Personal development activities: the Personal Growth Wheel

Growing as a person is not about becoming someone else, it is about becoming more yourself. This wheel looks at how you know yourself, what you are learning and how coherent your daily life is with what you believe.

What is personal development coaching?

Personal development coaching is a process of questions so that you decide what you want to grow in as a person and what the first step is. A personal development coach does not tell you what to learn or what to believe: they help you see clearly what makes you grow, what is missing and which change depends on you.

The starting point is the Personal growth area of the wheel of life, scored from 0 to 10 according to how satisfied you are today with your growth. To look at it more closely, the personal development wheel (also called the personal growth wheel) splits that area into eight sections: contribution to society, current projects, future projects, spirituality, effort and self-esteem, attitudes, skills and knowledge.

Examples of personal growth conditions: having the freedom to say no, wanting to take training courses, spending half an hour a day reading, feeling that you contribute something to others or looking after your spirituality.

Examples of personal development activities that come out of this wheel: practising saying no once a week, choosing one course out of three, reading every day, helping with a charitable cause or setting aside time for reflection.

Video: how to do the Personal Development Wheel step by step

Personal development coaching: the Personal Growth Wheel, a step-by-step exercise (in Spanish)

Can’t see the video? Watch the Personal Development Wheel tutorial on YouTube.

Example of the Personal Development Wheel

If you are looking for exercises to improve your personal growth, this is the place. Many times people don’t want to discover their demons and prefer to stay in their comfort zone. But it is time to take personal responsibility and start being happy by discovering everything that fulfils you (and also everything you don’t like).

As in any wheel of life, you will need a blank sheet of paper and a circle divided into eight sectors, as shown in the figure. Score each wedge (area) from zero to ten according to how happy you are today. There is no preset scale: it is something very personal. Try not to rack your brain looking for a reference system to work out how to gain one more point. If you hesitate, close your eyes and ask yourself: am I truly happy in this area of my life?

The Personal Growth Wheel of Life

The area of the life map we will work on is the Personal Development Wheel, in which we look at the most personal aspects of our happiness, personal and spiritual. Start by scoring what you feel you contribute to society, to God and even to yourself. See whether you are satisfied with your current projects, how you could collaborate, for example, in an end-of-year collection for charitable causes, and think too about the future projects you will carry out. Spirituality deserves a score of its own, since it gives meaning to your life. Also assess the effort you put into yourself and all the talent you have (broken down into attitudes, skills and knowledge).

Area	Description
Contribution to society	Do I feel useful to society? Am I satisfied with the contributions I make to society, to God and to myself?
Current projects	Am I comfortable with the personal growth plans and projects I am immersed in? Does my life make sense with what I am doing now?
Future projects	How promising are my future projects? Am I satisfied with my prospects of growing?
Spirituality	Do I feel good about my spirituality? Do I practise and cultivate it enough?
Effort and self-esteem	How would I rate my level of self-esteem? Do I put enough effort into the things I do? Do you still think your life is miserable and worthless?
Attitudes	Am I satisfied with the attitudes I have towards life? Do I approach everything that happens to me well? Do people tell me I come across as someone who thinks they are superior?
Skills	Do I have enough skills to do everything I set out to do?
Knowledge	Should I study new things to move forward properly in my personal growth? Perhaps you are considering studying coaching?

Do you have a score for every area (wedge)? This measurement puts your overall view of life into numbers, and you will probably see things differently. Not sure about all the values you chose? Review your scores and change them until you feel comfortable with them. Remember that we never judge a wheel as good or bad: it is simply yours, personal and non-transferable. In the template below you can see how the arcs should look once the scores are in.

Personal development wheel template

When to do the Personal Development Wheel

When you feel stuck, or months go by without learning anything new.
Before choosing training, a course or a personal project, to decide what you want to grow in.
When it is hard for you to say no and what you want to do for yourself always gets left for later.
At the start of the year or after an important change, to review your projects, your values and your spirituality.
Every few months, to check whether the personal development activities you set yourself are making you grow.

Now is a good moment to start working on the lowest-scoring areas: perhaps starting from some coaching examples? Personal development activities? A self-esteem exercise? Rest assured that the happiness app, Happiness Play, can help you; you can start with these personal coaching questions.

Personal coaching exercises

We often feel so afraid in certain situations that we prefer to hide them and say nothing, but questions that start with “what”, like those used in coaching, will help us in everyday situations. Remember that coaching does not try to teach or give advice: it starts from the idea that the client already has every resource needed to reach their goals.

Here are some examples of how personal growth coaching sessions work; you will see that they ask powerful questions that make the client think about their own actions.

I want to know myself better

Values exercises are a good starting point. It is very important that you look for the best way to get to know yourself; even if you have already come a long way, it will do no harm to reflect on your reasons through these usual questions a personal development coach would ask you:

Which facets are you interested in getting to know even better?
Do you think you give yourself enough attention? And your personal growth?
To what level are you consistent with your personal values, and how do you look after them?
Which actions are you going to take to carry it out, and when?

I want to train in something specific

When you start asking yourself what personal coaching is, you start to understand the importance of getting specific. Since you have begun this dynamic, let me ask you about the path you are going to choose. Perhaps it is good to start with these questions:

What are you looking to satisfy with it?
Have you searched well, or are you waiting for someone to do it for you?
Which people you know can advise you about it?
Where do you think you can find the information to get what you are looking for?

I want to develop communication skills

I suggest that, to reach the goal of developing communication skills, you research on the Internet and in specialised literature. I advise you to start by paying attention to these communication tools: listening, assertiveness and empathy. Also analyse your answers to the questions I am going to ask:

Which skills do you currently have, and how satisfied are you with them?
How can you make better use of your natural gifts and skills?
How are you going to avoid toxic relationships with this training? How can you get what you want for your personal development?
When are you going to start?

I want to recover my faith

As an example of personal coaching, it is very commendable that you want to be more in touch with your spiritual and religious side; to do so, I suggest you reflect on the path to follow through these questions:

What is so important to recover?
What are your real motivations? How are your conditions and expectations influencing them?
Is this decision aligned with your values?
If you were to look for religious advice, who do you think could help you?

My religion doesn’t satisfy me, what can I do?

It is an important question within personal coaching exercises and a very good start, since you are aware of how you feel. Let me suggest you meditate on the path to follow through these questions:

How important is satisfaction in your life?
Which aspects do not satisfy you, and how are they related to your conditions?
Which personal values are not being honoured because of it?
Imagine that spiritually and religiously you are happy: how did you achieve it?

I want to respect myself more or learn to set limits

This is important enough in personal development coaching for you to start diving inside yourself and find the most suitable answers; I suggest you do so by answering these questions:

Which necessary and motivating conditions do you want to attend to most? How will you keep them more present in your day-to-day life?
Think: if you were all-powerful, what things would start to improve? How could you favour alignment with personal values exercises?
How committed are you? And which resources do you need?
When are you going to start the change?

I want to enjoy sex more

The enjoyment or playful side is something we should always try to have and look after in our lives; I invite you to work on it in your day-to-day and exercise it like a muscle that needs toning. To begin those exercises, we would like you to answer these questions honestly:

Until now, what has sex meant to you?
Which limitations have you imposed on yourself, and how are you going to get rid of them?
How are you going to enjoy it more? Have you started to listen to your personal preferences?
If you could do anything, which path would you choose to start enjoying it right now?

I want to improve my self-esteem about my physical appearance

To achieve what you set out to do, we suggest some powerful questions that will guide you along the way:

Tell me, how satisfied are you in your daily life? Have you evaluated approaches to improving self-esteem other than physical ones?
Which goals, using coaching tools, do you think you need to set yourself to improve?
Are you committed to yourself? What do you need to do it?
Good, when are you going to start?

I want to broaden my hobbies

Surely a talk can help you take the first steps with this question. You can also take a few minutes to reflect and answer these questions a personal development coach would ask you, from which you will surely get a lot of information:

How much do you want it?
Are your expectations adequate?
If you knew you could do anything, what would you be doing?
How committed are you? When are you going to get down to work?

I want to live respecting my values

This seems to be a very important question, so I suggest you use these powerful questions to find what you are looking for:

Is it really what you want? Are your expectations adequate?
So far in your life, how aligned have you been with your values?
What is good about doing it?
What is stopping you from doing something about it now?

I would like to be socially useful

I think it is a very important goal, so I recommend you use the momentum to research in magazines, books and on the Internet. In addition to these readings, I suggest you reflect on these questions I am going to ask:

Which necessary and motivating conditions are you putting into play?
In which areas do you think you can be most useful? What do you think you can contribute?
Think: how do you want to make better use of your personal skills?
When are you going to start?

I want to learn to be happy

I think the question you raise is important enough for you to answer these questions, which will surely help you find the answers you are looking for:

What does “happiness” mean to you?
Which expectations are you placing on this learning of happiness?
Remember a moment when you felt happy: what was the feeling like? What colour would you give it?
Now think: how could you draw inspiration from the feeling and the colour to reach your goal?
Are you looking for information that is useful to you? When are you going to start? It is surely a good moment to carry on with our happiness methodological approach.

Draw your personal growth wheel now

Personal growth: quick answers

Where should I start if I do not know what I want?

Start with who you are. A values exercise and a life purpose exercise give you direction, and a life map shows how it all connects.

Do I need a coach to grow?

No. The questions on this page are designed to be asked alone, and the Autocoaching methodology explains the method. Reading what research says about happiness is also a good complement.