076 The life balance wheel is an awesome tool that allows me to check in on how balanced I am in my work-life, but also in ALL aspects of my life. I come back to it 2-3 times each year just to check in on how I'm doing - am I still working towards what I want for my life?? Because episode #6 was soooooo juicy, I rebooted it this week just for you....
There are lots of tools and exercises to help you evaluate where you are right now in your life - health, career, etc... so that you can find more balance with your life as an entrepreneur. Using these tools you can get a meta view of your life - notice successes, see areas you want to focus on, and get starting point to compare to later as you grow and change. As entrepreneurs, it can be so easy to just focus on your career. But I know you value your family, your friends, and having fun too! How do you juggle all of these things in a way that makes sense to you and focuses on what you want and value and need?
What you learn in this episode:
More info <<HERE>>
076 The life balance wheel is an awesome tool that allows me to check in on how balanced I am in my work-life, but also in ALL aspects of my life. I come back to it 2-3 times each year just to check in on how I'm doing - am I still working towards what I want for my life?? Because episode #6 was soooooo juicy, I rebooted it this week just for you....
There are lots of tools and exercises to help you evaluate where you are right now in your life - health, career, etc... so that you can find more balance with your life as an entrepreneur. Using these tools you can get a meta view of your life - notice successes, see areas you want to focus on, and get starting point to compare to later as you grow and change. As entrepreneurs, it can be so easy to just focus on your career. But I know you value your family, your friends, and having fun too! How do you juggle all of these things in a way that makes sense to you and focuses on what you want and value and need?
What you learn in this episode:
More info <<HERE>>
Hello, and welcome to the healthy, happy and mostly sane entrepreneur. I'm your host, stress management consultant, and coach and mostly sane entrepreneur Ellen Leonard. Each week, I share my obsession with hearing out how to prioritize your own health and sanity while running a business, because I don't think you have to sacrifice your own health and well being to be successful. So please stay tuned for today's episode full of actionable tools. And don't forget to hit subscribe to be sure you don't miss out on future episodes. So this is one of the favorite episodes that I ever did all about finding balance and using one of my favorite tools, called the life balance wheel. I come back to this exercise two to three times a year to help me get a clear snapshot of what's going on in my life right now. So I cannot only figure out how to balance work life, right, and prioritize that more effectively. But I can really check in with what's going on in the rest of my life. health, wellness, social money, everything. And it helps me to really check in with my priorities, my goals, what it is that I really want. And so I'm rebooting this episode. It's originally episode number six. So if you've listened to before, I hope you'll listen again. It's definitely worth it. Again, I use this exercise two to three times a year and come back to it and find it so valuable. And I hope you will too. So that's listening. So welcome to episode six. where I am right now and why that matters. In this episode, you will learn why figuring out what's going on with you right now is totally worth your time, you'll be learning number two a bout a tool called the life balance wheel. Number three, how it can help you get a snapshot of your life right now. And number four, how to use that snapshot to prioritize your health and wellness goals and all your other goals. So we're gonna dive in here in a few moments into what the life balance will exercise is and and why that's useful to you. But I wanted to take a moment to explain why an assessment or exercise like this is useful to you. Okay, so one of the awesome things that assessments are quizzes are exercises that are about your health and wellness, right things that are asking you questions like how do you feel right now, or what's your stress level or, you know, more biometric stuff like height and weight and stuff like that. These things give you knowledge about what is going on with you right now. And that knowledge is so freakin valuable. I think it's important is often overlooked. Because when you're looking to make changes when you're looking to evolve and grow, when you're wanting to be healthier, happier, more sane, when you're wanting more control, more calm, more focus, it's important to know where you're starting from. When I know where I'm starting from, I can discover the things that are already working right in all of our lives, there are things that are already working. So always looking at those. And then I can really focus on what I'd like to be different. And here's the other thing. When you know where you are right now, it can help you track your progress, because you have a starting point. And all these quizzes and assessments and things you can take again later, and find out where you're at now. Right? But it gives you the starting point. And as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, I know that you love data. Think of all the data you're going to get from this and how you can compare what's working, think of it like a split test.
Unknown:Is this concept
Ellen Leonard:going to work better in my life? Or is this one did this goal work better than this one, when you have a starting point, you can start to make those comparisons. So using these assessments or exercises to really gain some insight and specificity around what's going on with you right now. And of course, I've got an example. So let's say I wanted to have less stress. Sure, you can relate. But I need to know what specifically is stressing me out right now in my life and how that's impacted me like I need that information right now. Otherwise, I won't be able to take action. So it's the difference between saying something like, work makes me so stressed out. Versus whenever technology doesn't work for me. I get angry and frustrated. And then I start to get a really bad headache. Right, the first one where I say work makes me so stressed out, it doesn't really give me an option for action. Like except for quitting my job, like, there's no action that's going to fix that, or at least not really easily accessible one. The second one, whenever technology doesn't work for me, I get angry and frustrated. And then I start to get a really bad headache. That gives me so much information. It's ridiculous. It gives me a way to notice when I'm stressed that anger and frustration, it lets me know what's stressing me specifically at work, when tech doesn't do what it's supposed to do, you can relate to that too. And the outcome that I'd like to avoid that annoying headache. But these are things that I can do something about. So in this case, an assessment or an exercise that allow me to consider where I am right now the data I get from that makes it so that I can take action. So hopefully you have a better idea about why it's so important to do exercises like the one we're gonna do today, you can of course, find your very own exercises, or assessments, or health and wellness quizzes all over the internet, they are very easy to find. But today, we're going to use something I call the life balance wheel. Now I was first introduced to this exercise and my wall coaches health and wellness coach training. And it's become one of my go to exercises to do with my clients. Generally, it's something that they fill out before we even meet. And here's why it gives them so much information. It's ridiculous. It's super fast and easy. And there are a lot of versions of this exercise. It's also can be called like, the wheel of life that that name always sounded very like Lion King, he to me very like circle of life. So the version I've made is called the life balance wheel. Because I think this really does help you focus on how to find balance in all the aspects of your life. And why I offer this to clients to get started with when we start working together and to all of my students. So if you are an undergrad and you take a course with me more than likely you've taken this assessment at some point. But the reason I offer this is because it gives you a snapshot of your whole life and asks you to view yourself as a whole person made up of a bunch of different parts. Because it can be so easy to have tunnel vision about our life, like we're only our inability to get to the gym, or we're only our job, or we're only a mom, when the reality is as you are so many different things. And I love that because there's so many moving parts that impact our life. And all of them impact us physically, mentally and emotionally. And when we see that when we're able to view that bigger picture, it can really help to bring things into focus and help us narrow down really what's working well and what we'd like to be different. So I am going to describe what the life balance wheel looks like. I know you probably can't see it right now because you're listening to my words, but just know that life balance wheel. And the instructions and lots of notes about what we're talking about today will be in the show notes for you. So you can just listen along. But I wanted to be sure that I did describe what the tool looked like before we dive into trying to use it. So we'd like for you to visualize a pie chart with eight pie slices. And each slice of pie is going to represent a category in your life. Now you can modify these categories and you can make all the slices of the pie that you want to fit your life and really be more specific. But the one I designed for my clients and my students has the following categories. So business slash career, finances, health, family and friends. Romance, physical environment, personal growth, and fun slash recreation. So I'm guessing that that sounds like a pretty well rounded life like I covered a lot of stuff and I and maybe some things were missing. Again, you can add your own categories. Or for instance, if you don't like that friends and family are jammed into one, you could split that piece of pie in half, okay? So you can always make exercises or assessments like this. Your own you can make them to suit your needs. So when you when you do download this, after you go to the show notes, you can make it into your own thing that works for you. Okay, so now imagine that within each pie piece, there's a line going down the center of each pie, and this line has ticks on it that go from zero to 10 So it's essentially a zero to 10 scale. And you're going to use those numbers from zero to 10 to rank your level of satisfaction in each category. So zero is totally not satisfied. 10 is you're completely 100% satisfied in that category. And when I asked you to rank, how satisfied you are in a category, it's important here to focus on your own level of satisfaction, not what other people think you should be doing. So for example, if your mother has always wanted you to be a doctor, and you're never going to be a doctor, but now you're running your own online business, and she she calls it your, quote, online stuff that shouldn't play into this right like so other people's ideas of what your ideal life look like looks like or how you will be more satisfied with your life. Try not to let that enter into to how you're kind of rating your satisfaction. It's about how satisfied you are, again, another example, if everyone in your life thinks that you should be married by now, but you're totally cool with where you're at with dating, then it's okay to be 10 out of 10 satisfied with romance, this is about trying to accurately capture where you are right now in your life. And a quick note for my number nerds, I know you're out there, I hear you, I was a scientific researcher, this qualitative stuff can be challenging because you want the perfect answer, or the perfect number, or to follow the rules perfectly. So I will say this, the correct number on the scale is completely subjective, based on you, you are giving your own parameters for how you would define being satisfied in each of those categories. And that's what you use. So there's no right or wrong number, it's entirely up to you, and your feelings, your ideas about where you're ranked in each category. So how are we going to do this when all you can do is hear me? Well, we are going to do one category together. So remember, there's a link in the show notes to allow you to get a copy of the life balance wheel to do on your own. And I would encourage you to do that does have instructions. And that way you can go through all the categories, make up your own categories really sit down and think about it. But for our example, today that we're doing together, we're going to look at your business slash career pie piece. I know it's crazy that a podcast for business owners, and entrepreneurs would choose to focus on the business career pie piece. So I'm going to ask you on a scale of zero to 10, where zero is totally not satisfied at all. 10 is 100% totally satisfied? Where are you at? how satisfied are you with your business, your career overall? And I want to emphasize, this is not how successful you are not how successful you should be. You think you should have done already, but haven't done yet. Yeah, I know how your mind works. But it's how satisfied you are overall. And to help you drill down on this. I've got some questions that might help you narrow down your number. Okay, so some questions to consider when thinking about what your number might be is, how much joy or happiness does your career or business bring to you? Another question? How much does your career or business get you closer to your overall life vision, your overall goals, your overall values? Another one, how do you feel as though you are showing up as your best self or working at your best on a daily business? Are you able to show up authentically as yourself? And finally, does what you do for a living meet your needs. So these are just some questions to get you started. And considering how satisfied you are with your business or your career right now, a side note here, if you are still working full time gig and your entrepreneurship or business owning is on the side, then you might need to make two or three separate pie pieces out of this single pie piece to kind of look at all your different business career paths so you can kind of break them down. So it's good to have an overall feeling right overall, where are you at. But if you have multiple businesses, multiple careers going on, it's also awesome to kind of break it down and make it your own. So I'm gonna ask it just one more time now that we've kind of gone through it. Where are you on a scale of zero to 10 where 10 is completely satisfied. how satisfied are you? The broad category of your business or your career. And so for myself, because of course, I do this exercise all the time to check in with where I'm at in my life, what's going on right now. It's a really, really valuable tool that can help me to refocus where I'm like, Oh, well, that's not good. I need to work on that or right away. But for my business, my career, I'd say a matinee right now, I love what I do, I get to show up as my best self, most of the day. It's in alignment with my larger life goals, I really wanted to find a way to share all the knowledge that's in my head in a way that would be useful to people other than me, or the people that are trapped in the house with me, right to get the information that I'm obsessed with learning about and and using to benefit my own life. How do I share that with people. So I get to do that every day. And for most of my tasks, with my business, I get to think I get to think so lucky. I just yeah, I'm smiling even right now. As I say that, so that's where I'm at. And in a moment, we're going to move on to what you'd like to be different. Because this whole part, this whole first section is about where you're at right now, the importance of that, and kind of how to wrap your mind around what's going on with you right now. And in a few moments, we're going to move on to what you'd like to be different. But I really wanted to focus on how important where you are right now, this concept can be to you. So number one, it allows you to cultivate awareness around what's going on in your life right now. So again, a lot of times, as entrepreneurs, we are so freaking busy, things fall through the cracks all the time, things that we value, things that we need to be happy and healthy things that we want to be doing. Okay, so this allows you to cultivate awareness around that. Number two, it allows you to notice successes and what's working. So I would say my eight out of 10. For my business career, I would say that's a success, right? Oh, I you know, it can be so easy for me to get lost in the minutiae of running an online business day to day recording, podcast, doing stuff like that, and the things that inevitably go wrong with all of that. But this allows me to, you know, I really am loving all of it allows me to take that step back and see what's working. Okay. And number three, it gives you a starting point, to look back as you evolve and grow. So in three months, and six months, things might be different things might have shifted. And this can give me parameters for that a starting point to look at. So let's move on to what you'd like to be different, okay, and how to use where you're at now, to really drill down on where to focus about where you'd like to make changes in your life. So let's imagine that you've completed your life balance wheel to reflect how satisfied you are currently, in each life category. And again, you got to make up your own categories. And I'm going to ask that you get a different colored pen. And consider where you'd like to be in each category, the level of satisfaction, you'd like to be in each category and say, a year from now. So for those of you that are going straight for 10s, and everything, really, I don't think that's the thing. And here's why. That say you are a married mom of three kids. And let's say you also have an online business where I don't know you teach people how to use their instapot. If this is your business, please email me because I'm constantly convinced my instapot is going to explode. Seriously, reach out. Anyway. So you're running your instapot business you're loving on your kids, right? You're doing all this awesome stuff. And everything with your business is going really well. You're loving it. You're making money. You listed your career in business at an eight. And I'm going to go ahead and assume that you also love your kids, even if some of them might be currently teenagers and your husband and that you love being with your family. And in this case, let's say you ranked your satisfaction with your family at a 10 Do you really think that you can keep that 10 with your family while increasing your business and career satisfaction to attend as well? If you do, that's awesome. That's great. But I found over the years that trying to be a tenant everything isn't really a healthy way to approach this exercise. That complete satisfaction in some categories generally comes at the expense of others, right? Because there's only so much time in a day. There's only so much energy you have. And it's hard to rank fun and recreation at a 10 while you're starting a business right it's hard to rank anything else at a 10 while you're starting a business that's right because it takes so much energy and focus and so it's hard to be completely satisfied with your physical environment if you're moving or remodeling so i guess i just invite you to give yourself a little space for life so as you're looking overall at your life balance wheel about where you were where you are right now and where you'd like to be and you're coming up with those numbers be a little realistic you know maybe you can achieve a 10 in some of those areas maybe they're at like a nine and you're so close but is it worth it would it come at the sacrifice of something else that's high enough that you're good with it so be sure to consider all of that when you're doing that okay so let's imagine that you have done the first part where you're at and all the categories you've done the second power going back and kind of looking at you know what you'd like to be different maybe some things went a little higher maybe some things had to come a little lower it's all fine do that with some love and kindness to yourself but i'm going to create an action step here and i'd like to invite you to pick one category that you'd like to be different the most the one that you were looking at and you were like oh that's really where i need to be focused because as an entrepreneur as a business owner you are really freaking busy and this will only allow you to focus so what are the steps or goals that might help you to change in this category to get closer to the level of satisfaction that you're looking for for bonus points you can put a date in your calendar a deadline by which you would have liked to change to make these changes and come back to this exercise all over again and see where you are in the future and see what's changed
Unknown:for me
Ellen Leonard:i'm almost always focused on the health and fitness category i'd say right now i'm at a six with my satisfaction i'd like to be at about an eight last summer and fall i was at eight it was awesome i was so happy but my steps towards getting from a six to an eight have started to include switching up my meal prep routine and trying out some cycling classes to so far this is going great i'd say you know i started this about a month ago kind of around the start of the new year and i'd say that i'm at about a 6.5 as everything is still kind of trying to sort itself out right updating a meal prep routine and trying to find room for new classes and my life is challenging but i think i could go for more walks and that might help me get to an eight faster i think i can add that into but it's 15 degrees fahrenheit outside right now and so maybe that's not really going to get me to an eight right now but i do have a goal of getting to an eight and i do think it's possible to get an eight and my health and fitness category and maintain that eight that i talked about earlier in my business career category i think they can exist simultaneously okay but i don't have the goal of being a 10 out of 10 for health and fitness because i don't think i can be fully satisfied with that while i'm running a business because my version of 10 out of 10 being satisfied for my health and fitness involves some serious craziness where for instance i'm making every single meal fresh and most of those ingredients are coming from my own garden yeah that's kind of not going to happen when i'm running my own business that's that's really dreamy maybe someday but that's that's where my tenant out of tennis i'm guessing you have a version of that for all of these areas right the the dream which may be possible but just not right now so as we draw this podcast to a close i kind of like to bring up this idea of this is just one of many assessments or exercises that can help you understand where you are right now and i will of course be covering more of them but if you try this one out and it's not your thing you're like well i don't really like that at all that's fine you don't have to like everything it's about figuring out the stuff that's actually useful to you by trying it out right i always encourage everybody to try it out because you don't know if it works until you actually really give it a try and then if it doesn't work for you then it's one more thing that's off your list and you can also take that information for what parts didn't work for you be really specific when you think about that and what parts did work for you and then you can take that information and figure out what will work for you moving forward Word, right? You can be more successful in narrowing down on that. So this was a lot of information. I know I know. And please be sure to use those show notes that are waiting for you to help you build your very own life balance wheel. And just know you can of course come back and listen to the podcast again while you're going through the life balance wheel or you can reach out to me via email if you have any questions. But if you want more details and resources, I'd encourage you to head on over to www dot Ellen leonard.com backslash podcast. So www dot e Ll e N dash Elio na rd comm backslash podcast for the show notes and much more. And don't forget to hit subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes full of actionable tips to help you do what you love without sacrificing your health or losing your mind. Thank you so much for listening. I wish you a healthy, happy and mostly sane week.