Are you going to set yourself some New Years resolutions?

I know it’s a bit early but it’s not a bad idea to start thinking about next years goals right now rather than, as most people do, think about it on New Years Eve! Last November I set myself an income goal for 2010 and because of the momentum I created over the next few months I’d achieved that goal by the end of the first quarter! If you want 2011 to be your best year ever, now is the time to set the goals and start planning your work load.

Before we decide on some targets it may be worth looking at the areas we could set goals in. Not everyone is interested in just having a set of challenging financial goals, and in fact it would probably put us out of balance if we did. In order to give ourselves some balance perhaps we should consider looking at an exercise called the wheel of life that I came across many years ago.

Draw a cross on a piece of paper and then bisect the cross to make eight lines, making sure that all the lines are of equal length. Now add some titles to each of the lines representing all the important areas of your life. Some suggestions might be: your Career, your Financial life, your Physical life (health and fitness), the Relationships in your life, your Emotional life (the awareness and understanding of your emotions), your Educational life (areas for study, qualifications etc), your Spiritual life (relationship with or understanding of a higher being or purpose), etc.

You’ll notice that I’ve only made 7 suggestions as many people have another very specific area in their life that requires particular attention. In my case it’s my competitive swimming achievements which I regard as very separate to my levels of health and fitness and this warrants a spoke all to itself. For other people this extra spoke may be their part time business, their charity work or even a relationship with one specific person.

For each of these 8 areas you’ll need to give yourself a score from 0 to 10 according to how happy you are with that area of your life right now, 10 being extremely happy and 1 being not happy at all. If you’ve lost your job, are totally broke, have no possessions, are up to your ears in debt and have no way out of this dilemma you may want to score yourself a 0 or 1 on the financial area! If, for example, you are considering the spiritual side of life but have no interest or desire for knowledge in that area and are totally happy with that situation, then you’d probably score yourself a 10. These scores would have nothing to do with how other people see you or how the world might judge you but how you see yourself. It’s simply how happy you feel with that part of your life.

Now I’d like you to imagine that each line is a spoke on a wheel and each spoke has numbers on it running from 0 at the centre of the wheel to 10 at the rim. Place a cross on each spoke according to the score you have given yourself in that area and join up the crosses with a curved line to create your Wheel of Life which will probably now look far from round!

Now I’d like to ask you a question. How comfortable would your journey be if the wheels on your car were the shape of your wheel of life? If it’s anything like my example then the answer is probably not very comfortable which shows us why our life may be uncomfortable or a bit difficult right now!

Doing this exercise really shows us where we need to set some goals in order that our life experience can become a more comfortable one. It helps us to see how far out of balance we are and what areas we need to focus on for the coming year. We can set goals in any of the areas we have discussed and we need to be very specific with those goals. For example if you find that you have a failing within the relationships area of your life, perhaps with one individual then you could set a goal of spending at least one evening a week alone with that person concentrating on your relationship rather than on the TV or some other distraction.

We aren’t necessarily looking to score 10 on every spoke but we are looking for similar numbers on all spokes which will create some balance so that we have a smoother ride. In the past I’ve found that once I’ve done the wheel of life exercise, set some goals I immediately feel happier because I know how to get myself back on track. If I then work hard towards those goals for a couple of months and get some more balance and then re-do the exercise, I come up with a completely different shape of wheel and I have to set some more goals to get balanced again.

Hope you enjoy the exercise and that 2011 is your best year yet!