– I caught up with my friend Joe on the weekend and he was telling me about some drama that he had. He was on the way to work one morning, and it’s cold and wet at the moment here in Australia as it’s winter. And he was driving to work, rush hour traffic, peak hour traffic, trying to make his way through. He really had to be at work on time that day cause he had an important meeting with a client and his boss. They really needed to win this account. If they didn’t win the account his job was on the line. So he’s rushing to work, on the way, and something didn’t go right. Have you ever had the situation where you’ve got something that’s more important than usual, more important than normal, and you really need to be there on time and you’re making all the effort to get there and then something doesn’t go right? Hi, I’m Kristen Myers and I’m the Founder of Next Level Coach Co where we help professionals and entrepreneurs who are looking to get to that next level in life, whether that’s more money, more joy, more fulfillment, more balance. We help them get there by breaking through their unconscious limiting beliefs and negative attitudes so they can live their best, most fulfilling joyful lives. So my friend Joe, he’s trying to rush to work. He’s racing through the traffic and then suddenly bang! Something happens. And then he hears ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum. Like what is that? What’s going on? He pulls over to the side of the road and he gets out of the car to have a look and he realizes that not only does he have a flat tire, the wheel’s broken as well. What are the chances of that happening on the day that he needs to be at work on time, both a flat tire and a broken wheel? It’s not a easy one to fix when you’re in a rush. Murphy’s Law, right? Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong, right? I don’t think so. I believe that what you focus on is what you feel and I’ve talked a little bit about that previously in another video, but I want to talk about it again today cause it’s really important. But it’ll have a slight variation. So today’s topic is focus and balance. If I were to ask you what’s important in your life, what would be the first thing that comes up? Let me ask you in a different way. If you think about all of the areas of your life, what are the areas that are most important to you? Can you think of them? Is it things like health, wealth, family, relationships, anything else? I was a self described high achiever, striver-driver, success seeker, whatever you want to call it. But basically in a nutshell I had low self-esteem and low self-worth, so I filled myself up with love and fulfillment by achieving and doing things. And I did it not only for myself, but also to get recognition and love from others, from friends and family. And so I was doing this for a lifetime, or at least the last decade in the corporate world. And for anyone who’s been in the corporate world for some time and been through some corporate restructures, I’m sure many of you have. Or if you haven’t you probably know someone who has been. And after, going through the restructuring process, I came to a point where I realized I’ve put in all of this effort, I put in all of this work, but ultimately I’m still just a number in a big corporate machine and where does the fulfillment come from? It kind of questions my achievement. I’ve done all of this achievement for what purpose? So with those questions I started to think about and reflect on what are the areas of my life that are important to me. So with that I drew a big circle on a piece of paper and divided it up into sections like a pie, or like a wheel on a car. Like a wheel on Joe’s car. You can see where this is going, right? So I put into the list all of the areas of my life that are important to me and I put that list into that wheel, into that pie. And so I wrote down things like career, health, wealth, relationships, and I had a whole list. So why am I going on about this wheel so much? What’s with the wheel metaphor? Well it’s really the wheel of life or the circle of life, or the foundation of your life. So it’s really important. I mean what you focus on is what you feel. Where your focus goes, energy flows. It’s that simple. So I realized that I was neglecting certain areas of my life and prioritizing other areas of my life. And until I put these things onto the wheel I didn’t realize that cause I was just so focused on the career part that it was my top priority. Like a career and achievement and focus, that’s what I was doing. Think about it, if the wheel of your life is out of balance or out of whack, just like the wheel on Joe’s car, it’s not gonna be a pleasant ride. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. Or in Joe’s case you might not even make it to the destination of where you need to go. So it’s really important. At least I think it’s really important to get this wheel right and at least to understand what your wheel looks like now, today. So let me show you how I did my wheel. I’ll draw it on the board here. I just drew a big circle like this and divided it up into sections. And you can have as many sections as you need and want. But I just put in to each section what are the areas of my life that are important to me. So I had things like career, and it’s probably a little bit too important, but it was one of the areas. I had wealth and money. Family. Relationships. I had some things like spirituality. I’ll talk about that in a bit more. Spirituality. Spirituality. What else did I have on there? Fun, Growth. I think I had one more but I can’t remember what it is. But it doesn’t matter exactly how many you have but the point is just to get down the major ones. I got down the major ones and I suggest that you do the same. The next thing I did was each one, I scored them out of 10. So 10 would be it’s an amazing area of my life and I don’t need to even look at it because it’s so amazing. And a one or a zero would be that it’s a big problem and need to probably have a serious look at that. So the scoring that I did for me, career I had about a eight, wealth was about I think a six, family would have been seven, relationships eight, spirituality, hmm, two. Fun, maybe five. Growth, maybe seven. And so this got me thinking, hmm, that’s interesting. But it wasn’t until I did the next step where I really kind of found the deep powerful insights. And do you want to know what the step is? Well it’s really simple, I’ll show you. All I did was I colored in my wheel to match the scores. So if it’s a 10, I’d color the whole thing in. So if it’s a eight, it’s probably about here. Six is probably about here. Seven’s probably about there. Eight’s there. Spirituality, two. Fun, five, about halfway. Seven, I had about there. And this one I can’t remember so I’ll leave it blank. But then I colored it in. And now here I can see an issue here and maybe you can see one, see it too. In particular for me it’s here. Look at this wheel. Imagine that this is another wheel inside the wheel. And can you see how my wheel’s not balanced at all? And my hypothesis here is that if your wheel is not very balanced then your life’s not gonna be very balanced and it’s gonna be a bit of a bumpy ride. And I feel like this kind of reflects why some of my life has been a bit bumpy like in terms of when I think about it from my perspective. And what I’m going to suggest to you is that if you have a low score on any or one of them it’s probably due to three reasons. The first reason is do you have any focus on that area? And I certainly didn’t have any focus on that. I didn’t even know what spirituality was, what it means. The second thing is do you have a plan to do something about it? In terms of spirituality I had absolutely no plans to do anything about it. And then the third area, third thing is, are you actually taking action. Are you doing something about it? And again, for spirituality I was definitely not doing anything. I mean this could have been a one. I don’t know why I put two. If I look at it on the other hand, if I look at where I scored well, I scored well in career and relationships. And if I think about career cause it’s a easy one to talk about, was I focused on it? Absolutely, yes. Did I have a plan for it? Absolutely, yes. And was I taking action? Absolutely, yes. So no wonder my career is doing so well and spirituality is so low. So where to from here? Well I just decided, I made a decision, that I wanted to upgrade my wheel. I wanted to kind of balance it out a bit and the good news is that upgrading this wheel can be a lot more cost effective than buying new wheels for your car. And all I did was I focused on, I made a choice. What area that if I improved it the most would have the greatest impact on my wheel or would have the greatest impact on my life? And I decide that for me that it was spirituality. That if I was able to understand what it is, come up with a definition of it, come up with some sort of plan to do something about it, not that I need it to be an eight or a 10, but just to balance it out a bit more. And so I just made a decision that I’m gonna define, read a bit more about it, find out what it is, define it for me, and then have some sort of plan for me to do something about it. Now it’s really simple for me. I thought I’d read a couple of books. Maybe meet a couple of new people and maybe go and try meditation and see what that’s like. I’m not talking about rocket science here. It’s really simple stuff. So for you what I suggest is just to have a look at where you score lowest and have a think about well do you want to do something about it or not. It’s that simple. Most people know what they need to do. The problem is that they just don’t do what they know. So an example, a simple example, is food or junk food. People know that it’s not healthy to eat junk food yet they still eat it anyway. It’s the same with these areas of life. Like we often know what area we should focus on, but we don’t. So I was determined to do something about it. And you know who else was determined? Joe, my friend Joe. He’s still stuck with the car at the moment, if you remember back to the metaphor, the story. So Joe’s stuck next to the car and it’s broken down and he’s gotta be at that meeting cause he’s gotta be there on time. So he was determined not to let that set him back either because his job was on the line, like if you recall from before. So he got a taxi or an Uber and he made his way there and he crushed the meeting, he killed it! He won over the clients. Everyone was happy, his boss was happy. So it’s all about what you focus on. He was focused on getting to the meeting on time, making it there, doing a killer presentation and winning them over. He wasn’t focused on oh my day is falling apart. Oh no, what am I gonna do. I’m stuck here. He didn’t just wait in the car all day and hope that things were gonna get better. He took action and made a difference. Sometimes our problems in life are obstacles that we just need to climb over so that we can grow. If you think about it, if we had no obstacles, no problems, no challenges, then we’d never grow and we’d be bored, right? So over to you, let me ask you how smooth is your wheel? What are the areas of your life that are on there? Are you having a bumpy ride right now or is it a nice and smooth one? What area, if you improved it the most, would improve your life the most? I encourage you to do this exercise if you haven’t already. Just write down the first things that come to mind. Don’t try and think about it too much. The more you think about it, the more you’ll try and overanalyze it and you’ll get yourself all confused. Just go with the first things that come to mind. It’s worth it, I promise you. I’d love to hear how you go with your circle of life, with your wheel of life, with your pie. And let me know how you go by commenting below the video. I can’t wait to hear from you. I’m looking forward to seeing your comments. Until next time, inspire yourself and inspire others. Cheers!