What are Your Life Goals?
We as humans are constantly in search of a meaning in our lives and are always inspired by the two questions that we constantly ask ourselves:
a. What is Life?
b. What is my purpose in this lifetime?
So, what is Life? Every time you ask this question to yourself, you will observe that you get a different answer to it. I often used to wonder, is there a road map that can help us to answer these questions and take actionable steps to achieve our goals or in other words become a better version of us.
In the summer of 2011, my search for meaning found its way. To be precise, 7720 miles from Mumbai, India at the scenic Clear Water Resort, Puget Sound, along the magnificent Northwestern coast of the U.S. Yes! I was lucky to receive a scholarship and attend a course on ‘Financial Life Planning’ conducted by Ms Amy Mullen and Ms Carol Anderson of Money Quotient, Inc, U.S.
As part of the course, we were introduced to a beautiful tool called ‘Wheel of Life’! The moment I looked at it, I fell in love with it! I knew that this is the tool that is going to help me find my meaning and live my dreams!
I had a great experience doing this fabulous exercise and when I look back today, I have found my higher calling as well as made significant progress in many facets of my life! Our clients enjoy doing it and share some of the beautiful memories of their lives! I would love to have you try it out. Are you ready? It will take about 5–7 minutes. Take a paper and pencil and draw a big circle. This exercise is about your current feelings towards various aspect of your life. Hence you should be able to complete it quickly. Imagine you are at the hub or the center of the wheel of life in the picture. And the wheel has nine spokes or covers nine facets of your life. Now close your eyes and open slowly to focus on one aspect of the life in the wheel. Say, let us start with Family. On a scale of 0 to 10, how satisfied are you with your family members and accordingly fill the family spoke with a dot to indicate the rating scale number.
Close your eyes again and open slowly to focus on Health. On a scale of 0 to 10, how satisfied are you with your Health and accordingly fill the health spoke with a dot to indicate the rating scale number. Repeat this exercise till you complete all the 9 spokes or facets of your life and connect the dots.
Meditate for few moments. Now, tell me how does it feel? Have you ever thought about Life like this before? What does your Wheel of Life say to you? What aspects of your Life do you feel great about? I mean, the ones where you have scored 7, 8, 9 or even 10? Why do you feel great about it? What took you to get there? Similarly, what aspects of Life that you feel that you will need to work on? Say, the ones you scored 2, 3 or 4 . Do you recollect few of these that you might have scored higher earlier in your life? How did you do it?
Finally, if you were to pick up few aspects of your life that you will want to focus now and for the next few years what will it be? Can you identify 2 or 3 steps to move it to a higher score. Say, if your Leisure score is 5 what are the steps that you will take to move it to 7? Think and reflect on it for few minutes.
Now go fill up your Vision Board with your Life Goals! Did you find meaning or purpose in your life? You will be able to live the life you want to be! Because you created it! Go for it!
P.S.: Wheel of Life is a tool to review as to where you are now, where do you want to go and how to do you want to get there. At a quick glance, it provides a 360 degree view of your life. It is a compass to measure your Life Balance. The shape of the connected dots may vary for each individual due to various factors or stages in life . For example, some of you may find that Community and Inner Growth scores are low in your satisfaction level or not applicable and you may not want to pursue at this point of time. Also, the motivation factors in life for some of you can be both extrinsic and intrinsic. The purpose of the exercise is to find focus, priorities or directions in your life. It is ideal that you set incremental goals initially before you set audacious goals to achieve it. You can revisit once a year to review your progress and renew your life goals.
