As you sip your tea in the hammock pondering the next step during your midlife transition, an unsettling weight of overwhelm might darken your mood. How to make sense of your past and present and find a way, in the coming years, to live out all the dreams you still have? Can a wheel of life help?
You’ve learned that after you hit midlife, you don’t need to sit back and wait for decay. This is a time for possibilities and opportunities. Now that you’re entering your second half, it’s the perfect time to reflect, plan and consider what’s important and what you want to do with the rest of your life.
It’s also the perfect time to reassess your life’s calling, your why, your purpose. Without defining your purpose, it’s easy to get lost. Check out How Finding Your Purpose Gives Your Life Spark for more inspiration.
You’ve spent many decades now creating your beautiful life. It’s pretty awesome. And, some days will feel like you’re speeding towards your dreams with focus and perfect alignment, when nothing is holding you up, everything is smooth sailing. Other days, nothing will seem to go right and everything starts off working against you and continues all day. Maybe it goes on for weeks.
Or years.
Why the Wheel of Life Helps
Life is so big, so messy, so complicated. How in the world can you even know what you want or where to start? By breaking it down a bit.
A quick internet search of “wheel of life” will show you how this has been done many times in slightly different ways by so many people. But you don’t have to do that search right now, because I have my version for you called “7 Realms of a Radiant Life.”
The 7 realms fit together to create a collage that can then feel less chaotic. Different areas of life are muddled, overlapping, and interconnected, no clear-cut delineation exists, but by honing in on an area, clarity is possible.
By using categories to reflect on your life, you can see things are going well and where they’re not so hot. You may find that you’re not strong in one aspect, but you’re also not in a place to tend to it. That’s okay. Looking at your life through the lens of 7 realms gives you one way of investigating and reflecting about where you want to put priority and effort.
Life is a web, not 7 stand-alone compartments – one element has components from another element, one category determines the joy of another, they overlap and intertwine and play with each other. So, if you find repetition or confusion about where one idea might theoretically exist in two realms, don’t fret. The tool is yours and it’s for you so use any way that makes sense for you.
Pan out every once in a while, and see the big picture. How is it all connecting to create the life of your dreams? Are you headed in the right direction?
Let’s break it down using the Salted Moon version of the wheel of life. Print out the pdf and make notes on it if you like.
Body Wisdom
Starting with the vessel that allows you to exist in this world – your body. Body wisdom is learning how to nurture and care for your body by listening to what it needs. Our bodies are complex and amazing and will do everything in its power to keep us alive. Which sometimes backfires (hello, inflammation).
Even though western medicine often tries to convince us our bodies are machines, it’s far more profound than that. Neuroplasticity and epigenetics are two fields showing us so much of what we thought were once-and-done, is simply not true. We are capable – our bodies are capable – of so much growth and healing for our entire time on the planet.
Remember you‘re a unique and wholly original person and what works for your body (and mind and soul) may not work for others and vice versa. Developing the ability to really listen to what our bodies need to flourish – body intuition – is even more important as we’ve put some time in and have had sickness or injuries that haunt us.
Questions for Reflection
This realm focuses on our nutrition, movement, breath, posture, flexibility, balance, microbiome, brain health, energy, and vitality. Take these things into consideration when reflecting on this element. Imagine the physical self you’ve dreamed of. How far off are you? What could you change now to be on your way to that?
How are you doing? How do you feel?
Your body deserves the best of care because it is home to your soul…
Spiritual Wellbeing
And your soul or spirt requires nurturing as well.
Your soul is your deepest, most true, essence. Your personality wraps in layers around your core or spirit. This is where your dreams live and where peace settles. It’s also where untamed love and joy dance and celebrate.
Spirituality can be a loaded word for some, but regardless of what angst it might bring up, connecting with something greater than yourself, is what makes life so rewarding.
That can mean a mainstream religion, nature worship, a turning to other mythologies for guidance and comfort, or making something up yourself. Tuning to a light from outside of your own existence helps calm and comfort our brain and heart.
But, before you poopoo this entire realm, know that it also includes maintaining a sense of wonder, finding joy, and exercising your creativity. It’s about letting curiosity and imagination tangle with your thoughts and actions as you go about your day.
Spiritual wellbeing is defined by being in wonder of the mysteries of life. Take a few moments to sit still and quiet and be curious about what you feel. Keep an open heart and mind and let the beauty of all existence sweep over you.
Questions for Reflection
Do you meditate or pray daily? Do you practice mindfulness? How could you add more spirituality to your life? Do you want to? What are you grateful for? Do you regularly engage in activities that feed your spirit?
But your thoughts and emotions can get in the way of experiencing your spirituality…
Emotional Wholeness
Your emotional wholeness is how you handle obstacles and challenges, how you talk to yourself, and maintain healthy stress levels. It’s creating more equanimity and accepting and knowing where and how you can make an internal difference.
In our world today, it’s possible to find an endless way to numb and escape tough emotions. Social media, spending recklessly, excessive food, too much alcohol or medications. But how we handle the tough feelings and emotions determines our emotional health and wholeness.
Life is unpredictable and we don’t have control over what comes our way, but we can have control on how we navigate through life – how we experience our emotions so when things are hard we become stronger, more resilient and we can start from a powerful emotional wholeness.
Questions for Reflection
How are you doing? What do you feel could be better? Do you talk to yourself like a good friend or a critic or an enemy? Have you found ways to better handle the challenges of life? Do you experience equanimity? What is your stress level and what can you do to manage it? Is it time to reach out for help to get to the next stage?
Which tells you about who you are and who you can become…
Personal Evolution
Personal evolution is always happening. You always have a choice to remain the same as yesterday or even a minute ago, or are you going to grow, try something new or expand your awareness.
Are you done? Or do you want to keep learning? I know you want to keep learning because you’re here. You have so much left to do and so much to learn and so much to give. You’re just hitting your stride.
As a human – a human with a heart and soul – you are perpetually in a state of becoming more you. More true to your unique self and a more accurate representation of your calling or your dharma in this world.
Reflecting on our lives, evolving, accepting the difficult parts, and loving them, we find gratitude and joy. Personal evolution is finding what it is we want to nurture in ourselves and then understanding what that looks like in our days.
Your personal evolution is also about your identity. How you see yourself as well as how others see you. What labels you place on yourself determines much about what you will experience and how you feel about your life.
Questions for Reflection
Who are you? What, if anything, would you like to change about yourself? Do you feel intellectually challenged? Do you express your creativity? What things do you do to feed your curiosity and imagination? What are some challenges or obstacles that are making your dreams difficult?
Through discovery and reflection, you can make the needed changes…
Commitments
Your job, volunteering, taking care of others, making money, finding time amidst all the things you have to do just to survive, how are you supposed to also live your wildest dreams?
You don’t have to choose one or the other. A heavy dose of reflection and investigation will help you get to the core of your dreams and how you can experience them without abandoning every commitment and responsibility.
Much of it depends on how you view your responsibilities, how you go about performing your must-dos, and how you care for yourself while walking in the real world.
You make commitments to yourself and commitments to others and it’s absolutely doable to honor each of these and still have a radiant life. No matter what your life circumstances, it is impossible to avoid every single thing you don’t want to do. It just doesn’t work like that. It helps to find ways to do the less-fun stuff with a good attitude.
You will face challenges, distractions, and opposition so it will be imperative to have a plan in place for dealing with these along your voyage. Create productive and dream-supporting habits, routines, and rituals. The level of responsibilities and commitments fluctuates and sometimes you have to focus on one over the other for a period of time. That’s normal.
When it comes time to implement these new habits and routines, you’re going to find your brain is quick to defend the status quo. Your desire for betterment and the human need to keep everything exactly the same, are going to bang heads. Can you foster the discipline and resilience to make lasting change?
Questions for Reflection
Are you in a career that you find fulfilling? Retired? Now what? Are you financially comfortable? Do you often feel like you’re drowning in commitments and responsibilities? In what ways can you lessen your responsibilities? How can you get help? Have you created routines, rituals, and habits that are nurturing your radiant life?
Which brings you out of yourself and into the realm of others…
Connections
Connections to family, friends, community, and a partner are important for well-being in so many ways. As a human, you need others. Finding people who inspire and support you is vital. And so is being there for others and offering your best self with kindness and love.
Loneliness is a significant marker for a shorter life. And study after study shows the opposite is true – having a healthy social network, having others you can count on, and a happy marriage increase longevity.
Having someone who acknowledges your feelings and offers companionship not only feels good but reduces stress and increases your overall health. That tight circle of people right around you is important, keep them close and love them.
Not only does having a group of friends help your emotional health, if you choose wisely, it also assists you in making healthy choices. Hanging out with people who go hiking every weekend? Cool. Eating dinner with your friends who make healthy choices? So will you.
Belonging to a community of people who share your beliefs – religious congregations, sports teams, volunteering, dance groups or acting groups, clubs – has been shown to increase health and longevity.
Even just a friendly smile and a few words with a stranger in line at the grocery store, your neighbor, or your waitress, has shown to increase feelings of connectedness to the greater world.
Questions for Reflection
Consider your concentric circle of relationships, those closest to you are the ones that you share a close bond, and that radiates outward to the strangers you meet around town. Are you content with your connections? Are there people you’d like to reach out to more? Need new friends? Are your relationships with others loving, safe, and joyful?
Thinking further outside your own body also includes your environment…
Surroundings
Surrounding yourself with comfort and beauty that matters to you, makes life better. Even if you only have a small corner to call your own, having things that matter to you and make you happy is important. Your home should be your refuge from the chaos of the world.
Things like color, texture, clutter, light, temperature, sound, smell, and visuals (whether windows, photos, or art) can either make you happy, creative, and at peace or anxious, irritated, and overwhelmed. There’s no right or wrong either. Each of us has to discover for ourselves what makes us comfortable. So forget what’s on your social media feed, and find what stirs your soul and makes your heart dance.
Eliminating toxins in our surroundings can be a game-changer in our health and longevity. It isn’t easy though, as we are inundated with chemicals. Some are naturally occurring, and we can take measures to lessen their impact, but others are added through manufacturing and human-created sources.
Good ventilation, working detectors, air filtering systems, and water filtering systems are a start. Careful shopping for the least toxic versions of what you surround yourself with is also smart.
Connecting to nature and getting outside has proven essential for physical, mental, and spiritual health. Take short walking breaks. Get away for a break in nature. Especially if you are by water. Having a view from your window or paintings or photos of nature help when you’re stuck inside.
Questions for Reflection
Consider how you feel about your home, town, community, and area. How are you doing about spending time outdoors? Are you confident in recognizing toxins and finding ways to lessen their impact? Do you have a happy place? How can you remind yourself of your happy place any time you need it?
Where we live influences the availability of nutritious food and places to explore outside and get exercise, which circles back to taking care of your body…
As we get older there is a sense that we’ve made all our choices, we’ve ended up here and this is where we are. But we are no more stuck now than when we were 20. The challenge is in discovering where we want to, reflecting on where we are now, and finding a way to bridge that difference.
My hope is the 7 Realms of a Radiant Life will give you one more tool in that exploration.
Share what you find out! Did shifting your thinking into categories help you find a clearer view of your entire life? Were you surprised by anything you discovered?
