LIFE EXAMINATION

Life examination through the construction of a lifeline is a valuable tool for both personal organization and the unfolding of conscious self-understanding and awareness. It is a natural model for the understanding of cycles, process and
change. When we can view our lives from an overview perspective many new options become available to us. The past is an invaluable teacher.

There are basically two ways we may reflect on our lives. First is from an objective examination. This involves asking the question: what were the events, and when did they happen? The objective viewpoint summarizes the external
and factual events. Secondly we each have a subjective experience of the past, which is our interpretation of what has occurred. This perspective includes our feelings, attitudes and judgments about what happened. Because, in essence, we
create what we experience, the way we view ourselves in the past has a significant impact on our present experience. It is according to how we perceive what has happened that both ourselves and our lives appear to us.
For these reasons, a lifeline overview, both from an objective as well as a subjective perspective, provides an excellent reflection and insight tool for reorganization and growth, as well as an incentive for goal setting and personal
transformation.

I have charted my lifeline, from primarily an objective perspective, from the ages of 20 – 40 below. A questionnaire for generating the information and a blank lifeline chart follows this for your own use. It is easier if you record initially the
objective events then, if you choose move into the more subjective experiences. The charts below are draft charts and are not to a definite time scale. They are sequential in nature and format. The numbers on the left side are activity numbers used to input the information into a computer. My original chart was hand-drawn.