Embrace and Improve: Evaluating YOUR Overall Well-Being
Hey Achiever!
How would you rate your overall well-being?
As we gear up for 2025, have you taken a moment to reflect on the areas in your life where you want to set goals? The journey to meaningful achievements begins with understanding where you currently stand and where you want to go.
One tool that can help you determine where you should set your New Years Resolutions and goals in general is what I call the Well-Being Wheel. You may have seen (or even used) other versions, which is great: we need a variety of tools and resources at our disposal to build your dreams.
Start by either drawing the Well-Being Wheel in your journal or even easier grab and print mine to follow along or come back to later.
Gaining clarity on where you want to see improvements is a critical step to your next meaningful achievements. I am here to support YOU through using this tool and crafting clear goals aligned with your values. And I promise, it's easier than you think!
Evaluating Your Well-Being
Start with the Well-Being Wheel in front of you. This tool is designed to help you assess the key areas of your well-being—emotional, physical, intellectual, spiritual, environmental, financial, occupational, and social. Grab a pencil and mark a dot in each category to indicate how you currently feel about each one in your life. This is completely up for your own interpretation; it’s about getting clear on your starting point. These categories can have different interpretations for different people, but we will cover the basics of each after you get your initial rating down.
Try to do this step before moving on! (I know its hard for some of us who like to know all the directions before starting!)
Areas of Well-Being
Next, let’s dive deeper into understanding each category and what could be considered when rating it currently in your life.
Emotional: Emotional well-being involves understanding and managing your feelings and emotions, fostering resilience, and maintaining a positive outlook, which contributes to overall mental health.
Physical: Physical well-being refers to maintaining a healthy body through regular exercise, balanced nutrition, sufficient sleep, and preventive healthcare, ensuring you have the energy to engage fully in life.
Intellectual: Intellectual well-being encourages lifelong learning, critical thinking, and creativity, promoting the pursuit of knowledge and stimulating mental growth through new experiences and ideas.
Spiritual: Spiritual well-being encompasses finding purpose and meaning in life, which may involve connecting with personal beliefs, values, and practices that guide and inspire you.
Environmental: Environmental well-being focuses on living in harmony with your surroundings, recognizing the importance of a clean, safe, and sustainable environment, and making choices that contribute to the health of the planet.
Financial: Financial well-being relates to effectively managing your financial resources, achieving a sense of security, and making informed decisions that align with your values and goals.
Occupational: Occupational well-being emphasizes finding satisfaction and fulfillment in your work, balancing professional aspirations with personal life, and engaging in activities that align with your skills and passions.
Social: Social well-being involves cultivating meaningful relationships, fostering a sense of belonging, and maintaining a supportive network that enhances your overall happiness and resilience. (This is sometimes broken into romantic/family and friends).
After reading these brief descriptions, revisit your Well-Being Wheel and use your pen to confirm your rating in each area or make adjustments after thinking about a little more than just initial gut feeling. Then color that area from the line your dit is on, down to the middle of the wheel. Does it look like a “wheel” or are some areas a lot higher or lower than others?
Grab that pencil again. Now make a dot with your pencil where you would like to be in each area. Remember, it’s normal for some categories to be right where you want them, while others may need significant improvement. Still using the pencil, connect all the ‘want to be dots’ - this helps to visualize the shifts you want to make. All part of the journey!
Understanding the How Areas of Well-Being Work Together
Imagine you’ve been working hard at a job that drains your energy, doesn't challenge you, and doesn’t pay well. Your financial, occupational, and intellectual well-being might be rated low. But what if six months from now, you land a job you love, earning more money? Your financial and occupational well-being might improve, but your social well-being might take a hit if you’re not able to see friends from the previous job as often.
This example is to say that while we would love for everything to be a 10 it is unlikely, and as we continue to work through the Well-Being Wheel there are areas where you may intentionally give up a few points in order to get points in another area which are more important to you.
Prioritizing the Areas of Well-Being
Next, prioritize these areas by ranking the areas of well-being on what will enhance your overall well-being the most. (Use the lines to the right of the wheel for this, and try to complete at least the first four.). While one area may need the most improvement, that might not be the area of your well-being you prioritize the highest if a different area that aligns stronger with your values and core needs.
For example, you might have rated your intellectual well-being as a 2 and would like it to be a 7, but you would increase your overall well-being more to get your physical well-being from a 5 to a 7 because it is more closely tied with your core needs of feeling comfortable in your body.
Transforming Insights into Action
For those who prefer lists over visuals, after you have charted the initial points on the wheel and prioritized them on the right, jot down your current scores and your desired scores in the priority list. For example:
Financial: 4 → 7
Occupational: 4 → 6
Mental: 5 → 8
Social: 5 → 8
Once you have your desired scores and prioritized the the areas of well-being that'll improve your overall well-being the most, it’s time to confront the tough questions.
Why do you want to improve these areas?
What stressors are they currently causing?
What will be different if you can improve this area?
Recognizing these feelings can help you clarify your motivations.
Crafting Your Plan
Take your top 4 areas of well-being that you want to increase your rating on and label the 4 boxes of lines on the bottom half of the paper. Now, think about what changes you can make to increase your ratings. Some changes may be substantial, like switching jobs, while others might be smaller, such as cooking at home more often or swapping chips for fruit. List out (brainstorm) all potential actions, no matter how big or small that could improve an area of your well-being (some might appear multiple times like in our changing jobs example.
Star the options you think you'd like to take to increase your well-being in each area! Your plan is coming together.
Finding Balance in Your Goals
Before you finalize which actions will become your goals and habits, keep in mind that improvements in one area might affect other areas of your well-being. Because you are aware of this, you're setting yourself up for more success. However you still need to consider if there isn't anything that can be done to mitigate the well-being drop, are you willing to make that trade off?
If the answer is yes, go for it! If the answer is no, don't. If the answer is, I am not sure… Think about how far you would be willing to drop before that area of well-being would be a concern. If you're not willing to lose ranking in another area you should revisit your brainstorming and see which options would be the best starting point for you to make progress to overall improvements.
For example: If you are looking to raise your physical well-being, one idea you might have had was to get a meal delivery service to always have healthy foods to eat. This could affect your social and financial well-being though depending on the cost and if you feel less connected to others always eating your own food and not going out. If the trade off doesn't feel worth it, you might instead decide to meal prep breakfasts and lunches for the week. This solution would be a little more work than a delivery service, but could increase your physical well-being without straining you social or financial well-being.
Celebrate Your Progress!
You are already on the way to improving your overall well-being. By evaluating where you currently are and thinking about the areas you can make improvements you are already making progress worth celebrating. Appreciate the work you have put in to identify and craft your plan. Writing this down is a win and can only help you reach YOUR meaningful achievements.
Couple questions to help you feel confident in yourself, your plan, your goals:
Are you feeling good about your goals, or do you have some hesitations?
Do you need to break any goals down further to ensure you can stick with them?
Do you need additional resources to be successful?
If you find you need support or accountability, don’t hesitate to reach out—I’m here to help you create a plan you can confidently follow.
Revisiting Your Overall Well-Being Regularly
Set a date to revisit this exercise and reassess your overall well-being. Depending on your goals and your ability to stay committed, you may return to this process sooner or later. Some people look at this quarterly, others monthly, and some only annually.
Remember, the Well-Being Wheel is one of many tools that can guide you towards YOUR meaningful achievements, but it isn't the only one. When used with other tools like the monthly habit tracker, you can both get clear on your goals, your why, and your action plan.
It’s time to take your life off hold - as you evaluate where you are and where you’d like to go, know that you are not alone. If you need guidance, assistance or accountability, I’m here to support you every step of the way. Your dreams are worth pursuing, and you deserve to be confident in YOUR ability to reach YOUR next meaningful achievement.
Celebrating your every win,
Adrienne - Founder, Meaningful Achievements
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