A few months ago, I wanted to create a life time timeline and highlight certain key events in my life. I used to do this exercise with my clients and I found it to be profoundly helpful myself. Since we are all spending a lot more time at home and (hopefully) have more mental space to reflect, this is a great exercise to do right now. **The free printable for this exercise is below, and you can also do this in any notebook of course!

1. Breaking It Down

First, you want to start by breaking your life timeline into decades.

0-10 Years Old

10-20 Years Old

20-30 Years Old

30-40 Years Old

And so on… (I actually went ahead and made mine up to 100 years old, which helps with legacy mapping but more on this later). If you are in your twenties or teens, consider breaking the years down to 5 year spans to get more details.

2. What Stands Out?

Next, you want to write out the key things you remember most for each decade. These will likely include highs and lows. Try to focus on the things that really stand out to you.

After you have written out your key memories for each decade, you want to have two different highlighters to highlight the things you loved the most and felt most grateful for and proud of, from each decade.

The second highlighter will be used to highlight the parts from each decade that helped you grow or change, even if that time was difficult. Were there things you now know because of those experiences? Asking this question really helps us appreciate the hard times because we often don’t appreciate how much we learned or grew as a result of difficulties.

3. Patterns & Changes

Once you have done the decades you have already lived, try to fill out the next decade with hopes, goals, ideas, projects, etc. that you want to actualize inshaAllah. You can notice the patterns in your previous years to see which kinds of experiences excite you and bring out your best energy and talents. You can also make changes such as:

• Setting boundaries

• Deciding which habits or thoughts need to be unlearned

• Stopping or starting certain projects, goals, relationships, etc.

Making these conscious changes can help you to have the best possible next decade inshaAllah. Since every year also comes with unique challenges, some of which we may not expect, we can make a list of resilience factors to work on (more on this later).

Let me know below if you have ever done a life timeline and when you plan to work on yours inshaAllah! You can download this printable to help you create your life timeline!

Till next time,

Asma