Your Life Map graphs your feelings about your career, family, friends, and romantic interests over time. Here are two examples created by my clients:

While you can do this on any size space, I recommend getting the biggest surface you can. The more space you have, the more detail you can include. 

The x-axis is time. I suggest going back at least ten years, although if you started university more recently than that, use that as your start point.

The y-axis is how you felt, with its maximum value representing utter joy and satisfaction, its minimum value representing utter hate and despair, and its centerpoint being when you had no specific feelings one way or the other.

Draw curves for how you felt about your family, your friends, your romantic interests, and your career. Mark the points that were especially meaningful and impactful for you with a brief note about what each was.

While you may be tempted to do this by entering loads of numbers in a spreadsheet, don’t! At least, don’t start that way. Physically drawing these graphs will help you feel how you felt rather than just thinking about it.

When you’re done, stand back and look at the entirety of your Life Map. What patterns do you see? What relationships do you see between each of your curves? Do you see any connections you hadn’t realized are there?

If your team trusts each other, presenting your Life Maps can be enlightening and further strengthen that bond. If you have any concerns at all about doing this, however, don’t do this with your team! If you force Life Maps on a team that isn’t ready for it, you’re unlikely to get the honest reflection you’re hoping to encourage.

Many thanks to Johanna Rothman, who first taught me about Jerry Weinberg’s Career Map! I took that and evolved it into this.