Creating your lifeline

Objectives

• The participants become aware of certain strengths and competences with which they have mastered past life situations. This awareness can help them to master future challenges.
• what has shaped the lives of the participants,
• how they became the person they are today.

Material

A template with a coordinate system or a piece of paper, pens.

An example from the teacher or a fictional person for explanation.

Instructions

The “lifeline” method helps to visualize and reflect on one’s own biography and to set goals. Each participant should first work individually on his or her own lifeline. Everything that seems important should be listed. No one has to share things later in the group that are not meant for others. Nevertheless, all points that are important in one’s life so far should be mentioned. Everything that is discussed in the group is treated confidentially.

1. The faciliator provides templates with a coordinate system to participants (see examples below). The coordinate system has an X-axis for the passage of time and a Y-axis for the evaluation of an event.

• Option A: In the first variant, all values are above the X-axis
• Option B: In the second variant, the X-axis as a “zero line” offers a visual aid for visualising positive and negative experiences. Positive things are marked above the X-axis, the negative things below.

1. On the time axis (X-axis), the participants mark their “milestones”, i.e. important events.
2. After that, the events are evaluated. The stronger a “milestone” and its positive or negative effect is, the higher or lower the mark is made in the coordinate system. Each point on the coordinate system is labelled with a term symbolising the event, e.g. wedding, accident, success, crisis etc.

In the next step, the evaluated “milestones” are connected chronologically. The resulting life line shows ups and downs as well as turning points.

Variant

Different topics can be reflected/focus on a specific life area, e.g. School/Education/Work, Hobbies/Interests, Family/Friends. For each topic, a separate life line can be made or a different colour can be used for each topic and everything can be put into one coordinate system.