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My Life journey practice.docx.pdfImportant note: If this exercise, at any point, produces intense or overwhelming feelings, stop what you’re doing. Instead, consider seeking the assistance of a professional therapist.
Important note: If this exercise, at any point, produces intense or overwhelming feelings, stop what you’re doing. Instead, consider seeking the assistance of a professional therapist.
A personal life timeline chart is a chronology of your life experience. It documents the major events in your life, both positive and negative, and helps you see the arc of your personal development. A timeline chart is a useful way to identify the major themes and influences in your life, as well as set the course for attaining future dreams and goals. While what you choose to add to your personal timeline is entirely up to you, the following steps provide guidance for creating a personal chart.
Choose a starting point. A personal life timeline chart does not necessarily have to begin with the moment of your birth. You can choose to begin with your parents or ancestors and track how events in their lives lead to your own. Alternatively, you can begin with a later stage in your own life, such as at the beginning of an important relationship or at the start of your career. Your timeline is a generalized outline of your life and does not have to be highly accurate but somewhere within the ballpark
The practice is divided into 3 stages to allow you to explore your life experience and reflect on it to inform your future journey. Each phase builds on the previous one, going deeper at each stage. You can decide to go for all of them or stop at a certain stage when you feel you got enough insights from the practice and continue later if applicable
Stage 1: Get it out
Stage 1: Get it out
Estimated time required: ±30min
Get a large blank sheet of paper
Start by drawing a timeline of your life. Use any shape of timeline that makes sense for you, it doesn’t need to be linear
Include key milestones and key events.
Draw/highlight key learnings / new perspectives. Look for those that didn’t ‘mean much’ back in that day but looking backward they are important
Spend time looking at it and adding details / highlighting/connecting topics
Stage 2: Initial Reflection
Stage 2: Initial Reflection
Estimated time required: ±30min
The goal here is to deepen your awareness, more specifically, to develop your capacity to consciously observe how past experiences and responses shape the present, and additionally, to understand, perhaps even to appreciate, the value of past events, even negative ones, in strengthening who you are today.
Looking at your timeline write down your responses to some or all of the following thoughts and questions (or similar ones):
Identify any negative turns, big or small. Reflect on what you may have gained or learned. Consider any redemptive value and how this might have contributed value to your life.
Identify key decisions that, in retrospect, were fruitful. In each case, what made the choice effective? What positive results did it produce? How did you respond at the time (thoughts/feelings) to each decision/result? At what point did you know this decision was a ‘good’ one?
Identify choices that didn’t turn out well. In each case, what made this a poor choice? What were the costs? How did you respond to each (thoughts/feelings in response to choice/outcomes)? When did you conclude this to be a poor choice?
Which decision-making strategies work? Which do not?
What are key differences, and similarities, can you identify between the ‘strategies’ you’ve used to make decisions that are effective versus ineffective?
Look more closely, and see if you can identify the ‘steps’ you take (patterns of thought/feeling/action/think/feel/act) in executing effective strategies; do the same for the ineffective ones.
Stage 3: Going deeper
Stage 3: Going deeper
Estimated time required: ±60min
The invitation at this stage is to re-write some aspects of the story of your life in ways that help you better understand yourself. When you make a genuine shift in how you think or act in a certain situation, this produces a shift in attitude, meaning it directly affects changes in your body’s physiological-emotional states. You can consciously shift how you emotionally experience certain events by how you interpret them start looking again at your timeline, this time write down your reflections and responses to some or all of the following questions:
What strikes you or stands out in looking over your timeline?
Can you identify any ‘stages’ or ‘turning points’ in your timeline?
Is your timeline crowded in some places and spacious in others? What does this mean (to you)?
Is there a ‘center’ or a central theme (or two) in your timeline and life, overall?
Can you identify a driving question in your mind that, consciously or subconsciously, has driven your actions and choices throughout life? If so, how did this shape you, your choices or events?
What were your most pressing emotional drives, or the primary reasons or purpose beneath your decisions?
Who are/were the most significant people in your life? How?
What are the milestones or markers associated with each stage? What does that mean (to you)?
Is there anything you’ve omitted or left out, i.e., people, accomplishments, events, etc.?
What if anything would you change or add, if you could? Also, how would each of these changes or additions affect your life, or even change its present course?
Considering your decision-making strategies (Stage 2), what changes, if any, might further enhance your decision-making strategies, knowing what you know today?
Reflect on the value of these and similar questions, in opening space for new connections, shifts in meaning, gems of insight, wisdom, and other food for thought.
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