Image Credit: Kyle Glenn — Unsplash.com

It is that time of the year again! Time to reflect. Where are we? What did we aspire to be? Many of us beat ourselves up by reflecting too much on the failures than the successes in our lives.

As a matter of fact, yesterday I was reflecting my year gone by with one of my friends. And she said, ‘The mere fact that we are ‘Breathing’ at this moment! Isn’t it great?’ Profound.

I believe, for many of us, the entire goal setting process and drawing up action plans to transform our lives have become so complicated and a stressful event that extends for many weeks and maybe few months. I have been there many times and I can relate to it.

This got me thinking for a few years and we at Life & Money have designed and developed an innovative and immersive ‘Wheel of Life’ tool that will guide you to prioritize your goals in 10 minutes and help transform your life. The beauty of the tool lies in its simplicity and through visual representations it guides you to make informed decisions in various aspects of your life.

So, how does it work?

Step 1: It helps you to zoom out and understand your current satisfaction levels across various aspects of your life viz. health, relationships, career, money, leisure etc.

Step 2: It helps you to get closer to yourself and find out what do you aspire to achieve in some of these or all aspects of your life.

Step 3: The tool helps you to zoom in and provide you with a Gap analysis as to where you are now and where do you want to go. The Gap analysis will guide you in prioritizing your life goals and set the foundation to transform your life.

While doing the exercise it is important to understand that it helps to set incremental milestones rather than very ambitious ones. Many a time, we fail to follow through on our action plans because we have set up extremely ambitious milestones. For most of us, dropping old ‘habits’ and developing

new ‘habits’ take time to bring about the desired outcomes or milestones.

My personal experience suggests it is better to complete the exercise and not draw up action plans immediately. Give it a couple of days and revisit it. This will help you gain more clarity on your goals.

First, appreciate the areas you are doing well and cherish some of the memories associated with it. It gives rise to positive thoughts and feelings and a sense of gratitude to self and the people involved in helping you achieve your goals.

Many times, we are critical about ourselves and tend to focus immediately on the areas that we are not doing well and want to get to work on it! Take it easy! Remember the Caterpillar took some time to transform into a beautiful Butterfly!

Second, study your Wheel of Life and pick one aspect of Life that you feel you want to focus for the next 12–18 months. When you pick on one aspect of your life, be clear to visualize the ‘why’ behind the goal. Or in other words, what do you value the most that drive you to achieve your goal. You will see significant improvements in not only that aspect of your life but also a few other aspects of your life too. Gradually, your Wheel of Life will attain a Balance whereby your Gap between your aspirations and where you are now will reduce and almost merge.

When I chose to pick one aspect of my life that needed attention in this year; I chose Health. I signed up with a Holistic Wellness Coach and started working on it. Within a few months, I started feeling healthier, lighter, happier and having more meaning in my life. And, surprisingly my biggest challenge at the beginning of the year – Money is turning out to be better as I am in a better space now! This experience is amazing! When I look back, my Wheel of Life is moving towards a nice ‘Balance’!

As a New Year Gift, we will like to offer our readers, free access to the Wheel of Life tool to help set your goals and transform your lives. The offer is valid till January 15, 2019, you can access our ‘Wheel of Life’ Tool and a few other resources related to it. Please click on Contact Us and fill up a few basic details about you. Click the Services section and select online courses. And in the comment section please mention ‘ Free Access to Wheel of Life Tool and Related Resources’. We will send you an email with a short note on how to use the Wheel of Life Tool and other resources.

May you and your family have an amazing 2019!

This blog was first published by Partha Iyengar on medium.