What has formed you?
Drawing your life map will help you understand your past and figure out your future
At the Animas’ 2022 Annual Transformative Coaching Virtual Summit, I attended Dr Simon Western’s talk “Formation or Transformation? Exploring the Meaning of Coaching”, in which he talked about the danger of selling transformation through coaching. His opinion is that it can put the coach in a guru position and take away the ownership and empowerment from the client.
I very much agree with this point of view, that’s why I never called myself a transformational coach. In my opinion, the coach’s role is to create a safe space for you to do whatever you want to do. If transformation is your objective, great. But you might just want to take stock, clarify things, or achieve a specific goal. Transformation can sound big and a bit daunting.
Simon suggests focusing on the formation journey we all experience from our early years until now. And he said something that I loved:
“Coaching is a space to help your clients locate themselves”
Often clients come to me with a feeling of being lost, at a crossroads. And I usually like to start the coaching journey with a visualisation of their vision of the future. What they want to aim for.
Now I’m also going to offer them to start with their formation: basically talking through all the steps they’ve taken in life and that have had an impact on them. It’s a great way to highlight themes in your story. To make sense of past decisions. To understand why you are where you are. And to also make decisions about the present and the future.
I've put a new exercise to draw your Life Map - check it out if it's something you want to explore. But I would also encourage you to share it with someone - friend, colleague, coach - as I believe realisations will emerge by talking through it and with someone else sharing their own reflections.
How to draw your life map
Step 1
Starting from your childhood and earliest memories, list chronologically all the milestones, significant events and decisions you have taken until now, whether they had a positive or negative impact on your life. Include the external elements that have shaped you, locations and people that have had an impact on you.
Here’s a checklist to help you:
Significant events, good and bad, that have changed your life, taught you something, made you grow up, inspired you…
Achievements you’re proud of
Passions you have discovered
Decisions you’ve made (and if they were good or bad in hindsight)
Difficult moments
Small events that had a big impact
Country(ies) and city(ies) you were raised in
Locations that are significant
Trips you have taken
Communities you were part of
Culture(s) and religion(s) that have shaped you
Studies, courses you’ve taken
Jobs you have done
People you have met
You’re going to need a big piece of paper (A3 or 2 x A4 taped together). Here are some examples of life maps to get you started but feel free to use your style and creativity to create your own! You could start it as a draft and redraw it later too.
Mind map
Road map
Step 2
When you’re finished, take a step back and look for the themes that run throughout your life map:
Values that have driven your choices
Patterns in the decisions you’ve made
Risks you have taken – have they paid off?
How you overcame obstacles
Beliefs you have formed
Step 3
Where are you going now? Create the next segment(s) of your map by adding your projects, both personal and professional. You can also do this exercise to create a more detailed vision of your future if you want to dive a bit deeper.