CI080: One thing at a time, or how to change your life without changing everything

CI080: One thing at a time, or how to change your life without changing everything

I think it is a normal reaction to a major event in your life to want to make all of these changes at once and you know what? I think it is also impossible.

~Andrea Klunder

The wheel in the sky keeps on turning…

Though maybe sometimes more smoothly and freely than others. And in this case, it’s the “wheel of life.” More on that in a moment.

Recently it has come to my attention that I have been trying to change everything all at once.

The health crisis that I’ve experienced this year with surgery and recovery has set me on a trajectory where I am fully aware of all of the things in my life that I’m not 100% happy with — all of the things in my life that I wish were better and all of the things in my life that I have felt like I could always do some day in the future.

And I’m realizing that, well, I’ve heard it said many many times and I know it’s true: The future is not guaranteed. We are not promised tomorrow.

Read on for more…

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Article Continued

And so I want to make changes to my home environment and I want to improve my financial situation and I want to make changes to the way that I approach my career and work and I want to make changes to my romantic relationship with my partner and I want to make changes to the ways that I do or do not spend time with my family and I want to make changes to the amount of time that I spend with my friends and I want to give back more and I want to make changes to my podcasts and I want to travel more and I want to take better care of myself and become more consistent again with my yoga and meditation practice.

All of these things at once.

And I think it is a normal reaction to a major event in your life to want to make all of these changes at once and you know what? I think it is also impossible.

So recently I was reminded of this tool that I originally learned about from Katy Flatau. who has been on The Creative Impostor before talking about life & career coaching in episode 050.

This tool that I learned about from Katie is something that gets used in the coaching and personal development space and I honestly don’t even know where it came from. If YOU do, I’d love for you to clue me in send me an email Andrea [at] thecreativeimpostor.com or share it on Instagram and tag me @AndreaKlunder.

The Wheel of Life is a chart in the shape of a wheel… or a circle or a flower or anything else you can think of that could potentially be round.

It’s segmented into different sections or pieces or petals and each section has a category and that category is ONE aspect of your life which holds some kind of value and meaning for you. The wheel rolls best when all of those areas of your life are in sync with each other that you have a general level of satisfaction in all the areas. But if one of them is out of sync, meaning if you have a higher level of dissatisfaction with that area, it can cause the wheel to get a little wonky and not quite roll as smoothly.

And I think that obviously it is unusual that we are generally happy with everything in our lives. Right?

And so the way that you can use the Wheel of Life is to label those different sections with categories. The categories can vary depending on what’s important to you and how you want to prioritize them. In fact, the number of categories that you can have varies.

Typically I’ve seen it with eight different categories (and I find this insufficient.) They could include money and finances or career and work or volunteering and giving back or family or social or creativity or romance — there’s no right or wrong way to pick your categories. It’s just a matter of choosing them and figuring out how they all fit together to make one cohesive happy life package.

Then you look at each category and rank on a scale of 0 to 10, zero being at the center of the wheel and 10 being all the way to the outer rim, how satisfied you are with that area of your life.

Then you focus in on one — possibly two, but generally one area of the life that has the lowest satisfaction level and look at: How can I focus on improving my overall happiness and satisfaction with this area of my life?

This can be hard because sometimes it feels like you are now neglecting those other areas of your life.

And that is not the intention. The intention is just simply to shine a spotlight put some focus and put a little extra energy behind that which is bothering you and then when that starts to improve, hopefully, it starts to lift the overall satisfaction level in other areas of the wheel as, well rather than lifting that category up to the detriment of the other areas.

And sure you might have to allocate a little less time energy or resources to some of those other areas in order to shift it into this area because we are, after all, limited what resources are available to us. It is a fact of life. Although I suppose some people could argue that with me as well.

But then you start to focus on: What are the things that I can do? What are the things that I can control to improve my level of satisfaction with this specific area?

So it’s an interesting concept and it’s something that I wanted to revisit because of this desire for me to try to change everything all at once which is leaving me feeling ineffective exhausted overwhelmed and not really making any progress on what it is that I want to be improving.

We’re exploring this idea of The Wheel of Life on what I’m calling Mission Mondays in The Creative Impostor Group on Facebook.

It’s a place designed for social support for creative individuals — so I think you qualify! Please join us and every Monday there will be a post from our community manager, Terri called Mission Monday.

This post will have a Wheel of Life image above and I would love love love love love for you to share ONE area of your wheel that you are focused on for the week that you have a mission in that area.

And at least one thing you’re going to do that week is to improve your overall satisfaction in that one area.

By you focusing and sharing that focus with me, it’s going to help me focus. And I will be ever so grateful. Let’s do this together!


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