Life Mapping Guide
This exercise will help you reflect on the life experiences that have shaped your life-view, and in turn, how your life-view and beliefs have shaped your life experiences.
Instructions:
Using a blank piece of paper or (ideally) a blank sheet of flipchart paper, draw a line graph that captures the high and low points of your life from birth to present day. Starting at the left-hand side of the sheet, which represents “Birth” (a neutral event), graph the life events and experiences that impacted you:
- Take the line down where a negative event or experience occurred and up to where a positive one occurred. The more negative or positive the event, the more you should vary the distance from the “neutral” line for that event or experience.
- Label the highs and lows with a short description of the event or experience.
Here is an example:
Once you’ve completed your life map, reflect on the various “ups” and “downs” of your life path thus far. Then answer the questions below, taking as much time and space as you feel inspired
- What key learnings have you gathered through those events that helped to shape or reshape your life-view?
- If you can, call or talk in-person with some of the people who were involved in these events. What can they tell you about how they experienced you during those events – what do they remember of your state of mind or how you viewed the events that were occurring? What changes or lessons did they see you put into practice after these events if any?
- Again, reflecting over your life map, do you see any ways in which your mindset (assumptions or beliefs about the world) influenced how you handled the event? If so, what were/are those assumptions or beliefs and what did they create?
- Which assumptions, beliefs, or ways of looking at the world captured through this exercise are still active in you today, and which will be most beneficial as you prepare to meet new life changes and challenges?
To download the Life Mapping exercise, please click on the image below:
