The Wheel of Life is a powerful tool that compares how your life is currently with how you’d ideally like it to be, providing a vivid visual representation.
As life coaches, you can use it as an assessment tool to help your prospects understand their life balance and personal satisfaction.
In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the Wheel of Life, its categories, benefits, and how it serves as an essential online tool for you.
What is a Wheel of Life?
The Wheel of Life is not a new concept. In Buddhism, the Bhavacakra represents the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, and it traces the origins of the Wheel of Life.
In your coaching business, however, you can use the Wheel of Life as a self-assessment tool. It helps your prospects understand their current situation and identify areas for improvement.
The Wheel of Life is a popular visual exercise in personal development and coaching. You can use this tool to allow your prospects to introspect on different areas of their life, assessing their actions and identifying where they would like to give more attention.
There are various categories or segments in the Wheel of Life. Each category represents a critical area of one’s life. The assessment process involves rating the level of satisfaction in each of these categories, which results in a visual overview of life satisfaction and balance.
Wheel of Life Categories
You can use many variations of the Wheel of Life depending on the focus of your coaching service.
For example, you can use a Wheel of Business for business coaching, focusing on sales, marketing, operations, and customer service. A Wheel of Health could focus on nutrition, exercise, sleep, and mental health. The possibilities are endless, and you can use the Wheel of Life to suit the needs of each prospect.
While you can customize the categories based on individual needs, there are eight standard categories. Here’s a detailed look at each of these categories:
1. Health
This category focuses on physical health and well-being. It includes diet, exercise, sleep, and overall physical health. It may also cover mental health, including stress levels and emotional well-being.
2. Friends & Family
This category assesses the quality of one’s relationships with friends and family. It considers the time you spend with them, the quality of your interactions, and your overall satisfaction with your relationships.
3. Significant Other/Romance
This category is about your romantic relationships. If you’re in a relationship, it assesses the quality of that relationship. If you’re single, it might determine your desire for a relationship or your satisfaction with being single.
4. Career
This category evaluates your job satisfaction, career development, work-life balance, and fulfillment from work. It can also include aspects such as job security and recognition.
5. Finances
This category is about your financial security and stability. It assesses your income, savings, financial goals, and overall financial health.
6. Personal Growth
This category focuses on self-improvement and personal development. It includes education, skills development, personal achievements, and progress toward personal goals.
7. Fun & Recreation
This category assesses your leisure and relaxation time. It includes hobbies, interests, travel, and other activities that you enjoy and that help you relax and recharge.
8. Physical Environment
This category evaluates your living environment. It includes your home, neighborhood, and the physical spaces you spend your time in. It assesses comfort, safety, and satisfaction with your physical surroundings.
You can rate each of these categories on a scale of 1 (least satisfied) to 10 (most comfortable), and the collective ratings provide a view of one’s life, highlighting areas that need more attention.
Some Examples of Wheel of Life Questions
The Wheel of Life assessment is subjective and personal. The questions might vary depending on the coaching services you offer.
Nonetheless, the following are some general questions you can include in your Wheel of Life assessment:
Career/Work: How satisfied are you with your current job or career path? Are you fulfilling your professional aspirations?
Finances: How comfortable do you feel with your current financial situation? Are you effectively managing your finances and saving for the future?
Health/Wellness: How would you rate your physical and mental health? Are you taking proper care of your well-being through exercise, nutrition, and stress management?
Family & Relationships: How strong are your connections with family members and close friends? Are your relationships supportive and fulfilling?
Personal Development: Are you actively pursuing personal growth and learning opportunities? Are you working on improving yourself intellectually and emotionally?
Fun & Recreation: How much time do you allocate to hobbies, leisure activities, and things that bring you joy and relaxation?
Romance/Love Life: If applicable, how satisfied are you with your current romantic relationship or love life?
Physical Environment: How content are you with your living environment? Does it promote comfort and tranquility?
Spirituality: How connected do you feel to your spiritual beliefs or practices? Are they providing you with a sense of purpose and peace?
Time Management: Do you feel in control of your time, or do you struggle with managing your schedule effectively?
Stress Management: How well do you handle stress and challenges?
Self-Care: Do you prioritize self-care and set aside time for relaxation and rejuvenation?
Communication Skills: How effective are your communication skills in expressing your needs and understanding others?
Goal Achievement: Are you making progress toward your short-term and long-term goals?
Why use the Wheel of Life in Coaching?
Here are some benefits of Wheel of Life for you and your prospects:
- You can understand your prospects better, identify areas of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, and pinpoint where your coaching efforts can be most effective.
- You can help your prospects identify priorities and set realistic, achievable goals.
- You can see how your prospect’s life balance and satisfaction levels evolve, providing a measure of the effectiveness of your coaching process.
- It encourages prospects to actively assess their life balance and set goals, fostering a sense of ownership and commitment to your coaching process.
- It helps clarify and articulate feelings and perceptions that might otherwise be difficult to express, promoting profound understanding and effective communication.
- You can easily customize the categories to reflect the prospect’s unique circumstances and priorities, making it a flexible tool in various coaching contexts.
The Wheel of Life as an Online Assessment Tool
In today’s digital age, the Wheel of Life has evolved from a paper-based exercise to an interactive online tool.
This transformation has made it more accessible and user-friendly, allowing your prospects to complete the exercise at their own pace and revisit their results over time.
The online assessment tool also provides a dynamic visual representation of the individual’s life balance, offering several advantages over its traditional counterpart. The following are some of them:
Accessibility
As an online tool, one can access the Wheel of Life from anywhere, at any time. This flexibility allows your prospects to complete the exercise at their own pace and convenience, whether at home, work, or on the go.
Interactivity
Online versions of the Wheel of Life often feature interactive elements that enhance the user experience. For example, your prospects can drag and drop points on the wheel to rate their satisfaction in each category, visually representing their life balance in real-time.
Tracking Progress Over Time
A significant advantage of an online Wheel of Life assessment is the ability to save and track progress over time.
Prospects can revisit their wheel at any point to see how their life balance has changed. It makes it easier to track progress toward goals and identify areas needing further improvement.
Visual Representation
The online tool provides a dynamic visual representation of the prospect’s life balance. You can use the visual aspects to understand the areas of satisfaction and dissatisfaction at a glance. Then, you can use it for goal-setting and personal development planning.
Guidance and Resources
Many online Wheel of Life tools also provide additional resources and advice to help prospects get the most out of the assessment. It might include tips for rating each category, suggestions for setting realistic goals, and resources for personal development.
Sharing and Collaboration
Online tools often offer the ability to share results between you and your prospects. This feature can facilitate discussions about life balance and personal satisfaction, providing valuable feedback and support.
Benefits of Wheel of Life Assessment Tool For Coaching Business
The digital adaptation of the Wheel of Life brings an added layer of convenience, making it an essential tool for modern coaching. Here’s a closer look at the distinct advantages of using the online Wheel of Life tool:
1. Virtual Consultation
With the online tool, you can offer real-time virtual consultations as prospects fill out their Wheel of Life. You can provide immediate feedback, build rapport, and streamline the coaching process.
2. Email Marketing Integration
Seamlessly integrate the Wheel of Life results and insights into your email marketing campaigns. You can keep your prospects engaged and deliver tailored content based on their assessment.
3. Real-time Analytics
You can tailor coaching sessions effectively with immediate insights and analytics that provide a dynamic view of a prospect’s life balance.
4. Remote Accessibility
The online format ensures that the Wheel of Life tool is accessible anytime, anywhere. Whether your prospects are traveling or at home, they can easily access, fill out, and discuss their assessment.
5. Interactive Engagement
Online interactivity means prospects aren’t just filling out a form. They’re engaging with a tool that can offer instant visual feedback, enhancing their self-awareness process.
6. Easy Updates and Adjustments
Digital platforms allow for quick edits and adjustments. As a prospect’s life changes or as your coaching approach evolves, the online Wheel of Life can be easily updated to reflect these shifts.
7. Secure Data Storage
Most online tools offer cloud storage, ensuring that your prospect’s data is safely stored. You can easily retrieve those data and use them for future coaching sessions.
8. Customizable Templates
Tailor the Wheel of Life to suit individual prospect needs. You can easily adjust categories or redefine scales with online assessment tools.
9. Integration with Other Digital Tools
Easily sync the Wheel of Life tool with other digital platforms, be it calendar tools for session scheduling or CRM systems to manage prospect data.
10. Eco-Friendly
The digital format means there’s no paper waste, making it a sustainable choice for environmentally-conscious coaches and prospects.
How to Use the Wheel of Life Tool in Coaching Business?
Even though the Wheel of Life has huge benefits in the coaching business, you might need to learn how to access this tool.
So, here are some ideas revolving around the application of the Wheel of Life tool in coaching:
Step 1: Identify Life Areas
The first step in using the Wheel of Life with your prospects is to help them identify the critical areas in their life. You can use different categories to tailor to each prospect and reflect what matters most to them.
While there are no hard and fast rules about these categories, they typically include career, family, health, personal growth, finances, and relationships. You can aim for around 8-10 categories for a comprehensive view of their life.
Step 2: Assess Satisfaction Levels
Once you identify the life areas, the next step is to ask your prospect to rate their level of satisfaction in each area on a scale of 1 (not satisfied at all) to 10 (fully satisfied).
This self-assessment is a crucial part of the process. Encourage your prospects to be honest with themselves during this process, as this will help them identify the areas they need to focus on.
Step 3: Plot Scores on the Wheel
After determining the satisfaction levels, it’s time to plot these scores on the Wheel of Life.
In the traditional Wheel of Life, you had to manually draw and plot scores, but today, the process is automatic.
The online tool takes the numerical inputs from your prospects and automatically translates them into a visual representation on the wheel.
Step 4: Reflect and Plan
The completed Wheel of Life assessment is a starting point for reflection and discussion. Have your prospect look at their Wheel of Life test result. The areas that could be more ‘full’ are the ones they may wish to work on.
Use this as a basis for discussion and goal setting. You can cover these areas: What changes could they make to increase their satisfaction levels in these areas? Or how can they bring more balance to their life?
Creating Online Wheel of Life Assessment
Different softwares and online tools have made creating a wheel of life assessment as easy as possible. You can create engaging Wheel of Life assessments in just a few clicks with intuitive user interfaces, customizable templates, and interactive features.
Not only does this save time and effort, but the online format also offers a dynamic experience for prospects. They can easily input data, visualize imbalances, and track changes over time.
Furthermore, the digital approach facilitates seamless sharing, real-time feedback, and integrated action planning. You can provide an enriching experience to your prospects.
One such tool where you can create your Wheel of Life assessment is CoachPodium. Creating a wheel of life assessment with this interactive online tool is a walk in the park.
Create the Wheel of Life Assessment with CoachPodium
CoachPodium is a platform designed to help you generate more leads. You can create an interactive online Wheel of Life tool that enhances the experience of your prospects. It also aids in gathering insights faster, which can help tailor your coaching strategies effectively.
You can easily integrate this tool into a website, enhancing user engagement and inviting prospects to evaluate their life balance.
Here is the step-by-step guide for creating the Wheel of Life assessment using CoachPodium:
Step 1: Access CoachPodium
Open your web browser and navigate the CoachPodium website. Log in to your CoachPodium account using your credentials. You will be able to assess the CoachPodium dashboard.
Step 2: Create the Wheel of Life Assessment
Go to the Wheel of Life menu on the dashboard’s left side and click the ‘Add New’ button. Add a title for your wheel and, if desired, write a description that reflects the purpose or focus of the assessment.
Step 3: Customize Each Wheel Row
You can customize each row with a title, question, and color. You can also set whether each question is mandatory or optional. If you’re not satisfied with a row, you can delete it.
Step 4: Configure the Wheel
The wheel configuration includes General and Call to Action Settings.
In General Settings, you can customize the button text, skip text, wheel meter, and chart type. In Call to Action Settings, you can choose between default, custom, or no call to action.
Step 5: Publish Your Wheel
Once satisfied with your wheel, you can publish your wheel. You can always save your wheel in the Draft if you want to make changes later.
Step 6: Make Your Wheel Accessible
You need to make your wheel accessible to your clients. You can do this by sharing the unique URL generated embedding the wheel on your website.
Following these steps, you can easily create a Wheel of Life assessment for your coaching business. After you successfully create your Wheel of Life assessment, it will look something like this:
Features in CoachPodium’s Wheel of Life Assessment
While creating a wheel of life assessment online, you should know a little about the features of a wheel.
Following are some standard sections that you need to get familiar with if you are creating a wheel of life assessment with CoachPodium:
- Question Title: The category or aspect of life that your prospect wants to know and evaluate.
- Title Description: A brief description or explanation of the specific area that a prospect is evaluating.
- Wheel Meter: The visual representation of the Wheel of Life, typically presented as a circular chart divided into segments.
- Meter Value: The numerical value or rating for each Wheel category. This value indicates the individual’s level of satisfaction or fulfillment in that area.
- Chart Type: The type of chart used to display the Wheel of Life assessment, often a pie chart, spider web, or a progress bar.
- Anchor Labels: The labels or names on the outer edges of the wheel represent the different components or aspects of life.
- You can write ‘Strongly Disagree’ or ‘Not at all Satisfied’ to show disagreement. And you can use ‘Strongly Agree’ or ‘Extremely Satisfied’ to show agreement.
- Featured Image: An optional image visually represents the Wheel of Life assessment, adding context or visual appeal.
Different Styles of Wheel of Life in CoachPodium
The Wheel of Life is an essential element in your coaching service. But did you know there are different visual styles to represent the Wheel of Life?
These styles can add variety and depth to your coaching sessions. You should consider the needs and preferences of your prospects when selecting a style.
Let’s explore the three main styles:
1. Spider Web Style
The Spider Web style is a classic representation, now available in online tools.
How It Works
Your prospects rate their satisfaction in different life categories, and the online tool automatically plots these scores, creating a ‘spider web’ style.
Why Use It
This style provides an immediate visual insight into life balance. The online version adds interactivity, allowing prospects to adjust ratings and see real-time changes.
2. Polar Chart Style
The Polar Chart brings a modern twist to the traditional spider web. It offers a more refined online experience.
How It Works
It works similarly to the spider web but with radial lines and color coding.
Why Use It
The Polar Chart is visually engaging and can resonate with prospects who appreciate detailed visual data. It’s perfect for adding a modern touch to your online coaching tools.
3. Progress Bar Style
The Progress Bar style offers a linear approach.
How It Works
A horizontal bar represents each life category, in which the filled portions show the prospect’s satisfaction level.
Why Use It
This style is intuitive and user-friendly. It’s an excellent choice for prospects who prefer a straightforward approach, and the online version adds a layer of interactivity.
Other Wheel of Life Assessment Tools
Besides CoachPodium, you can use several other tools to create your own wheel of life assessments. An example of such an assessment tool is the Wheel of Life Plugin.
The Wheel of Life Plugin is a perfect solution to enhance your coaching business. This dynamic tool helps in understanding your prospects. The following are some benefits of this plugin:
- Create easy-to-follow assignments tailored to reveal crucial aspects of your prospects’ lives.
- Adjust the tool to reflect your unique coaching style, from its appearance to its core values.
- Transform every assessment into a potential lead, setting the stage for impactful coaching sessions.
- Utilize customizable email templates to maintain a personal touch as prospects engage with your site.
- Convert assessment results into actionable coaching opportunities with compelling messages.
- Seamlessly embed the Wheel of Life assessment anywhere on your website, ensuring maximum visibility.
Refer to the article 6 Best Wheel of Life Coaching Assessment Tools to learn more about different Wheel of Life assessment tools.
Conclusion
The Wheel of Life is a versatile and powerful tool in life coaching. It helps your prospects understand their current situation and empowers them to take control of their life.
By identifying areas for improvement, setting goals, and tracking progress, you can guide your prospects toward a more balanced and fulfilling life.
You can ease this process as a coach by providing support, encouragement, and guidance. Similarly, you can help your prospects realize their aspirations with the Wheel of Life.
Hence, using this tool will benefit you in lead generation and selling your services.
