Coaches often use a Life Balance Wheel to help clients determine whether their lives are in balance. Sometimes I suggest to a client to draw a circle, divide it into eighths and use the labels shown below for each section of the pie. Then I’ll suggest they put a mark in each section from 1 through 10 to show their satisfaction in that area of their lives. Take a minute and do it for yourself….don’t worry, I’m waiting.
Now you can see that your life looks a little bumpy. Any area that isn’t a nine or ten indicates that you have some sort of block to your growth in that area. Blocks to your growth are intimately linked with your self-esteem. Following are examples from each of the eight areas of life:
Physical Environment
Clutter is an example of a block. I’m not saying if you don’t put everything away every time you use it, you are blocked and living in clutter. You aren’t bad or wrong. What I am saying is that if your piles have piles, you can’t remember the last time you saw your appointment book or your telephone bill, you are living with clutter – a physical manifestation of a block.
Fun and Recreation
Are you someone who works all the time? Having spent a few years working 70-80 hours per week, I learned that I had a big block to trusting my talent as a coach, teacher and writer so I was doing work that was very unloving to me. With excellent self-esteem and self-love, who would work so much doing a job she hated? Do you work or play too much? It is probable that if you do, you are dealing with some sort of block to your own happiness and fulfillment.
Personal and Spiritual Growth
Sure indications of blocks in the area of personal and/or spiritual growth are ignoring your intuition or hunches and/or continuation of self-destructive behaviors even when the negative results in your life are very obvious. I have a client who keeps having relationships with men who reject her. Until she heals the low self-esteem and shame of who she is, she will most likely continue to have these relationships.
Significant Other/Romance
You see it everywhere – women who settle or say yes to relationships that don’t really work for them because they are essentially convinced they cannot really be treated like the goddesses they are. My first marriage of 15 years was like that. I knew when I was 19 that he was mean and screwed up but I married him anyway at 22 and stayed with him through 4 children and a total of 19 years. It boils down to me being willing to marry a person totally wrong for me because I had no belief in myself. I’ve discovered that until I loved myself, I couldn’t have the kind of love I wanted.
Friends and Family
Do your friends and family take advantage of your “good nature” and ask you to do too much for them with little or no return of the favor? Well, I hate to tell you that you don’t have a “good nature”, you have poor self-esteem. Something is blocking the natural understanding you have as a goddess being about balance and give and take in any relationship. And you don’t have the self-esteem to say, “That’s enough!”
Health
Overweight and out of shape? Something is blocking you from good self care. After all, we live in the Information Age. There are zillions of doctors, websites, books, gyms, news items, etc. that tell you what is healthy to eat and what kind of exercise would work for you. So what’s stopping you? You guessed it. A block of some sort.
Money
Almost everyone I know has issues about money. They’re fairly easy to trace. Most of the time we learned our attitudes from our families. Hence the success of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The Law of Attraction says, “like attracts like”. That being said, if we all had a real mindset of abundance and knew we were worthy of infinite flow, we would not have any shortage of money in our lives. What’s your block?
Career
Do you see yourself as never been given the chance to succeed? Or you don’t even know what you are good at? There are so many ways that we block ourselves in this area. Just look around at all those people who “hate their job”. What’s keeping them from offering the planet their gifts?
If you started learning how to see and remove your blocks, what might your Life Balance Wheel look like a year from now?
About the Author:
Maia Berens helps women overcome their blocks to their own growth. Her self-coaching, group and private coaching provides women with the safety to change their lives. For more articles, information and a totally free year of personal growth assignments visit www.allaboutlifecoaching.com and join our Ask A Coach community.
