Lifeline Exercise 

Introduction:
This exercise is a creative process for you to capture the key moments in your life. This self reflection exercise can be useful to review your personal history and reflect upon where you have been and where you might be going. This Lifeline Exercise can help you capture significant events in your life and may enable you to create a more integrated sense of your life. Patterns may emerge that help you understand yourself better. The lifeline exercise is a tool for exploring who you are, what you’ve done and how you got to where you are today. 

Getting Started:
Start by getting a sheet of paper and creating a list of key moments, events, accomplishments, obstacles and celebrations that are important. Make a timeline that begins with birth and ends today. Note the events on your timeline with a brief description. You determine if the events get added to your sheet above the timeline, on the timeline or below the timeline depending on whether the event was happy, neutral, or challenging for you. 

Options for your consideration:
1. You may want to transfer your lifeline to a sheet of posterboard so you can visually see your lifeline on a bigger page.
2. Consider sharing this experience with a friend or classmate. Complete the exercise together and share your lifelines with each other.
3. If you choose to complete the exercise on your own, consider sharing it with someone. Reviewing the lifeline out loud with a person we trust allows us to hear ourselves say things out loud that help us to know ourselves better. Also, others sometimes point things out to us that we did not notice.
4. Consider saving this lifeline and completing another one in the future to see what shifts occur.

Questions to explore when you have completed your lifeline:

• Step back and look at the entire picture of your life.
• Are there patterns that you observe as you review your lifeline?
• What does the lifeline show you about yourself?
• What do you notice about your lifeline and the events that are significant to you?
• What are the successes (above the line) and challenges (below the line)?
  • What do these events have in common?
  • How are they different?

Final Thoughts:
Exercises such as the lifeline raise our awareness of ourselves. When shared with someone else, they present us with an opportunity to disclose information about ourselves. The choice to share rests with each of us.

For further information:
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Please contact Beth to see how she can help. Phone charges and 30 minutes of your time are your expenses for this mutual assessment. Beth can be contacted at 250-483-6729.