Using Stories for Goal-Setting and Life Planning: Outlining the Plot
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?
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.