Life going up in flames? Take control back!

TL;DR: we are sharing a tool to help you look at your situation holistically, fulfil your career goals, and honour your life goals. It doesn’t make coffee, but it’s still pretty powerful.

Falling off the hamster wheel

In 2020, at the peak of the pandemic, Niamh and I chose to quit our corporate jobs. Our daughter was diagnosed with ADHD and home-schooling was the next level up in terms of intensity. Yet, somehow, lockdown turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It shone a light on just how much help our daughter needed. Now. We decided to pull the plug on it all, and to redesign our life, with family, meaning, and purpose at the centre.

Our daughter wasn’t the only issue we were experiencing, but like the dog in the pic: everything was “fine”. We could handle it. For one, our regular travels between Europe and the US were starting to take a toll. I would board the flight to San Francisco that my wife had just landed on, and we would share a coffee at Dublin airport as a date. So fun, right?! I was also dedicating my life to work, chasing the adrenaline rush of getting things done, realizing I was burning the candle on both ends - but unable to stop myself.

During the weeks that followed our decision to quit, and before we launched The Hybrid Way, we spent hours trying to make sense of it all. We questioned everything. We realized we needed a proper re-set to help us keep the good and replace the bad. But how? How do you integrate work, fun, hobbies, family, time for yourself, etc together? After all, time is limited : you can’t have it all.

Introducing the Wheel of life (DUN DUN DUUUN!!)

The wheel of life is a tool that is often used by life coaches to help leaders (re)align their actions with their goals. It’s based on a simple idea, which is that every life has component parts that make up the whole. The model below provides 10 categories that make up a typical life.

You’re a leader, so imagine you are taking a 360-degree view of your current life situation. The wheel of life will help you identify areas of imbalance and set priorities based on your life vision.

What the wheel of life looks like:

Try it out yourself:

1. Score yourself on each category - looking at my life, how much would I score myself right now?
2. Review each category - am I satisfied with the current score? If yes: what do I need to keep doing? If not: what actions can I take to increase your score?
3. Set goals based on the areas where you want to improve your scores

The goal is not to get a perfect 10 on each category, and I find that liberating. No, the most important thing is to know whether you are satisfied with each individual score, and if not, what you want to do about that. What would it take to raise that score? What would you need to do, change, or give up to get there? Really, the power of the tool is in the questions you ask yourself, and the actions you take as result.

Typical categories include:

• Physical Health: fitness, nutrition, stress reduction, medicine or healing, mind-body well-being, healthy living
• Relationship / Friends: social connection, community, environment
• Love / Family: parents, children, extended family, spouse, intimacy, parenting
• Creativity: side projects, art, crafts, outlets of self-expression
• Career: workplace relationships, business skills (soft or hard skills), career planning, stretch goals, growth mindset
• Finances: current outlook, future outlook, basic needs, budgeting, retirement
• Purpose / Meaning: morals & ethics, spiritual accountability, your life purpose
• Fun: arts & music, literature, rest & leisure, sports & hobbies, travel, vacation, humour

Feel free to modify the categories with ones that works best for you. For instance, we’ve come up with those that reflect what matters most to us:

• Our business
• Our daughter
• Our home
• Finances
• Fun & adventure
• Personal growth
• Family and friends
• Health, fitness, wellbeing

When & how should I use the wheel of Life?

In short: in moment of needs, but it’s better if you can use it proactively.

I’ve used this tool at key points in my life, typically as a last resort when my life was so imbalanced I didn’t know what else to do. For instance, a year after moving to Ireland from the US, I found myself with close to zero social life, while working all the time. I held an international role with expectations to support folks in Europe and in APAC. All while I was managing a team based in California. Dealing with multiple time zones had a pretty disastrous impact on me. It’s hard to function like a human being when you don’t sleep properly.

When the time came for our re-set, we laid out what we wanted our life to be. For me it was: our daughter, family, time for creative writing, mountain biking 2x per week, and the desire to do business with folks we like on projects we love.

Today, Niamh and I use the wheel of life in a more proactive way. We check where we are every 6 months or so. It’s great to see our progress - it’s not always all rosy, but it brings clarity. We score ourselves separately, then compare notes on where our individual gaps are. Sometimes the difference in scores is eye-opening! We help each other achieve our respective and joint goals, and keep ourselves accountable.

There’s a reason why this is a coaching tool - we, as humans, are pretty bad at seeing the truth for ourselves. We say we want to spend time with our family, yet we’ll prioritize emails over dinner together. Having a partner or someone who can point things out is super helpful. It might be helpful for you to share your results with someone you trust.

Life is messy, change relentless, and sometimes we’re neck-deep in ??. At Midlife Stuntman, I share hard-won insights on chaos, growth, and laughing through life’s uncomfortable lessons — French irreverence, zero platitudes, and yes, sometimes ??.