The festive season is upon us, and it gives us a chance to unwind, spend time with family and friends, and to reflect on how far you have come and where next from here.
To design a new future, one needs to understand own past.
A few years back, being impressed by the overwhelming account of studies on the benefits of reflective writing, I set up a year-end ritual for myself to review the past in order to write a new future.
Extensive research on this subject demonstrated that people who spent time writing about their experience, uncertain events of the present, past or explored their future options experienced physiological, psychological, and mental benefits. It was even linked to the improved productivity, performance, and overall satisfaction in life.
Presently, we are so used to being driven and informed only by the signs of the “external” life giving little importance to the inner game.
We are the story we are telling ourselves about us, everyone, and everything in our life.
By taking control of this narrative or, at least, getting to know it, you can reclaim your own “authorship” and charter new pathways towards important goals, reducing grip of uncertainty and overwhelm.
If you never did any deep dive into your own story to see the patterns and scenarios that rule your life experience, wishing to come out of them and are desperate for a change, here is a step-by-step algorithm.
Divide your life experience in up to seven periods that mark a certain “era” of your life, periods that signify a certain theme and give them a title. For example, university years and early career years (from 17 to 23 years old) or years spent working abroad.
Then cast an eye back and pick five to six significant experiences and events within each era that defined it and had meaningful impact on you, both positive and negative. Title the experiences and describe them and what they were about for you. Keeping it to 1000 to 3000 words is a good guide.
By doing just this much, you will start picking up important patterns of thoughts, emotions, relationships with people and events as well as seeing how they shaped your life and influenced where you are now.
Once you are done describing major events, look through each era and its events, choose up to top ten events that shaped your current life in the most significant way and answer few questions:
How this experience shaped your life, your world outlook, the way you relate to people and self?
How did they shape your personality?
What are common patterns of thoughts, emotions, reactions, people’s relationships, values as decision drivers that emerge?
What important decisions and choices did you make at that time that influenced your present and the way you view your future?
Having gone through the ordeal of this exercise, you would be able:
- to see the plot of the game you are playing in life,
- to see few same-themed scenarios that are present in most life experiences,
- to let go of events of the past by making sense of them and letting go of resentment,
- and more importantly, you will reconnect to the creative part of yourself that yarns to be expressed in the future.
One can design their life by merely extrapolating the trajectory they are already on or by tapping into the creative force to bring forth something totally new. The latter cannot be done without going into the depth of own past to seeing how you created your present.
The point of transformation is in the same point of initial creation.
This exercise can be limited only to the current year’s events to sum up the year that is going.
Next, take all the learnings from the past, reframe important ones into goals and start setting a scene for writing your future.
To start with, allow yourself to write freely, without criticism. This sort of thinking permits all your different internal motivations to find their voice.
If you don’t know what to write, write about anything that comes to mind. William James, the great American psychologist, remarked that he didn’t know what he thought until he had written his thoughts down. Gradually, your ideas will gain form and clarity.
Happy Invisioning!
