It’s about optimal health in each section and not over optimizing one section at the expense of another. It’s about living life to its fullest and maintaining continuous, positive activity to keep us healthy and happy. It isn’t merely about not getting ill, it is about making the most of your life. The theory is simple balance the different areas of your life, and you’ll start to find that your life will improve. This well rounded version of the wellness wheel includes physical wellness, spiritual wellness, intellectual wellness, environmental wellness, financial wellness, social wellness, and emotional wellness. Finding fulfillment with and optimizing for each section will lead to a more balanced life, good health, and help reduce stress. We believe this version is the most complete without being overly complicated. It’s an updated iteration that is more relevant to our current period. The Wellness Wheel we will look at and share contains seven dimensions of wellness. If left unchecked, it could bring all kinds of problems, whether physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. Just as when one area of your life is neglected, it can become a burden, weighing you down and throwing you off balance. After wobbling about for a bit, you would most likely be thrown off. Try to ride it and you’d soon discover the effects. Think of the wheel on a bicycle if you attached a weight to the edge, the whole thing is out of balance. To achieve true ‘wellness’, each of these aspects need to be carefully balanced. At the center of this wheel is you – the individual – with all these facets radiating around you.

More recently, other wheels have been devised, containing as few as four sections and up to as many as thirty-six! More often than not, though, these wellness wheels will have seven main sections, each one relating to a major area of our lives. All these aspects contribute to better mental health, a healthy lifestyle, and personal satisfaction. The diagram helps to visualize the fact that all these aspects are joined in some way, each of them having an effect on our lives, with us at the center. This simple wellness model was more hexagonal than wheel-shaped, with the six separate sections each containing a different aspect of life. Hettler creating a model known as the ‘Six Dimensions of Wellness’ – the first example of a wellness wheel. It was based on the principle that humans could live better, healthier lives if they paid attention to balance and awareness in various areas of their lives. Bill Hettler co-founded the National Wellness Institute.

Life balance wheel