you have sufficient financial resources to support the the lifestyle you want to live.
Spirituality / personal growth: Your growth-oriented pursuits, your relationship with awe and the unknown, and whether you have sufficient mental or creative bandwidth explore the unknown.
Professional wellbeing: Your ability to achieve your desired impact through your work, the balance of what you give vs. receive from work, etc.
Note: each of these sections has much more depth and can be interpreted with great nuance. If you’re interested in exploring additional interpretations, check out this post.
Everyone’s wheel will look different in two predictable ways: 1) The sections might have different labels from the labels referenced here, and 2) the size / importance of each section might be larger or smaller depending on the person’s priorities.
Even though everyone’s wheel looks different, misalignment generally looks and feels the same for most individuals. Here are a few common examples of misalignment:
Too much of a good thing: Your wheel has one massive section while the rest are teeny and under-nurtured. This looks like the workaholic, the spend-a-holic (ka-ching) or really any “--a-holic” variation. Success can be addicting, but it’s not serving you if it’s at the detriment to the rest of your life.
Hamster on a wheel: This feels like you’re constantly running from one thing to the next without being able to stop and enjoy your accomplishments. If you stop moving for even a moment, momentum in one or more sections of the wheel will stop with you.
Balanced yet stuck: From the outside looking in, life looks great across the board. But, something feels amiss and it’s difficult to pin down. Why isn’t life moving forward?
And, here’s an important caveat: you don’t have to be experiencing major misalignment to benefit from the Wheel of Wellbeing framework. In addition to being used to address major misalignments, it’s also a great tool for fine-tuning overall wellbeing, intentionality, and life balance.
How Om Labs uses the Wheel of Wellbeing to guide your coaching journey:
Om Labs uses the Wheel of Wellbeing in two ways: 1) as a tool to help clients generally specifically target misalignment or fine-tune areas of opportunity and 2) as a benchmark for wellbeing during significant life transformations.
As a general tool to help clients target misalignments or fine-tune overall wellbeing: Sometimes clients begin a coaching relationship knowing they want general support without a specific outcome in mind. In this case, clients start by taking a general assessment grounded in the Wheel of Wellbeing framework. Together, the coach and client set and work toward personal goals aligned to the assessment outcomes. As goals are achieved, the client can expect to see overall improvements in wellness and life satisfaction.
As a benchmark for wellbeing during significant life transformations: Oftentimes clients begin working with Om Labs because they’re looking for support redesigning a major aspect of their life or they have a transformational goal in mind. In this case, a tailored version of the Wheel of Wellbeing assessment is used at regular intervals throughout the client’s transformation or transition process to ensure the broader changes taking place are creating positive impacts on the client’s life. Used this way, the Wheel of Wellbeing assessment is an accountability and progress tracking tool.
Getting Started:
Take the Wheel of Wellbeing General Assessment: If you’re interested in taking a general version of the wheel of wellbeing assessment to establish a personal baseline, you can take Om Labs’ version of the assessment here (coming soon).
Discuss Your Results with a Coach: Book a free, 30-minute consultation to discuss your general assessment results along with outcomes you’d like to achieve through coaching.
Work With Your Coach to Create a Personalized Plan: Your personalized coaching plan serves as a roadmap to guide you toward your desired outcome and includes progress tracking and/or data visualization tools so you can see the progress you’re making along the way.