What Are Your Buckets?

In coaching, and in some religions, a circle is used to represent the different aspects of our lives. In Buddhism, it's called the Bhavacakra, in Hinduism it's called the Samsara, and in coaching, we usually just call it the Wheel of Life.

Whatever you call it, it's a useful tool to look at life and reflect on how it's going.

It usually looks something like this:

As we kick off the new year, I recommend taking some time to draw your own Wheel of Life.

That means stepping back and reflecting on the 'buckets' that together form your unique life, in order to create a tool that you can work from in the upcoming year. You can draw it out in your journal, or you can use the free blank template that I've included here. 

My wheel looks like this right now:

I say "right now," because your wheel may evolve or expand over time. Mine has.

Then, once you've created your own wheel, each month or each quarter, you can schedule a little check-in with yourself to look at how things are going in each area, and identify opportunities for growth, expansion, or more fulfillment. I like to place dots in each area to represent my overall level of fulfillment in each (the perimeter of the circle represents a 10, and the inside represents a 1), and then connect the dots to see what it looks like.

The fun thing about doing this regularly is that the wheel almost always looks slightly different, at any given point in time. 

Darin Eich of Innovation Learning has a great post here about how to do this in a reflective way - by using the wheel to do your own personal year in review. 

I'd love to hear from you in the comments...what are the different parts of your wheel?

Happy New Year!
Sarah