Your Personal Mid Year Review in 6 Steps (+ Free Wheel of Life Template)

We’re almost halfway 2022, a great time to reflect on the past 6 months and take some time to do a personal mid-year review.

No, this is not going to be a standard mid-year goal review (what have I done so far, where am I behind, where am I on schedule) …

Sure, you can look at your 2022 goals, measure your progress, and see how you’re doing. But what I care about more than my goals is how balanced I feel. I don’t care about making X amount of money if I feel unhealthy or lonely because I don’t spend time having fun with loved ones.

If you have been following me for a while, or you are familiar with my life design process, you know that the first step towards designing the life you want is getting clear on your vision for life: How you want your life to look and feel like in all areas of life.

And although your vision can consist of many physical things like your dream house, your dream car, your dream man… ultimately it comes down to what feelings you think those things will generate for you, like abundance, freedom, and love.

So to ask yourself the right mid-year review questions, let’s take a look at the bigger picture.

The Best Mid-Year Review Tool: The Wheel of Life

One exercise that I love doing to check in with my vision is the Wheel of Life, because it matches up perfectly with the way I categorize my life into different themes.

The Wheel of life was created by Paul J. Meyer and plots all important areas of your life on the spokes of a wheel. It’s a great way to visualize how balanced your life is.

An important note is that this theory assumes that different areas of your life need a different amount of attention at different times of your life. This means that a balanced life wheel can look completely different from one person to the other, or from one year to another.

Step 1 – Choose your life themes or roles

The first step is to decide on the important themes in your life, or the roles you play.

I personally use 7 themes to categorize my life, but 8 is easier if you want to equally divide your circle. If you don’t feel inspired you can use these 8 themes:

1. Health
2. Friends & Family
3. Partner
4. Work
5. Personal / Spiritual Growth
6. Home / Lifestyle
7. Play & Leisure
8. Wealth

Step 2 – Draw your Wheel of Life

Draw a big circle on a paper or download my free Wheel of Life Template to create your own Wheel of Life.

Make sure that the number of spokes matches the total number of life themes or roles you are using. The middle point of the circle is zero, the points on the outer circle are 10.

Step 3 – Rate your current attention

How much attention are you currently giving to each area of your life? Rate this on a scale from 1 to 10 (1 = Low, 10 = High).

You can think in terms of time and energy here. If you feel like all your energy goes to your romantic relationship because there is a lot of conflict, you can rate this area as an 8 or a 9.

Plot your ratings for each area on the matching spokes of the circle. Then connect all the dots so you form a shape within your circle.

Here’s a completed Wheel of Life example:

Step 4 – Rate your ideal attention

How much attention would you ideally like to give to this area? Again, rate each life theme on the spoke from 1-10, you can use a different colour if you like.

Be realistic here, and keep in mind that not every area of your life can have a 10 out of 10 in time and energy. For example, when I was travelling, my friends and family played a smaller role, because apart from the sporadic Zoom sessions, I couldn’t spend much more time and energy on them.

Connect the dots of your ideal situation.

Step 5 – Identify the imbalance

You’ll see two figures in your Wheel of Life. Can you see in which areas you’re out of balance?

Write down a list of those areas.

For each area write down what you think causes the imbalance and brainstorm a way to solve this.

Often you will find that you can redistribute your time and energy, because one area is getting too much attention, and others too little because of it.

For example: Your work gets an 8 out of 10 of your time and energy, while you want it to be a 6. Your personal growth only gets a 5 while you want it to be a 7. The question then becomes: how can you make sure that your personal and spiritual growth gets more of that energy that now goes to your work? Firstly, you need to identify what makes your job more draining than it should. Are you working too many hours? Do you work outside of your zone of genius? Do you hate your boss? Is your commute too long?

If you know what causes your imbalance, you can find a solution (for example: Set stronger boundaries, work 80%, change your job, ask to work remotely, get a job coach… etc.)

Step 6 – Implement your Solutions

Find at least 1 solution per imbalanced area and plan it into your goal-setting system for the second half of the year.

Make sure you make these goals SMART so they’re not just good intentions but an actual plan.

For example:

• Hire a job coach to improve my job satisfaction by July 31st.
• Schedule weekly date nights to improve my relationship with my partner
• Plan two city trips to help improve my lifestyle before the end of the year

I created a free printable of a Wheel of Life Template to print or use on a tablet. You can download it for free here.