Using Stories for Goal-Setting and Life Planning: Outlining the Plot
Now, it’s finally time to begin plotting the story – what is the quest that the main character will go on? What will she encounter on her journey? What dangers and perils await her?
This step is similar to traditional goal-setting, but it’s placed within the context of an overarching life story.
To begin outlining my life story’s plot, I start by asking myself the following questions.
Questions for Outlining My Life Story
What do I want?
Who do I want to be?
What change do I want to see in myself? In the world?
Who do I want to help?
What problem(s) do I want to solve / fix? What wrongs do I want to right?
What do I want to leave behind?
The Powerful Woman Wheel
I created the Powerful Woman Wheel as a way to define the areas of life that a powerful black woman (versus a strong black woman) would focus on. Since, ‘becoming a powerful woman’ is one of the key quests of my life story, I use the Powerful Woman Wheel to help define the main categories of my life story.
Who / what is going to help me?
Mentors, role modes
Right associations
Centering practices / beliefs (big why)
Who / what is going to stop me?
Shadow self
Vices
Unresolved trauma responses; attachment issues
Wrong associations
What lesson(s) do I want to learn?
Before my story is finished, I want to be able to say:
I’ve mastered…
I’ve studied…
I’ve learned…
I know something about…
How far can I go?
A MORE SIMPLE METHOD: Instead of answering all of the questions above, I can draft a pretty good life story outline by asking myself, ‘How do I feed my ‘X'-factors’ ?’ My X-factors are the personal archetypes that I uncovered while defining my main character. They are also included in my Declaration of Self.
The Life Value Map
I wanted a way to keep my answers to the life story outline questions close at hand. Something that would act as a living ‘map’ that I could refer to regularly and that I could quickly and easily add new quests, adventures and story elements to over time.
Borrowing from agile project management, the Life Value Map is like a backlog of all the things I want to do in life - a running list of my goals, dreams and visions - organized in a kanban board layout.
I use the categories from the Powerful Woman Wheel as my column headers and I add the answers to the life story outline questions under the relevant column(s).
I prefer to keep my life value map in a digital project management tool like Trello or Asana. This makes it accessible anytime and anywhere. Which means I can always use it to add new items to my life story outline.
