By Paula Quinsee
Have you ever drawn up your Life Line over your lifetime? Drawing up your life line is a great way to identify both positive and negative experiences in your lifetime that have contributed to where you are today.
Here’s an example of what my lifeline looks like:
Often we are so focused on our goals and where we are going in life that we miss how far we have come and the journey we have walked to get to where we are.
Most of the time we are also either focusing on the past, or we are focusing on what we have not yet achieved, which can leave us feeling frustrated, despondent and demotivated.
Doing this exercise can help you gain deeper insights into both the positive and negative experiences you have gone through in your lifetime as well as the critical life skills those experiences have taught you such as:
Resilience
Determination
Personal Values
Self-reflection
Energy and attention
Vision and goal setting and so much more….
It’s also a great reminder of your successes (no matter how small they may seem) and your ability to bounce back which can boost your self-esteem, confidence, creativity and problem solving skills.
Why is this so helpful?
Well we don’t often think of these critical life skills and how developing them actually has a positive impact on our lives and how we can handle situations going forward.
When we find ourselves in a challenging situation or that we’ve hit rock bottom, reflecting on past experiences can also give us some great insights into our thinking and decision making capabilities such as:
When you experienced a negative patch in your life – what was going on around you and inside of you?
When you experienced a positive patch in your life – what was going on around you and inside of you?
Can you see any trends or patterns emerging that led up to these situations happening or that contributed to you moving through them?
When you went through a positive patch, can you see any trends, patterns or actions that you can replicate to help you overcome tough patches in the future?
This is a great exercise to do together as a couple, family or as a team to get to know each other on a deeper level, build healthier relationships and live a meaningful life.
Give it a try and let me know how this goes, I’d love to hear your feedback on this exercise.
If you would like to do more work like this, consider signing up for the Womenology Masterclass for women. We cover this.
Paula Quinsee: Relationship Expert and passionate advocate for creating healthy relationships at home, in the workplace, and against GBV, to co-create a more human connected world and positively impact people’s lives. Paula is also an international speaker and author of Embracing Conflict and Embracing No.
More info: www.paulaquinsee.com Email: paula@paulaquinsee.com
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