Finding your Harmony!

Sometimes, you feel so inundated with life and its challenges, that you grapple with a basic life question. “ Where do I begin?”. All of a sudden, snuggling into the quilt, and binge watching, Schitts Creek, seems like a viable option.

Well, as a coach, I find that okay. You need a hustle, every day. But, sometimes, it’s also necessary to get the ball rolling again. When I find my energies low, I find the Balance wheel a great point to begin my starting again with. It is something I use as a tool, with my coachees as well.

What is the Balance Harmony Wheel?

So, first things first, the Balance Wheel is a simple exercise where there are 8 different areas of your lifelisted and you give each one a value between 1 and 10 to show how satisfied you are with that area. Personally, I like to call my wheel a Harmony wheel, as that is what I strive to achieve. Balancing in my opinion is still a wobbly act! Our life journeys are different, what we gravitate towards varies and so harmony over balance seems more appropriate to me. Yes, certain things like health are essential and need attention so ensuring we keep the basics in mind as we work towards finding our harmony.

Usually there are 8 areas that are generally looked at as the main themes for a balanced life, these are career, financial, mental, social, personal growth, physical health, relationships and spiritual. There might be some areas that may not resonate with you. For instance, you may not be a spiritual person and that’s ok, you could just ignore it or replace it with something else more meaningful to you. Then consider each one in a pie and give it a score on a scale of 1-10, 10 being best, on how well you think you are doing at it. As shown in the adjacent image. Whether you choose to draw it out like I scribble in my bullet journal or make it on a excel it doesn’t matter how it looks, just that you have your numbers to work with.

What do I do once I have the numbers?

Self-scoring is a great way to know where you stand. They give you an idea of where life is good, and where it’s a tad bit blah. The aim here isn’t to score a perfect 10. Everything being hunky dory isn’t really a realistic view and its but natural for things to be low too.

In the example let us do a self-score for Manoj, a marketing executive in his mid 30’s. Have a look at his self-score and then move on to his harmony wheel.

Don’t aim for perfection

Give your evaluation a quick thought, rather than procrastination and overthinking. Like I said, you do not have to aim for a perfect 10, but its ok if your scores vary. This isn’t an exact science, but it does give you some really useful personal information for you to work with. Also

Setting goals

It’s up to you how you choose to use your numbers on your Balance Wheel to set goals. Here’s a few ideas, which I’ve done in the past.

Depending on the timeline that you are giving yourself for your goals, you may want to pick the top 3 areas to work with instead of taking on too much.
Or you may write out a small incremental goal for each of the 8 areas.
Have a introspection session of everything you’d like to change and then choose some of them to turn into a goal. Remember that bigger projects need to be broken down into smaller tasks to ensure they don’t get forgotten or delayed.

How often should I be using the Harmony Wheel?

That’s up to you but I personally don’t think it needs to be done very often. If you used it weekly then you might struggle to do it, set goals and then take the action to move things forwards each time. And that’s really what it’s for, not just to look pretty.

I think that it can be a really useful tool

Used for a monthly check in with yourself
Used each season to assess the bigger picture
Done when you’re feeling a bit low or lost, but unsure of why.
You can use this for other aspects of life as well where you may need to prioritize between various options you might have to work with.
Or use it to discuss your plans and goals with your growth coach.

Wishing you perfect harmony!