Maintaining Hope in Adversity: The Wheel of Life
Hello and welcome to today’s podcast. This is episode four of Maintaining Hope in Adversity and is the final episode for this season. The season began with hearing from Sarah about her life journey with Crohn's disease and a permanent ostomy. Her story is all about resilience and staying positive. We learned that she decided early on that her condition wouldn't stop her from enjoying life. Sharing her story on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok helped her connect with others and gave her a boost in confidence and a sense of purpose.
Over time, Sarah's focus shifted away from her health issues, allowing her to explore other aspects of life. She emphasized the importance of acknowledging negative feelings but choosing to focus on the positive. Sarah believes that we always have a choice in how we let our challenges define us and stressed the importance of staying optimistic. Connecting with others publicly helped Sarah live out her positive mindset and feelings of authenticity. Her story offers hope and encouragement to those facing similar challenges, advocating for resilience and self-care.
Through Sarah’s story, we hear how she has been successfully navigating life challenges, and I hope her story has inspired you to learn new methods to navigate your challenges better. As a life coach, learning about the spiritual and psychological aspects of well-being is a passion of mine. Through multiple courses over the years, I’ve been able to develop a portfolio of tools and resources to assist others with improving their holistic well-being to achieve a level of peace, comfort, happiness, meaning, hope, and accomplishment. Therefore, to build upon Sarah’s story, episodes 2, 3, and 4 in this season provide valuable tools to help you navigate the challenges you may be facing today by aligning how you live your life with your values.
Episode 2 guides you through a meditative exercise on identifying what you can and cannot control.
Episode 3 is an exercise on realizing your life balance by identifying your life domains, determining how much time you spend in each, and assessing whether your time allocation is optimal.
Now, in this final episode 4, I’m going to provide a second step to help you further improve your life balance. This exercise will help you understand satisfaction across different life domains, offering valuable insight into a person’s well-being and highlighting areas that may need attention. Some individuals may opt to assess their overall life satisfaction without evaluating how well they are performing in a specific domain, such as their relationship. For instance, if my financial situation is stable, I might describe my overall life satisfaction as "really good," despite my relationship with my spouse being somewhat strained. As you can see, this does not necessarily provide a proper understanding of how well you are achieving all your important aspects of life. So, life domain satisfaction refers to how satisfied you are with one specific domain.
So, the core question is, how satisfied are you in each of your different life domains?
After completing the Life Domain Diagram in episode 3, were there domains that you would like to spend less time doing? Or domains that you would like to find more time for?
This next exercise is one of my personal favorites and is one that I complete one or two times a year. Or, when I’m in a mode of seeking to understand the path that the Lord is leading me down, it is a way to clear my mind and reinstate a sense of purpose. It is called the Wheel of Life, designed by Hugo Alberts, PhD, Psychologist. I’ve provided a link to download a copy of the exercise.
Before starting this exercise, it is essential to identify up to ten of your personal life domains. If you have not done this, the instructions are provided in the appendix of this document. The Wheel of Life allows you and your coach, if you are working with one, to get a snapshot of how satisfied you are with your life.
To begin, you’ll list within the circle up to ten of your life domains. Within the circle is a scale from 1-10 for you to rate your level of satisfaction with each of the domains. One indicates you are not satisfied, and a score of 10 means you are delighted. This is a bit different from the Life Domain Diagram in episode 3, as it measures the time spent in each domain. The Wheel of Life is a measure of satisfaction. Are you achieving your desired level of satisfaction?
After marking your level of satisfaction for each of the life domains, you will connect the lines to form an inner wheel. This provides a valuable overview of the level of satisfaction you have with your life. With this overview, you can now determine any changes you could make with a domain to bring you closer to the life you have envisioned for yourself. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Why does the domain need attention?
What would it take to raise your satisfaction by one score in this domain? Remember to set realistic goals because significant change doesn’t happen overnight. Be kind and patient with yourself.
One additional practice I find effective as a Christian is taking time to pray and ask God to provide me with guidance. When I open my heart and listen in silence, I’m able to sort through the cloud of thoughts and find direction peacefully.
This resource is excellent to use when you’re feeling like you are busy all day, but not accomplishing anything of value, or when you want to reprioritize your goals. Consider scheduling a coaching call with me to help you filter through your thoughts and devise a plan. As a coach, I’m trained to listen and ask prompting questions based on the direction you want to go.
I hope you have learned and grown through Season 1, "Maintaining Hope in Adversity." My personal goal is to provide individuals seeking to improve their lives with practical tools and resources to achieve this. I have a goal to post a podcast once a week, but I must admit it has been challenging to keep this commitment. I will continue to work towards achieving this goal, so please be patient with me.
To learn more about Balancing Life Domains or to schedule a coaching call, go to my website at hikingforhealing.org.
Download the Exercise: The Wheel of Life https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JVtuYDCqkDGb7yi8mgUl4YRcmyQzYQ5N/view?usp=sharing
