The Anticancer Lifestyle Team The new year provides a good opportunity to re-examine your priorities, whether it be career, family, community, or personal well-being.
The Anticancer Wheel of Life is a tool that can help you visualize what is important to you and how much attention you actually pay to each of your core values. Download and print this template, or complete it on your computer. Note that the document shows two wheels—one that includes some of the typical core values that many people hold, and another one on the reverse side of the page with no values labeled, so you can list your own.
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How to use the Anticancer Wheel of Life:
- First, identify your core values—those things that are really important to you. If your core values match those in the labeled template please feel free to use that version. If your core values differ, simply use the unlabeled version and enter your own, one in each section.
- Each section of the wheel has numbered lines – 1 is in the very center and 10 is the outermost line.
- Now, take some time to honestly assess how much focus and attention you are giving to each aspect of your life, and fill in each section accordingly. 1 represents little focus and 10 represents the most focus and attention.
- When your Wheel is completed, you can see whether the important aspects of your life have been neglected or whether you may have put too much focus in one area at the expense of another core value.
- With this visual map, you may be able to determine where to make adjustments to achieve a balance that better reflects all your values.
- You can decide how often to use the Wheel to check whether your focus continues to reflect what’s most important to you.
- Now it’s your turn to complete your own Anticancer Wheel of Life.
After you complete your Anticancer Wheel of Life, you may find that you want to make changes to promote health and wellness in your life based on your unique values.
- Ask yourself: Why should I change my behaviors? What changes are most important to me? Is it important to start changing now?
- If you identify several goals that require changes in your behavior, you will want to prioritize the changes you wish to make, since changing too many things at once can be overwhelming and impact your chances of success. Try to pick the change that is most important to focus on first. Other changes can be made over time.
- Once you’ve prioritized your change goals, you are ready to use the SMART framework to help you set realistic goals and maintain them. The SMART framework is also available to you in the toolkit.
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