This week, I was doing some reading in a book by Eric Sinoway called Howard’s Gift. Eric's book is a project that he undertook to give people the benefit of Howard Stevenson's experience and wisdom. Howard is Eric's mentor but he is also an author, entrepreneur and professor at Harvard Business School. It is not my intention to review that book here but only to focus this week’s community update on a key area of the book and that is, how to live a happy and successful life. As with the many, many books that speak to this subject, Howard’s Gift focuses on how to live a balanced life with efforts and goals in all parts that matter to you like children, life-partner, work, community, hobbies et cetera.

As I was reading this, I began to list the goals in my life and without getting too detailed, I came up with the following in no particular order:

• Travel
• Music
• Family
• Life Partner (finding one ;-)
• Career
• Home/Condo and
• Community/Charity.

Okay, so that’s a nice list; I then started wondering how I, or any of our members or readers, should go about assessing how well we’re doing towards these goals. Of course, why not see what Google says? So I search “How balanced is your life” and “How to achieve a balanced life”. One of the interesting tools that I found was the “Wheel of Life”. It is a simple enough tool, but applying it was a great exercise.

Next, I took my goals and placed them around the tool (you can add more spokes in if you need to) and scored myself from 0-10, as the wheel is allows you. You can then join the dots around the wheel to show you how “round” or balanced your life is.

So, what are you going to do about it?

I remember a story that came from a parent-teacher meeting where my parents were concerned about a particular mark for one of my siblings (not me of course ;-). At the parent-teacher meeting, the teacher bluntly asked my parents what they were going to do about the mark they were unhappy with. It was a surprising approach for a teacher but it did hit home, so to speak, with my parents. Well, that is exactly the next step in the wheel of life exercise. 

For example, if you notice that you’ve scored low on your favorite hobby, that is either okay or not okay with you. If its NOT okay, you may want to build a plan or set some small or large goal to improve that area of your life by spending more time on it. I guess we all have to realize that we have limited time, so it is possible that this decision may compromise some other spoke or dimension on the wheel and for this reason, the exercise should be revisited periodically.

I did also come across another useful source on the Internet, WikiHow, that provides a 5-area method for achieving balance in your life. After reviewing that, I thought it is worth sharing for those who may want to have a bit more directed coaching on “How to Have a Balanced Lifestyle”.

So Happy Weekend folks... and here's me wishing you luck in rounding our your wheel of life.

Amanda