This is not another New Year’s resolution article

As we end the year and begin a new one, we like to reflect on the past 365 days and contemplate and plan for the 365 ahead. I’m not a big believer in New Year’s resolutions, and research has shown that most of them don’t stick (see my previous article on this topic “Three thoughts to help you achieve the changes you want to make.”). This time around, I would like to invite you to expand your horizon beyond the last 365 days and look at the past decade and even beyond. It will give you a much richer view of yourself and allow you to plan more mindfully for the future. I use this “lifeline” approach in my coaching and mentoring work, from MBA students and early career professionals (like my own twin girls) to today’s c-suite executives in F100 companies around the world, to future high potential global leaders.  

We often believe that who we are today is who we will become tomorrow. Life is a constant process of growing and changing. Frederic Hudson did some groundbreaking work on this concept in his book “The Adult Years.” With this in mind, I would like to offer up an alternative scenario. It is essential that we understand our past learnings and the habits we created along the way so that we can apply a growth mindset. By doing this, we can accelerate our impact and achieve what we most want out of life, today and in the future. 

Crafting a lifeline. This is an informative way to create an inventory of the learnings that have helped form you to this day. It is like telling the story of your life with yourself in the director’s chair. Each of us lives within a dramatic pattern that reveals who we are, who we should have been, what we should be doing, and what could still happen to us. Your story contains plots, themes, and characters (the good ones and the not so good ones). It consists of the highs and lows that might reveal the patterns and habits you have lived and created along the way. Creating your lifeline is a stunning opportunity to reflect on your story. It helps you to become more aware of how you show up in the world. It puts you in the position to become the narrator of your story in decades to come. 

If you have never created a lifeline, it’s a simple and creative, yet immensely powerful self-awareness exercise. If you have created one in the past, I invite you to create a new one and compare it to the previous version (but no peeking at the old one first). That way, you will be able to see the shifts in your thinking over time. The things that were immensely important to you at a previous point in your life might show up differently today, or perhaps not at all. 

How to get started. Grab a nice cup of coffee or tea and set aside 60 minutes for quiet reflection. Think about all the moments in your life that have left their mark on you. Think about the highlights and the lowlights using the six systems we inhabit (me/personal, partner, family, work, friends, and community). Reflect on what went well and how you reached that peak. What did not go so well and created “a valley” for you? What actions did you take in both scenarios? 

Drawing your lifeline will make your reflections visual. Grab a pen and draw a horizontal line from left to right in the middle of a large sheet of paper. This will be your “Age” line. It will guide your story from past to present, ending with today. Put a date on each peak (high point) and valley (low point), so you can recount your story. If an example would make it easier for you to get started, Google “lifeline exercise” and view some of the images. My most recent lifeline is the picture at the top of the article. I also added vertical lines to represent chapters in my life. The exact format is not important. It is all about your life’s story. Once you have completed your lifeline, contemplate the learnings and observations you have made. I do this exercise with all my executive coaching and mentoring clients, and up until today, everybody has had significant “aha” moments and revelations. “I have never looked at my life this way [as a one-string continuous event], and now my current situation and some of my behaviors are much clearer,” was a recent comment from a c-suite executive in a Fortune 50 company. 

Once you have crafted your lifeline, you have created the foundation for what you want to accomplish in the next decade. It will allow you to be more purposeful in selecting the behaviors and activities you wish to continue and amplify. It will help you identify the traits, actions, and behaviors you want to shed. And lastly, it will enable you to become more explicit about the new skills and behaviors you want to acquire for your personal and professional growth. Yes, you are a “whole person,” and work and non-work lives are deeply intertwined. 

Another “aha” I see from my executive clients is the realization that we live our lives at an incredibly fast pace. We spend a significant amount of time analyzing past mistakes or misfortunes, or dreaming and longing for future opportunities and rewards. Living too much in the past or the future prevents you from appreciating the present moment. By not living in the moment, we miss out on the richness of life and the every day ‘wonders’ that happen all around us. 

Establishing a gratitude practice might be a great awareness creator for the busy executive. At the end of each day, write down five things you are grateful for that happened outside of your day-to-day work routine: for yourself, your partner, your family, your friends, or your community. What small things happened today for which you are truly and genuinely grateful? The living and enjoyment of the present moment and the habit of gratitude for the small things accelerated my personal growth in the last five years. It helped me to define my life’s purpose – a different life path than that of the senior global technology executive that had guided me and defined my life for three decades. 

As a side note, in preparation for this article, I just completed my latest lifeline exercise (I do them every couple of years) and feel I have a vast inventory and new baseline for the decade ahead. My invitation to you is to take an hour out of your busy day and to craft your plan for the 2020’s. Look at it as “an investment in me.”

Some of my coaching and mentoring clients have been encouraging me to share my learnings and my “aha” moments, both the personal ones as well as those I learned in my new career. I plan to do so in regular articles moving forward. Follow me if those nuggets could be of interest to you. My hope is that together we can accelerate your personal and professional impact.

#leadership #coaching #mentoring #lifeline

About the author: Robby Swinnen is a former Fortune 50 Senior Executive with 30 years of experience leading global lines of business. He currently dedicates his passion to coaching and mentoring senior executives across a broad range of industries. He is a faculty member at the Hudson Institute of Coaching and is a strategic advisor to boards.