Years ago when I lived in the Yukon I attended a wellness workshop. One of the things we were asked was, “Are you balanced?” In order to find out, we had to create a wheel with seven spokes radiating through ten circles (with the center circle labelled as one and the outermost labelled as ten). Each spoke was labelled as follows:

PHYSICAL (your body)
MENTAL (your mind)
SPIRITUAL (your spirit)
FAMILY (your family life)
SOCIAL (your social life)
VOCATION (your vocation)
FINANCES (your finances)

We rated each of the seven sectors of our life, on a scale of one to ten with one being the lowest and ten the highest, and plotted them on the wheel.

Then we connected the dots around the wheel to see how balanced our life was.

It’s a great visual—the more balanced you are with the seven sectors, the more you will experience healing, harmony and wellness. But if the sectors are out of alignment you can see which area is in need of attention (where you might want to work on making changes).

There are other wellness wheels having spokes labelled as:

Self-responsibility and love
Breathing
Sensing
Eating
Moving
Feeling
Thinking
Playing/working
Communicating
Sex
Finding Meaning
Transcending

Try creating your own wellness wheel.

Are YOU balanced?

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My Friend
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