The Wheel of Life

As I sat down to plan all the possibilities of 2013, I realized something: I had no idea what I needed from my life.

How does someone who lost everything rebuild?  What did I need to stand on my own two feet again?  How in the world was I going to come up with reachable goals?  I was so lost.  So I did a little Google research and came up with a few ways to determine my 2013 resolutions.

The first thing I found was something called the Wheel of Life.  The idea is that you separate your life into eight key areas.  You then make a pie chart with eight equal sections and assign a key area to each slice.  How happy are you with each area?  Shade each slice up to that point where you are happy.  Here's my Wheel of Life:

A wheel needs to be fairly circular to carry its cargo.  Step back and take a look at your pie chart.  How balanced are you?  How circular is your shaded region?  The idea is that you now need to make goals that will balance out those sections in order to make your life run smoothly.  Clearly, mine needs some work.  I mean seriously, look at that number beside finances.  Personal, knowledge and health aren't looking so hot either.  My wagon isn't moving until I smooth this thing out.

So now I knew what areas I needed to make goals in, but I was still struggling to decide what goals I should make or how many I needed.  I decided to reorganize the pie chart in a form my brain could understand.

This gave me a concept of how many steps it took to reach 100% in each area.  I now knew how many goals I needed to get to the next step of happiness on my wheel.  

At this point, you might be thinking, "Geez, Marietta, that means you need to make 30 goals.  There's no way that's reachable."  And that's true.  The thing to remember is that, sometimes, a single goal is large enough it can count for multiple steps up.  For example, if I want to lose 30 pounds, losing just 15 would bump up my health one step.  So losing 30 pounds would account for two of those boxes up there.  Also, many of my goals tie in to more than one category.  For example, losing 30 pounds might help my health, but it'll also make me feel better about myself - that falls into personal as well.  So now I've covered three of those boxes up there with one goal.

Stay tuned!  Coming up soon: My financial goals for 2013.