Powerful Goal Setting Activities to Transform Your Life

The other day I was in a CEO’s office, and he was crying! On the outside, he had all the trappings of success, a nice car, a lovely family, and a good house in a good neighborhood. He then went on to say how his eldest daughter had just turned 18 and was leaving home, that he had spent all her formative years when she was growing up travelling and working, and that he had missed out. In my work, I often come across people who focus too much on one area of their life and neglect others. The consequence is that they may experience more stress, burnout, and dissatisfaction. Setting balanced goals is a good step to achieving overall well-being and fulfilment in life, but it can be challenging. These three goal setting activities can help set balanced goals.

Goal setting activities (1 of 2): Life Wheel Assessment

What’s a wobbly wheel got to do with balanced goals?

No this is not the start of a joke:)

When you have a wobbly wheel, the ride is far from smooth, and you feel every bump and jolt on the road. I don’t know about you, but I tend to focus on the discomfort of the experience and as a result miss the view or the joy of the ride. Now I could keep going with the wobbly wheel, but my ride would be far from good. At some point, I need to hop off the bike and take the time to fix the wobbly wheel.

This is the same with goals. At some point, we need to stop and reflect on the different areas of our lives and think about their relevant importance and our overall satisfaction with each of these domains.

The challenge is that as busy people it can be difficult to slow down and maintain our own bikes and their “wobbly wheels." In our fast-paced world, we often juggle family, professional, and personal responsibilities, which can lead to an unbalanced life if not managed properly.

The Bicycle Wheel as a Metaphor

To take this metaphor even further, to achieve balance, it's helpful to examine the "wheels" that carry you through life.

Each spoke of the wheel represents a different area of your life, such as physical health, spiritual well-being, mental health, social connections, environmental factors, financial stability, recreational activities, and emotional health.

How would you rate yourself in each area of life, with 0 being the lowest and 10 being the highest? Place a dot on the number that reflects your current strength in each area.

Down this Goal Setting Template here.

When you look at your wheel as a whole, you can see how balanced or unbalanced your life might be. Would your ride through life be smooth or bumpy with this wheel?

A Life Wheel Assessment is a powerful tool that can help you determine the areas of your life that would benefit from goal setting. By visualizing your current satisfaction levels in different areas, you can identify imbalances and set goals to improve those areas.

Goal setting activities (2 of 2): Your retirement dinner

Imagine it is your retirement dinner. It is an unusual retirement dinner at which your family, friends, and colleagues stand up and describe the type of person that you are for them.

• How would you like to be remembered?
• What do you want your children and friends to say about you?
• How would you like to be described by your colleagues?

By creating a vision of what you would like to be in the future in different areas of your life, you often reflect the personal values that are most important to you in each of these different areas.

1. Think of the different areas of your life and what you would like each person (or future self) to say about you in each of these areas of your life.
2. How would you currently rate yourself in each of these areas? Here you can combine it with the Life Wheel activity you did above.

If you have trouble visualizing your retirement dinner in goal-setting activities, then imagine somebody that you admire and respect. What qualities do they have that you admire?

Often, the characteristics that you admire in another can say a lot about the type of person that you would like to be.

Life Domains to Consider

These goal-setting activities often sow the seeds of goal-setting in a particular life domain.

Below are several life domains and further goal-setting resources:

References

Banks, D. R. (2015). Wheel of Wellness: The Three-Step System to a WOW Life. Balboa Press.