How Successful Are You?
Success Is Not Binary
If you’re new to this site, you’re going to see a common thread here. I like to talk about success.
In one of the very first posts on this site “What Is Success?”, we talk about the different definitions of success. What does it mean to you, me, and everyone around us. Bottom line is that it comes down to being happy.
The thing about happiness, though, is it’s not binary. On top of that, our happiness is not just tied to one single thing. It’s spread across multiple aspects of life. Consider the ultra wealthy CEO who might be meeting all of his or her goals in business and making a salary that rivals some of the wealthiest in the world. What is their home life like? Do they have issues with their marriage? Are they suffering health issues because of a poor diet?
We can’t assume that just because someone is happy or successful in one aspect of their lives that they are all around happy.
This is where we turn to:
THE WHEEL OF SUCCESS!
(read in an exciting booming and echoey voice for maximum effect)
I’m hoping one day I turn these posts in to YouTube videos so you can hear that like I do in my head.
What Is The Wheel Of Success?
Success is just like anything else in our lives. If we’re going to determine how to become successful, we need to be able to take a step back and rate where we are based on where we want to go. Evaluate the important pieces of our lives and put a plan together on how to improve.
The Wheel of Success (originally called the Wheel of Life), by creator Paul J. Meyer. Shown below, this exercise is a visual representation of how happy (or successful) we are in different aspects of our lives. Each wedge represents an important aspect of our own lives. Like we talked about in “What Is Success?”, each slice should be one of our own pillars of success.
I recommend that when you fill this out, you define your own pillars of success that you want to score yourself against. Write them down and define them so you have a good understanding of what each piece means. This will help in later sections when you work to identify your goals in each area.
How to determine your Success Score?
For each section you identify what your happiness goal is, that becomes your 10. put a dot in the section at where you rate yourself. Once each slice has a dot, you connect the dots. The shape you create in the end is your life happiness/success score. It will identify the areas where you are seeing success and the areas you really need to work on.
Here’s an example of what someone’s success score might look like
So What The Hell Do You Do With This?
Cool, now this random circle with a few slices has some weird blob in the middle. How does this help figure out success?
This is an exercise to help you evaluate your current success & happiness, but it only works if you score yourself honestly. Now, you might think that the result of this is obvious. You’re already very self aware, was this a waste of time? It’s only a waste if you don’t do anything about it. You need to take action to improve your situation and then come back and evaluate yourself again.
Let me emphasize. For this exercise to be useful…
YOU NEED TO:
DEFINE YOUR “10”
TAKE ACTION
EVALUATE PROGRESS
REFINE YOUR GOALS
REPEAT
Define Your “10”
Each slice has a perfect world. You need to be able to define what that is and know what you’re working toward. Make your goal as discrete as possible so you can build an actionable plan on how to get there. Learn about SMART goal setting. If you want to improve your finances, don’t just say “I want to save more”. Say “I want to have $50,000 saved in my savings account”.
For me, I know I need to work on my relationship with my wife. I work too much and I don’t prioritize spending time with her. So I gave myself a goal of taking her on 20 date nights this year. They don’t need to be anything too crazy or fancy, but 20 nights where the night is dedicated to just the 2 of us getting out of the house and spending time together.
Take Action
Once you’ve defined your specific goals for each section of the wheel, work on a plan on how to get there. Think about how you can do something every day, every week, every month to work toward your goals. Make sure you stay focused on them. Consider building yourself a vision board. It helps to have that reminder every day of what you want to work toward. Seeing it every day acts as a great reminder for not only WHAT to do, but also the WHY
Evaluate Your Progress
This exercise is useless if you only do it once. You need to take a blank sheet every 3-4 months and fill it out. Are you making enough progress toward the success you defined for yourself? If not, make some changes. Maybe saving $10 a week isn’t getting you there, you might need to ramp up to $20 a week. While taking massive action to course correct may be necessary, it is more important to make changes that you can commit to habit. You’re better off committing to long term improvement than burning out half way through just to hit a goal
Reevaluate your goals
When it comes to goals there’s 2 main outcomes for progress.
First, you spent a year and made improvement, but didn’t reach your goal. THIS IS OK!
Say your goal was to average 3 days a week at the gym and you only got up to 2. Don’t change your goal, just keep working toward it the next year. The goal always needs to be progress toward improvement. As you go on some of these things will become such a habit that 2 days a week to go to the gym will seem like nothing and 3 will become so much more achievable the next time around.
The second main outcome, is you reached or exceeded your goal. You’re now going to the gym 4-5 days a week. No problem. You’re crushing it. AWESOME!
4-5 days a week should no longer be your goal. What’s the next step. Maybe it’s an improvement in an exercise or 2.
Your goals need to continually grow as you do.
Repeat
Even though we talk about that “10” goal that you want to work toward, you actually never want to get there.
Let me explain what I mean by that. As you start to approach a level of 8 or 9, you want to update your goal. Make it bigger, continue to grow and improve.
Maybe your improvements get harder and the magnitude of them slows down over time, thats FINE, but you need to always continue on a path toward progress & improvement. If you don’t you become stagnant.
Remember, the tree that doesn’t grow, dies.
Conclusion
I’m a big visual guy, so to me this exercise is pretty amazing. I realized some things I needed to change in my life and needed to change ASAP. I switched up some of my habits and things I was reading to help facilitate the changes I needed.
What’s interesting about this too is that you shouldn’t view this as you need to take down each slice of the pie individually. It needs to be a balanced growth toward your goals. When I first filled mine out it became very obvious to me that I was working very hard on my career goals, but my friendships and personal relationships were suffering because of it.
This doesn’t mean that you should ever pull back in an area, but you SHOULD put more focus in the areas where you are suffering.
Just like the exercise itself I will be writing a version of this every few months. Not only to share some personal progress, but also to provide some help based on what I’ve learned from my own experiences.
Download a blank “Wheel of Success” here and try it yourself. Drop me a line on social media when you do and let me know ho this exercise has worked for you. Always love to hear about other people’s improvements & success!
Until Next Time!
AJ Zampella