A wholistic approach: an introduction and guide to the wellness wheel
The wellness wheel is a great holistic tool to use to help identify where in your life needs extra care and attention. The goal of using a wellness wheel is to identify areas where you may be thriving and areas where you may need to focus more attention and effort to achieve balance and wellness in your life. The wellness wheel is helpful for you to identify areas where you may be neglecting or overemphasising. Therefore allowing adjustments to be made to achieve a more balanced and fulfilling life.
The wheel is divided into eight areas including social, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, physical, environmental, financial, and occupational. The different segments each represent a specific area of life that contributes to overall wellness. You can then rate these areas of your life out of 10. 10 being fulfilled and 0 being least fulfilled. We need all areas of our lives to be attended to and full to have optimal health and wellness.
I complete a wellness wheel every quarter to assess where I am and where I need to give extra attention and direction for the coming months. After a heavy work filled year last year, I completed a wellness wheel pre-travel trip to Bali. What I saw shocked me, I scored incredibly low on the spiritual scale. Doing the practice highlighted to me something that I wasn’t necessarily conscious of before. I spent my travels refueling and filling up my spiritual bucket. You can read more about my lessons learned in Bali here.
So where do you start with creating a wellness wheel?
Draw or print a wellness wheel template
There are many free downloadable templates when you google “wellness wheel”. Maybe you feel that some of the areas don’t align with your needs, if this is the case you can create your own based on your specific needs and priorities.
Assess each segment
Rate your current level of satisfaction within each area on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. Something to consider here is how fulfilled you feel in each aspect and how much attention and energy you are currently giving the area.
Colour in the segment
Once you have given a rating to each segment, I like to give each segment its own colour to create a visual representation of your current wellness wheel.
Set goals
With a clear diagram and visual representation of where you currently are you can now identify areas of your life that could benefit from improvement. You can set SMART goals, specific and measurable goals to help you work towards greater balance and wellness. What do you need to do to improve each aspect of your life? Create a plan to achieve these goals.
Regularly reassess
Make sure to revist your wheel regularly to track your progress. Making notes and reflecting on how you are feeling and improvements over time. Regularly checking in on the wheel will show where you may need to make adjustments to your goals to create balance in all areas of your life. As a busy mum myself I get it, it can be hard to prioritise yourself and your time. The wheel can act as a visual cue as to where to start and allocate your energy accordingly. Focussing on what really matters to you and where will make the biggest difference therefore taking some stress out of it all
The wellness wheel is an important wellness tool for all but especially for busy mums. It is a great way to create more self-awareness and show where your priorities lie for self care, balance, goal setting, and stress reduction.
Much love
Katie xx