The Wheel of Life

This is a simple but extremely powerful tool to use to identify what areas in your life need improving It is holistic, in that it will help you restore balance to your life, and help you set powerful goals to you transform your life and achieve your dreams.

Draw a circle on a piece of paper about 3 inches in diameter. Divide this into 8 equally sized segments by drawing vertical and horizontal lines through the centre and then a further two lines that also cross through the centre of the circle. You should now have what looks like a pizza cut into eight equal slices. Each segment represents an important area in your life. You can choose these areas yourself or use the following which are the areas that most of my clients identify; Emotions, Health, Partner, Vocation, Money, Personal Development, Family/Social, and Spirituality. These are all self explanatory with perhaps the exception of Spirituality which does not necessarily mean a religious faith of some type. It can just simply mean being in touch with your true self.

You now look at each of the areas in turn and rate your self from 1 to 10 on where you believe your life is now compared to where you think it should be. For example, if you are financially independent with £3,000,000 wisely invested, you would probably score yourself 10/10, if on the other hand you have too much month left at the end of the money you would probably score 1/10. Mark on the relevant segment your score, 0 is at the centre of the circle, 10 is the outer edge. When you have done this for each area join the dots to form your "life wheel". If you are anything like the majority of people you will end up with a rather distorted crumpled looking wheel. If you imagine this life wheel on your car, you can see you are going to get a very bumpy ride.

This indicates which areas in your life you need to work on to restore a sense of balance, the goal initially being to try and get the Life Wheel as round as possible. You can then select which areas you want to prioritise for growth.

Identify which areas have your lowest score, these are probably the best areas to work with to set some powerful goals to start transforming your life.

The "Life Wheel" is extremely adaptable and can be used in many ways to progress your life. Your life coach (http://www.lifecoachingonline.com/) will teach you many uses for the wheel, and how it can be used to prioritise your most important goals and get you powerfully motivated to start taking action. It is also possible to make smaller wheels for each one of the above areas. When I am helping clients improve their health and fitness I use a "Health Wheel" where the segments are labeled; Happiness, Exercise, Hydration, Stress, Weight, Nutritional Supplements, Diet, Fun & Recreation.

You should review your life wheel every couple of months. It is a good tool for finding where you are now, where you want to be, and for measuring your progress.

In my next session I will show you how to set powerful goals in the areas that you have identified that need improving.

Setting Goals

The best way to set goals is to ask a Life Coach to assist you (www.lifecoachingonline.com). However, this of such fundamental importance that I am going to take you through the process and give you some tips to help you progress. Whatever goal you give to your sub-conscious mind, it will work day and night to help you achieve it.

There are seven things to remember when setting goals. They should be Specific, Measurable, Evidential, you need to accept Responsibility for achieving them, they should be Timed, Inspirational, and contain an Emotional element to motivate you to action. You can remember all these ingredients with the acronym S.M.E.R.T.I.E.

The two most important criteria are that goals are specific and timed. A goal that is not specific is just a good idea. A goal that does not have a time limit is just a dream. Vague goals produce vague results. "I want to lose weight" is just a wish. "I will be my ideal weight by the summer is better, and would make a good affirmation. But best of all is "I will weigh 56kg by 1st September 2007".

A good goal will also stretch you, it will encourage you to step out of your comfort zone. It will require you to learn new skills, overcome fears, and meet new people. Jim Rohn said "You want to set a goal that is big enough that in the process of achieving it you become someone worth becoming."

The ultimate goal is "Life Mastery." The ability to be totally in control of your life, your health, your emotions, your finances, your relationships, and life purpose. You may be unfortunate to lose material things but you cannot lose life mastery, that is those skills you develop in the process of getting your goals.

Being clear about your vision for the future and the goals you need to set will put you into the top 3% of the world's achievers. To move into the top 1% all you need to do is write them down and then take specific actions steps every day to help you achieve those goals.

In my next entry I will show you the "Wheel of Life" and explain how to use this tool to set goals that will create a balanced and fulfilled life.

The Power of a Goal

"If you don't set goals for yourself, you are doomed to work to achieve the goals of someone else."
Brian Tracey.

One of the first things a life coach (www.lifecoachingonline.com) will do with a client is help them to set some powerful goals in their life. Last year I attended a Brian Tracey lecture. During the lecture he stated "If you write 12 goals down on a piece of paper, then do nothing else except put the piece of paper somewhere safe, then twelve months later you look at that piece of paper you will find you have achieved 6 of those goals without you apparently doing anything."

I shared this with a client of mine who did exactly this. One of the goals was to own a house in Spain. This appeared totally out of reach for my client but she wrote it down anyway. Yesterday she phoned me to remind me of the coaching session and to inform me that she now owned a house in her home town near Seville. We were both amazed. Incidentally, she didn't inherit the house, she is funding the purchase herself.

This process works like magic, but there is some science behind it. The conscious mind can only handle a few pieces of information at a time. The sub-conscious mind is capable of dealing with millions of bits of information every second, and it filters out everything that is not relevant. When you tell your sub-conscious mind what you want, i.e. your goals, then the reticular activating system in the sub-conscious mind no longer filters out the information that would enable you to achieve your goals. Instead it brings the information to the attention of the conscious mind enabling you to react to, and seize opportunities that otherwise you may not have noticed.

Furthermore, you attract into your life the things that you focus on. Most people focus on what they don't want rather than what they do, so they get more of what they don't want. I always ask my clients what they want to be, do, or have. Most of them don't know. However, when I ask them what they don't want they can talk for hours. They are passionate about the things they don't want. It should be the other way round!

I also think there is a bit of magic involved in the goal setting process as well! Ralph Waldo Emerson said "When you write down a goal the whole universe conspires to help you achieve it."

I should point out that you should always take action to reach your goals, including reading your goal list aloud at least three times a day, but the process of setting goals is so powerful, that even if you apparently do nothing you will still have a 50% success rate.

When someone contacts me for coaching the first session is always free. (All the other sessions come with a money back guarantee - if you are not satisfied at the end of the session you get a full refund of your fee, no questions asked). During the first (free) session I will help you set some amazing goals, so what have you got to lose? Contact me now through my website or e-mail me (trev@lifecoachingonline.com) and I will help you set some powerful goals.

Change your Thoughts Change your Life

"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”
Thomas Jefferson, Third President of the United States.

A life coach (www.lifecoachingonline.com) can help you change the way you think about things. They can identify limiting beliefs, in-congruent values, and rules that no longer serve you. It is important to know what rules you have in your life because we generally have very tough "rules" that make it hard to live a happy life and very easy to get really pissed off. If you change your rules it's much easier to feel happy. For example a lot of people have a rule that they are only successful if they are earning a lot of money. It is hard to be happy with a rule like this. It's much better to change this rule to "I am successful every time I learn something" A life coach will identify all your rules (I bet you didn't know you had any), and then help you change them into rules that will make it much easier to feel good about things and damn difficult to feel bad about things.

Fear - Train the Butterflies to Fly in Formation!

All most all our fears are now self created. We scare ourselves by fantasizing about negative outcomes to anything we are considering doing, thus we let fear stop us from doing the things we should be doing to live abundant and extraordinary lives. Mark Twain wrote "I have lived a long life and had many troubles, most of which never happened."

Fear used to be the body's way of telling us our lives were in danger and giving us a burst of energy to run away from the danger or to stay and fight it. These days there are very few saber toothed tigers wandering around, nor other threats to our lives, but we still have the feeling of fear. It really just means we need to be a little more cautious, that's all. It doesn't mean we should not do anything. To get most of the good things in life you need to take a little risk, everyone feels fear, the important thing is to get on and do it anyway. You can actually train your body to enjoy the feeling of fear - someone described it as "getting the butterflies to fly in formation." Instead of thinking of fear as fear, feel it as exhilaration, or courage or self confidence instead. Remember that fear really is Fantasized Experiences Appearing Real.

A life coach (www.lifecoachingonline.com) will help you identify your fears, confront them and encourage you to work through them. One way you can do this on your own is to identify your fears, for example, "I am afraid to speak in public." Then write down "I want to ... speak in public, .... but I scare myself by fantasizing that I will ......" and list the reasons for your fear, for example, "... forget all my words and make a complete fool of my self." Do this for all your fears. This exercise will soon make you realise that you are the one creating the fear. Then replace the fantasy with the exact opposite so the statement now reads " I want to speak in public, I will remember all my words and deliver a fantastic speech." Then use this as an affirmation.

The things that we fear the most give us the greatest sense of liberation and growth when we press on and do them anyway.

Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

Many people do not enjoy the success that is rightfully theirs because they are unwilling to step out of their comfort zone. They doom themselves to a life of quiet desperation and third rate mediocrity. They are constantly stuck in an endless loop of reinforcing behaviour that holds them captive and generates the same results week in week out.

A good life coach (www.lifecoachingonline.com) will encourage you to step out of your comfort zone, but will keep you from stepping into your stress zone. They will stretch you just enough to make a real difference and inspire you to start living the life of your dreams. They will identify the limiting beliefs and negative thoughts that are holding you back and it will be as if an imaginary brake that has been holding you back had suddenly been released.

There are things you can do yourself to encourage you to get out of your comfort zone. You can use affirmations such as "I set goals and achieve them easily and effortlessly". You can visualize being successful in all that you do, and having, doing, or being what you want. You must flood your sub-conscious mind with images of your new successful self. Einstein said "Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions." Most importantly of all you need to change your behaviour and start taking action. You may make a few mistakes, but these are just learning processes through which you will grow. In fact the more mistakes you make the more successes you will have. George Bernard Shaw said "When I was a young man I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. I didn't want to be a failure, so I did ten times more work."

Every week do something that scares you a little!

Do You Want an Extra Two Months Every Year?

This is kind of obvious, I know, but if you cut out just one hour of TV a day, you will create an extra 365 hours each year to accomplish the things that you really want. These 365 hours equate to over 9 additional 40 hour work weeks, that's more than two months of additional time.

What should you do with all this extra time? Anything that is productive! Quality family time, learning a new language, gaining new qualifications, going to the gym, or maybe reading. If you read for just one hour a day you can easily become an expert in your particular career or passion and excel in virtually any area of your life.

Don't forget to make good use of the time you spend commuting too! The average person spends 30 minutes travelling to and from work each way. That's another hour a day! Another two months a year! If you use public transport you can read more, if you are driving listen to motivational audio CDs and learn the secrets of some of the world's most successful people. I purchase my motivational CDs from www.nightingaleconant.co.uk They have a fantastic catalogue covering all areas of self-development.