SET YOUR GOALS WITH THE WHEEL OF LIFE

Welcome to the Project Mindset Podcast, where we combine the science of project management and transformational leadership. I am your host, Thea Brockmeyer, project expert, international leadership mindset coach for top executives, and trusted advisor to business owners for over 20 years. My goal is helping you stepping up from being an expert to becoming the leader that makes big projects happen, seeing your infinite potential, achieving the results in business and life that your heart desires. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today. Let's begin now.

Hello, my wonderful friends. Today I want to share with you a little bit about the Wheel of Life, and if your life is bumpy, then how to get out of it and how to create a life where your bicycle or your car has no flat tires, that you're really having a smooth and fast and exciting ride. So imagine you have a bicycle and one of your wheels or one of your tires has a flat tire, or you are driving in a Ferrari and suddenly you have a flat tire. It becomes really bumpy on the streets, especially when you are off-road, and it doesn't really make fun. So if this is the situation, or everything is smooth and you want to maintain your situation, I think you will love this concept of the Wheel of Life that I learned late to set goals. Now maybe you heard of the Wheel of Life. Have you ever heard of it?

It's a wheel.

It's not a wheel of the bicycle, but it's a wheel that can help us to diagnose the areas, different areas of our life, like in a wheel, right? So you have different segments and each segment represents a different area in our life. We have different categories and they make the cornerstone. So if every category is like full, you know, then it's round. And if some categories are a little bit low, not on the outer side, then it feels like bumpy, right? If the wheel turns around. So let's use the Wheel of Life to assess our current level, and then we will— I will show you how can we use that to take out from the current level a visioning exercise to create our future, and to use it as well to clarify priorities, to identify clear goals, so that we, once we've identified goals, create a project plan to change the life in that specific segment and to achieve that goal faster than ever before. Now let's start the Wheel of Life. What kind of categories, segments do we have in such a Wheel of Life and how does it look like? Now imagine you take a paper and you create a circle and then in this circle you put, let's say, 8 segments. You can put 12, you can put 10, we work with 8. And then you take it, you know, you make it like 4 segments like in a cake, then you put 8 segments, right, the parallels. Now, once you have that, imagine we have categories like love relationship or family friends. A category can be adventures, fun, leisure, leisure environment, your workplace, how does the home or your desk looks like or your workplace. Health and fitness: How fit are you? What does your health look like, right? How is your spiritual, intellectual life? Do you read a lot or what do you read or with whom do you have conversations about that? What are your skill sets? What is your financial status or your career status as well? So financial security definitely is a big one.

And these different categories we use and we put them around in these segments.

And then, like, we have different levels in each segment because if they're on the outer segment, it will be a good smooth ride, and that would be the 10. And then we can score them, and if the segment is not really well presented, then it will be a very low score like a 1 or even a 0 because maybe we forget a segment.

Let me share with you a story.

I was working hard.

I had 2 kids, so family was always a high representative segment, even though being a single mom and working and traveling the world and teaching and building businesses in different areas like in industry, in construction, in hotel, in telecommunication.

Yes, I love technology, so I did a lot in technology as well. So like distribution, selling solutions, tech solutions, building up, setting up companies, distribution organizations in different countries, in more than different countries. But yeah, traveling from Mexico to US to Russia and UK, I forgot, I'm German, I forgot Got some areas of my life. I understood health is important because otherwise you can't maintain that heavy schedule. I understood that family holidays was important because there was no holiday without my kids. But I would say spirituality, reading was too short because on the plane either I was sleeping or I was doing some PowerPoint presentations for my next meeting or answering emails. And sleeping was not really good. So basically, and I didn't maintain a lot of friendship. I didn't manage to maintain a friendship in my home city, so I had a lot of— in Germany, so a lot of relationships I didn't really serve. Okay, I was busy with the kids, I was busy with the clients, I had friends all over the world. And then you come home and you want to spend more time at home, and suddenly you realize there's nobody you can have a chat with like another big metropoles of the world, right? However, this— my life, or my wheel of life, became bumpy, and I understood I have to do something. And I was introduced to this by a coach, and I feel I need to share this with you because if you are a project manager and you encounter difficulties in your project or in your stress with your clients, you really need to go ahead and do something. And the smoother and the more balanced this Wheel of Life is, the better we can cope with, let's say, a project that the financing gets blown up, or the client closes down, or other— let's say, life happens. You could have an earthquake when you have a big construction project, or you— I remember we had a lot of on crisis situations and projects. Yeah, sometimes things got delivered and the building was not ready, so the machines had to get parked somewhere. Or there was a situation, a friend of us was selling trains, and can you imagine, there was a failure in the contract, and at the border, at the customs, the train blocked the roads, or let's say the— yeah, so There were a lot of situations that could go wrong, but otherwise as well, it could happen that the company we signed a contract for some millions got closed down. And even a signed contract when there is no money, so what can we do? So we lost contracts. Life happens. And the more balanced we are in different areas of our life, the better we cope with the life. So this is why I invite you to this exercise. Now, how can we do that? Second, the The Wheel of Life, you can download that. We have for you a template and a description of this exercise in Project Leader Academy, www.projectleaderacademy.com/wheeloflife. And, um, yeah, it's free for you because I really found it very valuable. And if you are a leader and entrepreneur, you are hustling, hustling, it's good to maintain all these different areas, or at least get it less bumpier. And have a little backup. Now, if you would like to do that, the first thing is you either draw such a Wheel of Life or you get the template, the free one. We have it as well on the blog of the projectleaderacademy.com blog and you find it there as well. Assess your present, that's the first thing. Let's have a look where are we, which areas are smooth, which categories are cool, and take your time for that. Don't get distracted. You could sit outside in the nature or in a room or do it when you are traveling in the plane along, but it's not anymore that convenient that it was in the former times. And then reflect each category. It really requires concentration and filling in seriously so you can get an accurate view of your balance in life and the setbacks you have. Now, once you have this wheel, so you have let's say 10 little circles and the outer circle is the score 10. And if you score 8 to 10, it could be that in that category you will be really cool. That means that category you are satisfied and you should maybe have a look how can you maintain it in the future to be that high score, right? Because there are some reasons you were so successful. Maybe you make a lot of money or maybe you have a cool relationship. Which is work, right? Or maybe you have a cool health and you do a lot of sports and yoga. Which scores from 5 to 7, maybe you're just reasonably satisfied, but obviously you did not forget that category in your life, so definitely it makes sense to have a look there. Maybe how can you improve it or which one you would love to improve, right? I personally don't believe in the 100% balance Because work-life balance, like they say, that's not what I mean. Because if you're an entrepreneur, you have phases where you hustle, hustle, hustle. But if you skip sleeping, if you skip health, if you skip long-term, these categories, you will suffer and you will break and your wheel will break. And this is why I'm really so passionate about telling you about this model. And I would really highly encourage you to take your time and do that. And have a look how can you make your Wheel of Life a little bit more stable, whatever categories you choose, right? So, and if you have a score from 1 to 4, that really shows that you are not happy about this particular area. Maybe you really had forgotten that. Let's have a look about the descriptions per category, and so you can dream a little bit now while you're listening about the categories, and maybe you already check which one you do forget. If you want to take a pen and paper, you can just draw now the circle, or you downloaded it, you can stop this recording and just download it. Go back to www.projectleaderacademy.com/wheeloflife, or you go, if you don't get the link right, to the blog of the projectleaderacademy.com and you find there as well in the blog area, the blog post on the overview, and then please use this template and fill it in. Now let me guide you and let's have a look at the different categories.

Now, business career.

So let me ask you, how satisfied are you with your job or your present position as an entrepreneur? Um, is that the job or the company that you had imagined? Is that the industry you had imagined, or would you like to pursue something else or to build a new business?

I know entrepreneurs have thousands of ideas. Does that still bring you happiness and satisfaction? Does the job bring you happiness and satisfaction, or does it bring you— does it make you enough money to live? You know, a lot of entrepreneurs are so passionate about their business, but they barely can make a living out from it. I know there are so many broke coaches and/or trainers because they're good teachers, but a good teacher is not definitely or not necessarily a good salesperson. It's just a different personality and a different skill they never learned before, right? So have a look there. Then finance. Yeah, do you have enough income to meet all your basic needs and all your wants about travel or about taking care of yourself, of your family? Do you have some loans? Are you depending? Do you have debts? Or is money driving you? Or is money making you happy? Right? What is your relationship with finance? And exactly how much money do you make and how much money is missing? It's good to know that. So how much money would you need actually every month to have a good life, right? And how much are you in debt and far away from that? Let's have a look at the health. So if we look at health, yeah, how healthy are you? Can you sleep well? Are you fit? Or even though maybe you struggle with some disease compared to your situation, to your body, to your potential of your body. How healthy are you, right? How healthy are you? How do you feel? How satisfied are you compared with your appearance and weight? Do you personally have physical discomforts you hadn't had before? Or do you do some sports? Do you do healthy eating? I don't mean that everybody has to eat the same. Everybody has to fit something for himself. So don't compare yourself with other— to others. But, you know, how happy are you with your lifestyle and your healthy eating and your movement? We all know that we have to move because we need some energy, right? Yeah, let's have a look there. Then family, friends. So do you have supportive friends, unconditionally, trustworthy, right? So I remember I got ill in Germany and My friends from Russia came over by car in summer to visit me and to take care of me, right? So that's friendship, right? And it's a lot of thousand kilometers. Can friendships— are there friendships you can build upon, or are they just friends because you have a lot of money and do socializing, and once you maybe struggle in your project or in your life, on your career, you cannot count on them?

And Yeah, so no money, no friends. So to what extent do you really spend your free time with your family and friends? Do you— with whom do you spend your holidays? How much time do you spend with your family? Quality time, right? It's not just the hours, but the quality time. What do you do together? What would you love to do together? I remember my sister, for example, she wanted to have something in common, a shared hobby with her husband, because interests are different, right? And so they created a shared hobby, like going not just dating and eating, but going dancing, so to a dance club, and including the kids as well. Um, so the romance— have you found happiness in love, or do you have a partner with whom you can experience the romance part of love, of life? Do you feel you can improve that? I think it's important to feel love and happiness to train your heart because our heart can be a good— can be very helpful when we make business decisions. So yeah, a good romance as well can teach, help us to learn to listen to our heart. Personal development, for example. How is your personal growth? What do you want? What experiences? Or what are you eager to learn? What kind of skills would you like to learn? Or how you're spiritual, maybe you want to learn meditation, or maybe there are things you want to learn, to read about history, or about skills like problem-solving, decision-making, conflict management, or you want to get past some trauma that you had because things did not work out as you thought. Or you want to learn skills like project management to get and to achieve your goals faster. I don't know, but there's so many things. Sales skills are so important. We need them to sell ourselves to our children, right? And then they copy us and sell their ideas to us. But anyhow, so personal development, yeah. So especially when you have Children who are in, in their teens, it was for me, and I'm very thankful, a big advantage to get into that leadership development. And I really applied all that techniques, tools from the leadership trainings and MBAs to manage my children. And it was a challenge when they were like in their 14s and 15s, 16s until 20. So that was a big challenge and it helped me very much. Like how to teach them to give feedback and a lot of things. How to observe their behavior and to reflect it and so on. And to be and to have compassion.

Now, personal development.

For me personally, it's I want to learn more to meditate more regularly, to have rituals that would help me Okay, there are a lot of that. Now, fun and adventure. Fun and adventure. Are you enjoying life?

Life shall be fun.

We should be happy. Are you doing something just to make money, or are you happy with what you're doing? Are you just passionate because you think you should copy Mr. Y or Mr. Z, or are you doing it because it's your passion? Are you just doing it because everybody else is doing it, or do you really feel it's it's your calling. Um, yeah, fun adventure. Not everybody loves to travel by plane. Other people like to travel to walk. Other people like to hike. Other people like to go by bike, you know. There is not one fit for all. But yeah, what is for you fun?

What brings you joy?

Have a look inside of you and have a look how much time and what do you do and what would you love to do. And then contribution. I think if we are stable and we have 7 stable segments, filled segments, then we have plenty of energy as well to contribute. And when we suffer, the best is to help others, and that gives us a feeling. Do you volunteer? To what extent can you support clubs in the neighborhood or taking care of family members? That really helps a lot and gives a lot of satisfaction. Okay, so these were the 8 areas. I just repeat: so business and career, 2nd finance, 3rd health, 4th family, friends, 5th romance, 6th personal development, 7th fun and adventure, 8th contribution. Once you have them filled in after all these and you have scored them, the Wheel of Life is completed. Then you have a spider that shows either surprising peaks or drops or irregularity. And let's reflect now on your present situation. So maybe you ask yourself some questions like, hey, why did you give yourself such a low score in this category? What is the ideal score for each category for you? What is your ideal, right? What score do you want to achieve after a month, after 3 months, after 6 months, 6 months or after a year. And yeah, which categories score less, which categories maybe are so important for you to have a balance in life, right? The Complete Wheel of Life is really just your starting point and it helps you to understand how efficient are you in special areas. Now maybe you forgot really something, have a look. So if you spend all the time and energy on your career, maybe you have really not enough energy to spend on relationships, maybe on well-being or relaxation or health. So have a look which area you need to improve. And once we had a look at all the aspects and we know we're connected, we understand the balance, then let's have a look, um, where can we be you today and in a year.

Envision your future.

That would be the next step.

So now we are creating a future self in all these segments— no, just in the segments we picked up.

Just let's pick 3 segments which are the most important ones, and then let's create a 5-year vision, a 1-year goal, or a 90-day goal for each of these, right? So if, for example, you never did sports, and it's not realistic to have a 90-day goal where you say, "Oh, in 90 days I want to lose less how many pounds," or "I want to be fit and doing a marathon." But maybe that's good for 1 year, but it's good to have as well a 90-day goal for that area. That is what I mean.

Or if you want to significantly improve your health, so maintaining a certain new behavior in 5 years, during 5 years, will give us different results than just to make it a short-term 2 weeks or 90 days. So once we have assessed our present situation, we were looking into the 5-year vision or 10-year vision, 20 years, and 1-year goal, 90-day goals, which are depending the next steps. The visioning exercise, you could do it differently. You can just sit, you can walk, and think and close your eyes. Especially in the morning, in the evening, when we are in this theta-alpha brainwaves, where it's a kind of very receptive and it's very powerful to dream in the mornings or in the evening before we go to sleep. Once you don't do that, you can use guided visioning meditations. We have as well one.

I will put that for you as well on that visioning exercise.

Once you, once you sign up, you can Listen to that. We use that in our workshops, leadership workshops. And then you can write your goals and dreams into a journal. Some people say do that daily. Okay, I don't do that, but you can do that. Write your dreams and review your dreams and wishes and pick up the most important ones.

Now, before we get to the project that we can do, it makes really sense that we understand what is the difference between a dream, wish, want, needs, goals, right? So just because we have a vision, it's not always, right, a clear goal. Sometimes yes, but not necessarily. So in order to do something about it, we need really SMART goals, like, yeah, to have them specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and timed. To take action on it. And sometimes we have a big, big vision, and sometimes we can just do a little, like an agile project, a little step towards, a first step, you know, meeting a person, reading about it. Maybe we don't have a clear plan or pathway how to get there, but we can do some first steps and get more clarity into that fog on the pathway towards our big, big vision. And I want to help you get a little bit more clear about that. And a dream or a vision is mostly not linked to a time or budget like a project goal, but it's something in the future, like I said. And here is a little different next exercise that can help you to become clear and aware of your wishes and vision. So take your time to dream again and become aware of your wishes. What do you wish? What do you want? What do you need? Then record them or write them down. If you are walking, you can record them into your Evernote, and you can write them down into your journal. And then get clear on what you really want and need now. So, and then we can visualize the outcome, and then we can create a project plan to put your vision into action. So let's have a look at 3 things: the wish, what I want, and the needs. And there is a secret exercise I found very valuable to get clear and to, to understand what my subconscious wants, what it needs, and what do I want. And that means that you take that wish or dream and write down the sentence 3 times in your journal, "I wish," "I wish," and you just write 3 wishes, not more. Why just 3? You complete the sentence, "I wish," and then, "Da da da dum," and then, "I wish da da dum," and "I wish da da dum." You complete the sentence. Just 3 wishes. As you complete them 3 times, you do not add any more wishes because It would be too much energy, and it's considered that like 3 wishes, like in the fairy tales, they can come true, right?

Yeah, but a wish is just something we don't put so much energy inside.

So the desires, um, I want— let's go to that and look what do we want really, where we want, are ready to put some energy behind it and action behind it, not just having the magic fairy appear, or the magician. So now we write 3 times 3 wants, and we start the sentence: I want— I want— and then complete your sentence. I want—

So for the moment, do not concern whether a wish or want are the same things.

We will have a look into that, and then take Step 3: And now you complete the sentence 3 times and you don't refer to the sections before, you just write now: I need—

and then the second: I need this and this and this.

And then: I need this and this and this.

When you have completed this section, so 3 times, then please have a look at your responses, but don't change the wording, and you will be surprised. And now we can have a look at a wish and want and a need. So a wish is a very strong desire, but that is not backed up by the energy necessary to attain it.

A want is a strong desire backed by whatever energy, whatever it takes to attain that desire.

And a need is a thing or a circumstance necessary that we need to our existence, for our person, for our self-existence. So sometimes people feel that they need much more than they actually do in order to fulfill the self in them, right? There are a lot of things we want, but we don't really need them. So we probably pick these, yeah, let's say that handbag, right? We want it because it in our culture or in our, let's say, group, it's a must to have it. And so we have a strong desire and we put— we are ready to work extra, to do extra projects to make that money or to go to that special place and have that lifetime experience and that adventure, going to the Arctic or experiencing whatever, going diving, right? So as I love diving and yeah, that's definitely not a need, but I wanted it and it's a lot of fun.

Fun.

And yeah, when you do that with your family, it costs some money.

So you want to be safe, so you need a lot of stuff and a lot of training. Um, yeah, so before we pick the wants and choose the ones we want to turn into specific goals, like long-term goals, 5-year goals, 1-year goal, 90-day goals, I want you to invite you to look back on your Wheel of Life assessment and really have a look. Have you set which area needs priority? And does this want is a need or is it just a want. And maybe there is a need because there is an area in your Wheel of Life which needs you to take action now. But if this is a match with an area where you need to take action for your own smooth Wheel of Life, then let's create a vision board or a vision or write a vision statement for that want for that specific area and create the outcome and try to visualize it or to imagine that is going to be real. 5 minutes a day or maybe 2 minutes every morning, every evening, or really take cutout pictures or take some pictures on Pinterest showing you on a secret board whatever you want, copy pictures, take your head and put it onto somebody who has that body that you want, or whatever position do you have in that company where you want to get hired, or pictures of the place you want to visit, or the family members you want to reunite. But think about, you can do goals. These are things that you can take action about and not other people take action about, right? Because first of all, it's our energy. And we can decide where our energy goes and where our attention goes, right? This is our decision. But we can change ourselves, we cannot change other people. So then write a vision statement that exactly explains how you— when you completed that, when you achieved that, how would it look like, how would it feel, how would it smell, right? So write that vision statement of the money you have already received received and that you are thankful for it. And how happy are you with achieving that? So once you have that vision statement or vision board that triggers you every day—

somebody said, I think it was Bob Proctor—

write your future, that vision, that big goal on your card and put it in that statement into your pocket. And once your finger will touch it, it will trigger some neurons in our brain, then these neurons in our brain will remind our brain to work towards achieving that specific goal. And yes, it will help us to get the inspiration.

What shall we do?

Whom shall we meet? To listen to people who give us some clues on our pathway.

To get and attract the right people.

To build a team if we need one. Or to create funding and so on. So, and now then, once we have that, we have that vision, we have that statement, it's time to create an action plan. And we can call it a change project plan to attain that vision, to make that vision become reality.

And now we can look, oh, and we can describe this vision with the SMART goal formula. So what are the 3 Rs. How, what, what are the results? What do we think? But don't go into limitations, right?

So describe it and then do it and take the first steps.

It's like an agile way. Maybe we don't know the whole pathway towards that vision, but if we take a 90-day goal, maybe on the pathway, that should be pretty measurable, actionable, realistic. And it should be something when we stretch ourselves, it should be like 70% realistic to make that in 90 days, right? So maybe there are some skills that take more time than a month to learn. And yeah, so that is something we need to consider. And if you want to get some help or coaching, get a coach helping you in the accountability. If you want to understand project planning, then read on our blog, listen to the steps on the podcast, and as well, you may anytime look for getting coaching. We can refer coaches to you, and you can just join a group, and we can help you as well to hold you accountable with your project planning. Yeah, it makes sense to get it, to have a trigger, because we are so distracted in our lives. So I hope that was very helpful for you, because I invite you to set goals Write and visualize your goals. Have long-term and short-term goals, but don't have too many, and don't try to develop, um, all 8 segments of your Wheel of Life at the same time. You will struggle because we have a limited amount of energy, and this energy we should really set focus. So maximum 3, right? And then create a plan to make your vision a reality, to make that big goal a reality, to make that Small step, baby step, the 90-day goal a reality, and act on it. Make a plan and act. And that is project planning, that is change planning. And if you're an entrepreneur or not, this is something we all need, we have to learn. And once you experience it, you will understand it's the same in a company like in our private life. It's not that easy, but we are here to help you with resources, with free training, with free inspiration. Follow us on Instagram, on projectleaderacademy.com, or follow us here on the podcast. There will be a weekly podcast for you, and we have a Project Planning Momentum course. It's once a month we start, and you can check it out. It can help you to get an actionable plan ready for your life, for your dream life.

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