What is the Wheel of Wellness?

Have you noticed that when you do something in life, it tends to impact another area of your life? It feels like everything in your life is connected in some way. If you have ever felt this way, you wouldn’t be alone. There is a concept behind this, and it's best described with the wheel of wellness. The wheel of wellness is a circular model that represents the different areas of your life that are interconnected. When one area is unsatisfied, it mostly likely affects the other areas in your life. Think of it this way: when your job is not providing enough money to pay your bills, then you most likely are experiencing feelings of stress and anxiety. That stress and anxiety might keep you up at night, affecting your ability to get the right amount of sleep that you need. If you aren’t getting enough sleep, you might be too tired to workout that day, and you might not clean the house like you planned. Just one thing in your life has drastically affected all of the other areas in your life. The wheel of wellness can be used to identify the areas in your life that might need some attention to improve your overall well being.

How Do I Use The Wheel of Wellness?

The seven areas in the wheel of wellness are emotional, physical, intellectual, spiritual, environmental, social, and financial. Most likely, everything you do in life can be put into one of these seven categories. And if they fit into one of these seven categories, then they will affect something else in your life. The wheel of wellness is meant to help you create a healthy balance in your life to keep your overall wellness in check. When you look at the wheel of wellness, are there some areas in your life that need some attention? Perhaps, you feel like every sliver of the wheel is lacking in some way. If that is the case, try identifying two or three areas that need immediate attention and start with those. The wheel of wellness isn’t meant to overwhelm you by emphasizing everything you are lacking in. It is a support tool to help guide you in taking care of yourself and improving your overall wellness.

What Needs to Change?

Sometimes it can be hard to pinpoint what exactly needs to change in our life to improve overall. By making your way around the wheel, you can start to ask yourself how you are feeling in each area. When looking at the emotional section, you can ask yourself if you are feeling stressed or if you are feeling mostly content and motivated. Looking at the physical, are you getting enough sleep, eating nutritious food, or exercising regularly? When moving to the intellectual area, asking yourself if you are intellectually stimulated by challenging work and engaging in exciting activities. As you make your way around the wheel, you can ask yourself questions for each area. Are you meditating, cleaning your house, hanging out with friends, and meeting your financial goals? If you find yourself not answering these questions the way you would like, it’s possible you have found a place where you need to make a change in your life.

Where Do I Make Change First?

If there are several places where you feel like you need to make a change, it can be overwhelming choosing where to start. Try identifying a few places where you can make immediate changes to your overall wellness. If you feel like you are lacking spiritually because you haven’t been praying or meditating, then mark in your calendar a block of time where you will do those activities. You can make an immediate change intellectually by picking out a few books to read documentaries to watch. By making it a priority to get more sleep at night, you might start by putting your phone away earlier and turning off the tv. 

However, there are also changes that take a little more time. That desk job just isn’t cutting it. But getting a new job doesn’t just happen overnight. By making time in your day to do some job searching and updating your resume, you can work towards making a big change in your life that has a large impact on the other areas of your life. Working through that traumatic event in your life takes time. Seeking counseling and seeing the impact in your life might be something that happens over time. However, initiating the change by scheduling a counseling appointment can set you on a path for positive change in your overall wellness.

Your Overall Wellness

Your overall wellness matters. The wheel of wellness is a tool to help you work towards having a healthy balance in your life. This happens by identifying the areas that you feel are lacking, and following through with the proper changes to improve your well being. With the wheel of wellness, you can prioritize yourself and experience improvements in your overall well being.