What’s Your Balance?

Life is rarely a perfect balance and is ever changing. Check-in with yourself and see what area could benefit from your attention.

𝒷𝓎 Marianne Wylie, MSW, RSW

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​Feeling overwhelmed? Bored? Is it hard to get out of bed and find the motivation to do what needs to be done lately? Feeling angry, anxious or down? Feeling like something in life needs to shift but not sure what? Life is ever changing. One day we feel life is a perfect balance of joy, contentment, and positive relationships. And the next day something throws off our balance.

Experiencing mental wellness includes having a balance among the various aspects of life: the social, emotional and mental, spiritual, and physical realms, relationships, economic health, leisure and recreation, sleep, etc. In order to know where life isn’t balanced, take some time to evaluate each area of life.

Some people like to use Tony Robbins’ Wheel of Life (below). I encourage you to play around with the sections of the wheel to tailor it to apply to you. Grab a pen and paper and draw out this wheel with added sections or rename some sections.

I like to include sections such as spiritual, mental/emotional, and sleep. One’s spiritual health can include religion or belief in a higher power, or simply a sense of peace and oneness with the world, but it doesn’t have to. I think one’s spiritual health is anything that helps someone feel a sense of purpose and meaning in life. It can be their relationship to people in their life, their relationship to nature, or anything else that gives you a reason to get up in the morning and be happy to be here. Emotional and mental health is not the absence of ups and downs. It is more about your ability to cope with the ups and downs. When evaluating sleep, it is not only about getting the amount of sleep that you need, but also about the quality. In the section below on Health, you may want to consider not only your overall health but also if you take care of yourself when ill.

Now, considering how you have been feeling in the last week or so, rate how satisfied you are in each section of your wheel on a scale of 0 to 10. 0 means you are not doing well at all in that area. 10 means you are completely satisfied with that area. 

​(Tony Robbins, https://core.tonyrobbins.com/wheel-of-life-4/ )

Your wheel will likely have some areas rated high, some rated moderately, and low. Some might find that they rated low in all or most areas. All are normal and bound to happen from time to time. Don’t feel overwhelmed if you have a lot of low areas. The purpose is to see some areas that you are doing well in or better than other areas. These are some of your strengths. You can sometimes use the strengths of those areas to support other lower rated areas. For example, if your emotional/mental health section is rated low but your Sleep and Fun and Leisure are rated higher, your involvement in activities of Fun and Leisure and getting good sleep are supporting your emotional and mental health.

Consider one area that you would like to improve. Yup, only one. After all, we don’t want to overwhelm ourselves – it’s about balance. Consider something that you can try in the next week to improve that area of your life. Re-evaluate as needed.

Remember, life is rarely a perfect balance and is ever changing. From time to time it can be helpful to check-in with yourself and see what area could benefit from your attention.

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Source: Idea from Tony Robbins’ Wheel of Life exercise.
https://www.time-management-techniques.com/tony-robbins-rpm.html
https://core.tonyrobbins.com/wheel-of-life-4/