How to Use the Wheel of Life Assessment to Improve Your Level of Fulfillment

The Wheel of Life Exercise is a popular assessment tool for coaching. It’s simple yet effective.

This in-depth guide provides step-by-step instructions on how to use the Wheel of Life assessment for yourself.

If you’re a coach, it will also explain how to use it with your clients (including free templates you can use).

Let’s dive in …

What is the Wheel of Life Assessment?

The Wheel of Life assessment—also called the “life balance wheel”—presents a series of categories that form the cornerstone of one’s life experience.

The original concept of the Wheel of Life is attributed to Paul J. Meyer, an early pioneer in the personal development industry in the 1960s.

The assessment’s initial purpose is to determine your current level of fulfillment or satisfaction in each of the Wheel of Life categories.

After completing this initial “life audit,” the Wheel becomes a coaching tool for setting goals and tracking the individual’s progress.

wheel of life assessment

The Goal of the Wheel of Life Assessment

The principle behind the Wheel of Life assessment is that all of the fundamental categories of life are important and require our attention.

We all tend to be more proficient in certain categories than others. As a general rule, we spend more time and attention on our areas of proficiency (strength) while neglecting our blindspots (weaknesses).

For example, you might value health. Overall, you’re conscious of what you eat, you exercise, and stay active—that is, you invest attention in your “Health” category.

However, you may be horrible at living within your means, paying off your credit card debt, or saving for the future—your “Financial/Money” category).

The Wheel of Life exercise brings these discrepancies to your mind so you can take action steps to improve.

In an ideal world, the goal of the Wheel of Life is to achieve the highest level of fulfillment possible in each of the key categories.

Why Do Coaches Use the Wheel of Life Assessment?

The Wheel of Life assessment is a popular tool in the life coaching industry. Why?

Simply put, it’s relatively fast and easy. The client can complete their initial Wheel of Life assessment within a single session, providing a sense of accomplishment.

Moreover, this assessment highlights the areas that need immediate attention.

I was a business coach for 25 years and I always used a variation of the Wheel of Life with my clients as part of the initial personal discovery process. It’s a powerful tool.

Why the Wheel of Life is Important

Why is this simple assessment so effective? It focuses our attention on key categories of life.

The reason why these basic categories are important is that they address our basic human needs.

As psychologist Abraham Maslow showed, when we aren’t meeting these basic needs, our lives fall out of balance, which leads to neurotic behaviors like anxiety, addictive tendencies, and depression.

Essentially, when we’re not meeting our basic needs, we move in the opposite direction of fulfillment.

The Wheel’s singular focus is to help keep our attention on meeting our basic and growth needs.

How to Select Your Wheel of Life Categories

Before we review the step-by-step process of creating your Wheel of Life, let’s address the categories more deeply. In my experience, identifying your categories is where the “art of the Wheel” comes in.

The key is to determine the categories that are most important to you. In my coaching practice, I referred to these categories as “Areas of Focus.”

These categories must include the ones you currently focus on AND those you often avoid (otherwise, you’re not creating a “life balance wheel”).

How Many Categories Are in the Wheel of Life?

The standard Wheel of Life template has eight categories.

Paul Meyer’s original Wheel of Life only had six categories.

So it depends on you. The ideal number of categories is between six and ten.

If you have too few categories (less than six), you’ve either lumped too many areas into one category or you’re missing something important.

If you have too many categories (over ten), your Wheel of Life will become unmanageable and you (or your client) are less likely to use this tool in the future.

Standard Wheel of Life Categories

Although the labels you give these Wheel of Life categories may vary, these areas are generally the same for each of us.

Most Wheel of Life templates have the following eight categories:

  1. Health
  2. Family
  3. Significant Other
  4. Career
  5. Money/Finances
  6. Physical Environment
  7. Personal Growth
  8. Fun/Recreation

We’ll address these categories in more detail below.

Should You Use a Wheel of Life Template?

You’ll find a variety of existing Wheel of Life templates online. Most, if not all of these templates make two assumptions:

Assumption 1: There are 8 major categories in everyone’s life.

Assumption 2: These 8 areas are the same for everyone.

Now, to me, there are both big assumptions. However, I understand why the coaching industry uses these templates. It’s a matter of convenience.

Many people are just looking for a Wheel of Life template to fill out to complete the exercise. Plus, the eight categories used in most models do cover the general bases.

Regardless, you have two choices:

Option 1: Use an existing Wheel of Life template.

Option 2: Create a customized Wheel of Life.

The main difference between the two is that if you go with option 2, there’s one additional step. The benefit of option 2 is that you can apply a little more creativity, self-expression, and relevance to your Wheel of Life categories.

When I used the Wheel of Life exercise with clients, I always had them pick their category names based on what was meaningful to them.

Free Wheel of Life Templates

To make things easier, I’ve created a Wheel of Life Template kit that includes:

  • 3 variations of the wheel template with 6, 8, and 10 categories
  • 3 variations of the wheel template without labels so you can write in your own 

You’ll also get a print-ready PDF version of this guide to refer to it later. 

Download your free online assessment templates below.

Note: After you enter your email, you’ll be redirected here. The free assessment templates will be right here:

wheel of life template

A List of 11 Wheel of Life Categories

So let’s review various options for your Wheel of Life categories to help spark ideas.

Remember that the goal here is to determine the categories most important to you (or your client).

To avoid presenting a large list that will be difficult to use, I’ve grouped them into related themes:

Health

This category includes your overall energy level, vitality, well-being, quality of sleep, exercise, nutrition, mood, mobility, strength, fitness level, appearance, emotional health, mental health, and overall feeling within your body.

Relationships

This category includes your significant other or spouse and your overall family. If you’re a parent, parenting is included in this category too. Sometimes, “significant other” forms one category while “family & friends” form a second category.

Social

The social category includes friends, coworkers, your “inner circle, and community (which can refer to religious or spiritual groups). This category is sometimes merged into Relationships (above) while other times Community is a separate classification.

Financial

The financial category includes your income, savings, expenses, budgets, and investments—your overall “financial health.”

Career

The career category includes your role/job, company culture, career development, a side hustle, or an entrepreneurial venture.

Self-Development

This is often called the Personal Growth category. It includes learning, professional training, special skill building, reading, cognitive development, self-cultivation, and self-actualization.

Spirituality

Spirituality is a broad category including things like meditation, shadow work, religion, spiritual practices (like prayer), psychological development, general Inner Work, ethics, and the cultivation of virtues.

Creativity

You won’t see this category on most, if any, Wheel of Life templates, however, I would argue that it’s an important category. Humanistic psychologists like Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers highlighted how creativity is essential for positive mental health.1See, for example, Maslow’s The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. “Self-expression” is another name for this category. Creativity can potentially be rolled into “Spirituality” or “Self-Development.”

Contribution

This category can include volunteering, charity, activism, and “good works.”

Recreation

This category relates to one’s overall lifestyle, including whatever you find enjoyable, like traveling, hiking, camping, road trips, movie nights, or having new experiences.

Environment

This category covers one’s physical environment like your home setting and office.

As you can see, we have many options. Not all of the above will be as relevant for each person. However, the above list highlights why I prefer creating a custom Wheel for clients instead of using a pre-labeled template.

Factors for Using a Wheel of Life Coaching Template

In my experience, it’s best to have clients name their categories themselves. This makes the process more intimate and meaningful. It helps them want to move toward each category.

For example, I find the term “health” boring, vague, and overused. It doesn’t hold much meaning for me. However, “Vitality” and “Energy” are important to me. Vitality doesn’t represent something I “should do,” it’s an integral part of my being.

Also, some individuals are focused on actualizing their potential in specific areas. For example, if someone is a musician or a martial artist, these areas might merit separate categories.

If someone is married, having a category for “Spouse” or “Significant Other” is important, but what if they’re going solo right now? Do you need to create tension about having this category? I don’t believe so.

As a coach, I mainly worked with entrepreneurs and C-level executives. In these cases, we omitted the “Career” category and created a separate wheel for their businesses.

The point is that there are many factors to consider in customizing an individual’s Wheel of Life including their:

  1. Age (stage of development)
  2. Core values
  3. Personality type
  4. Life circumstance

So be flexible in your approach.

7 Steps to Using the Wheel of Life Excercise

Okay, now let’s dive into the exercise itself.

Step 1: Determine your Categories

The first step is to determine your categories. If you’re using a Wheel of Life template, this is already determined for you.

If you’re not using a pre-labeled template, review the list of categories above and determine which ones are most relevant for you.

Then, get creative with naming each category. For example, instead of “Money” or “Finances” you might use a term like “Financial Freedom” which represents what you’re moving toward.

Even if you’re using an existing Wheel of Life template, you can still rename your categories in your journal.

Step 2: Assess your Current Level of Fulfillment

Go through each category and determine your current level of satisfaction using a 1 to 10 scale where 1 represents “completely falling by the wayside” and 10 is total fulfillment.

This is a subjective ranking. It’s not a grade or a score (which we tend to have subconscious negative associations with). Instead, it’s just a personal evaluation to see where you’re currently at.

Step 3: Fill in the Wheel of Life Template

Whether using a preexisting Wheel of Life template or creating one yourself doesn’t matter. The next step is easy: fill in your template with your rankings for each category from Step 2.

Then, shade in the area in each pie segment.

This step illustrates how much “balance” is in your life wheel currently.

Step 3 completes your initial Wheel of Life assessment.

wheel of life coaching exercise

Step 4: Review the Completed Wheel

The entire circle of the Wheel represents your overall life.

What do you notice? Any surprises?

Do you see any areas you want to improve right away?

What category is drawing your attention the most?

If you’re working with a client, the first thing is to address the categories the client ranked themselves weakest in. Generally, anything below a 7 or so needs our attention.

Step 5: Define Your Categories

Review each category to understand why you ranked them as you did and what a “10” might look like for you in each category.

It’s helpful to write a description of each category so you can better evaluate your progress.

For example, if you have a “career” category, which factors determine your ranking?

  • Do you enjoy your work overall?
  • Do you feel you’re using your talents and strengths in your work each day?
  • Is your work environment relatively harmonious? Do you like who you work with?
  • Does your career allow you to be autonomous?
  • Are you moving toward mastery?
  • Do you feel like your work provides a sense of purpose?

The more clearly you can define your categories, the easier it will be to rank them in the future and track your progress accurately.

Step 6: Identify 2-3 Actions for Each Category

Next, determine two or three action steps you can take to help grow in each category.

If you’re working with a client, what can the client do to increase their level of fulfillment within each area?

In this strategy session, I always focused the client on the short term. Ideally, things they can do immediately or within the following weeks. This helps build momentum and keeps the process grounded.

To check the efficacy of each action, ask your client (or yourself): if you complete this action, will it increase or improve your level of fulfillment in this particular area?

Remember to emphasize the areas that you or your client ranked the lowest. The point of this assessment is to improve your overall life balance. In the context of our basic human needs, the needs that aren’t being met produce the most anxiety for us.

Step 7: Revisit Your Wheel of Life Assessment

Initially, you can revisit your Wheel of Life assessment each month. Then, move to once a quarter. Eventually, it can become an annual process.

When you revisit the assessment, you or your client will redo their rankings to track progress:

  • Have you increased your rankings overall?
  • Have you established a greater life balance by improving in weaker areas?
  • Did you fail to make progress or take some of the actions you identified in Step 6?

If this assessment is used in a coaching context, address the client’s resistance. We often have mental blocks related to certain areas of our lives. Navigating around and through these blocks is the essence of coaching.

Understanding the psychology of resistance is highly beneficial. See this guide on self-mastery for more on this topic.

Before Starting the Wheel of Life Exercise

Many people struggle to get traction with these coaching exercises because they start with many preconceived notions and conditioning.

They answer questions based on what they think they should answer instead of what’s true for them.

The key to overcoming this tendency is to clear your mind before you do this Wheel of Life exercise.

There are many methods you can use to accomplish this:

  1. Access a Beginner’s Mind
  2. Find Your Center
  3. Ground Yourself
  4. Tune Your Breath

A basic, 1-minute mindful breathing exercise can help settle your mind and reduce internal chatter. You want to leave your preconceived beliefs behind you when you go through this exercise.

All these methods help you get rooted in the body instead of the mind. Doing so helps loosen your mind’s rigidity and conditioning. If you use one of these methods before doing the Wheel of Life exercise, the process will go infinitely smoother (for you or your client).

If you’d like further assistance in getting into the right frame of mind, see my introductory program The Mastery Method: Activating Your Higher Potential.

How to Use the Wheel for Coaching

The initial Wheel of Life Assessment can be completed in a single coaching session—sometimes two.

To ensure smooth progress, be mindful of your client’s internal state. The centering and grounding methods listed above are beneficial.

Whether you’re using an existing Wheel of Life template or not, I highly recommend having your client label each category.

Help them clarify what each category represents for them (Step 5). This part of the process is perhaps the most challenging but it will make the evaluation process go smoothly in the future.

Focus on the categories that the client ranked the lowest in. Often, they will immediately know what they need to do in these areas.

If the client has resistance in a particular category, talk that out. Help the client find a way of approaching that area without triggering their resistance.

Also, be mindful of your client’s beliefs and overall mindset. We often fail to grow in particular areas of our lives due to subconscious limiting beliefs and a fixed mindset.

See this guide on changing mindsets to understand the difference between a fixed and growth mindset (based on psychologist Carol Dweck’s bestselling book).

The Wheel of Life is a Practical Exercise

The Wheel of Life is an excellent assessment tool—especially when someone is just starting on their hero’s journey.

Even without the promise of greater fulfillment, doing the Wheel of Life assessment can be revealing. It forces us to examine some of our blind spots. This exercise also helps us take responsibility for where we need to improve to better support ourselves and those around us.

This assessment can help build positive momentum and make course corrections as needed if used on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis.

Potential Pitfalls of Wheel of Life

It’s also beneficial to keep this exercise in context: Can we achieve the primary goal of the life balance wheel?

That is, can we create “balance” by ranking a “10” in each category?

I think it’s important to perceive the Wheel itself more as a metaphor.

We all want balance, but in my experience, that balance isn’t going to come from the external world—through meeting our basic needs.

Life is messy and chaotic. The Achiever in us wants to maximize and improve everything. Left unchecked, this constant striving leads to the antithesis of this exercise.

Ironically, by striving to “constantly improve” in each category, and continuously achieving goals for doing so, it can lead to burnout instead of balance.

So make sure, when filling out your Wheel, you use discernment. Determine what’s truly important to you. This requires inner honesty.

Practice saying “no” to what isn’t important to you. Otherwise, bumpy or not, your wheel will keep on turning …

The Irony of the “Wheel of Life”

original wheel of life buddhist

Buddhist Wheel of Life (Bhavachakra) – source

The original Wheel of Life isn’t the coaching tool highlighted above. “Wheel of Life” in Sanskrit is bhavachakra.

Variations of this mandalic image are found on the walls of Buddhist temples worldwide (usually near the front door).

Ironically, this original Wheel of Life represents the cycle of Samsara (suffering): life, death, and rebirth.

Breaking down all the symbols and images in this Wheel of Life would take time. However, it’s worth noting what’s in the center of the wheel.

Here, we find three animals: a snake, a pig, and a rooster. These three animals represent what’s called the “three poisons” in Buddhism:

  1. Greed, sensual pleasure, or attraction
  2. Anger, hate, or aversion
  3. Ignorance, confusion, or delusion

These three poisons keep the Wheel of Samsara (suffering) turning.

One may find internal balance arises more from reducing these three poisons than achieving goals in the Wheel of Life coaching assessment.

Just something to reflect on…

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About the Author

Scott Jeffrey is the founder of CEOsage, a self-leadership resource publishing in-depth guides read by millions of self-actualizing individuals. He writes about self-development, practical psychology, Eastern philosophy, and integrative practices. For 25 years, Scott was a business coach to high-performing entrepreneurs, CEOs, and best-selling authors. He's the author of four books including Creativity Revealed.

Learn more >

  • I would appreciate if you could guide me on how do we interpret the clients Wheel Of Life and the process to guide them.

  • Your insights just keep hitting the spot. I’m so glad you have made all of this available. One thing: there doesn’t appear to be a video where you have written “Here’s a video of someone walking you through the Wheel of Life assessment exercise:”

  • Hi Scott, I have really enjoyed your articles, lots of good stuff. I need your help, the Wheel of Life is a registered trademark of our company, Success Motivation International, Inc. Would you please include the trademark symbol and attribution that we own the trademark. Thanks for your help!

    • This type of assessment is found everywhere. Loads of books and seminars around the world. No certification is necessary. And truthfully, you don’t need a coach to do it either. Once you understand the process, you can do it yourself.

  • I liked the way you integrated spirituality into the framework for practicing the wheel of life. Thank you for your relentless efforts to accompany others in their journey of life!

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