How to Move Forward Wisely – After Divorce

In this article, I’m going to teach you how to create a Personal Life Timeline. Once you create it, you’ll see clues from your life story that will help you to make changes, empowering you to create a better future.

You’ll see before you a bird’s eye view of how your past was shaped. The ability to see themes, patterns, and connections from the past help to liberate your mind from the old stories and embrace new possibilities for the future.

A timeline shows some of the shifts and changes in your life story. Examining different aspects of these shifts can be immensely powerful in promoting healing from the past. Then, choices for the present and the future won’t give the same results. The old trauma or old wounds won’t prevent you from making better decisions going forward.

Including significant events, circumstances, and people help you to see new ways to manage experiences by being aware of the “triggers” that set off negative reactions. This enables you to move down a more positive path. This new awareness will cause discomfort because you’ll be stretching in a new direction. The goal is to begin to free yourself from limiting beliefs.

What a Timeline Looks Like

Here’s what a timeline looks like that was created by Elizabeth Beecham (a.k.a., Liz), a fictional character. For our purposes, this is just a snapshot of her whole story. The positives are above the line and the negatives below.

Looking at Personal and Professional Decisions

Career Choices

Liz was considered to be bright, a hard worker, and in physically good shape. She worked her way to the top of the company she worked for; however, when an opportunity to start her own company came along, she let FEAR take over and stayed where she was. Many years later, she realized that she could achieve whatever she set her mind to and took the plunge and did start her own company.

First Serious Relationship

Her relationship with Thomas Meyer, she realized, was a waste of precious time. He was the love of her life but was emotionally unavailable, didn’t want to make a commitment, and never wanted to have children. She stayed in the relationship for many years hoping it would change, but it didn’t. Now looking back, she can see how she was attracted to a man like that given the environment she was brought up in.

Marriage

She settled for someone who was not giving and loving. She found herself always trying to gain approval and love – but to no avail. Looking at the timeline, she realized that she was attracted to the same type of man again. This man made the outward commitment but never fulfilled her inner wants and needs in a friend, lover, and husband. She was able to finally see the pattern.

Scott left her when she got in a car accident and was going to have to go through a long recovery. He was not up to the task even having been married for all those years. He just didn’t have it in him to make that commitment.

Shifting Gears After Divorce

After her divorce and along with recovering from her injury, she felt deeply sorry for herself. Then, seeking help and guidance, she made the decision to create a new life for herself on her own terms. Deciding to make a commitment to change her life couldn’t have come at a better time when her son, Jonathon, needed her the most.

What This Exercise Gives You

The past can’t be changed. It’s gone. The good thing about looking at the past objectively is that it helps pinpoint a negative experience and find a positive in it. It shows where growth opportunities are as well as lessons that may not have been learned or missed in the past.

Creating your timeline gives you an overview of parts of your life story that have shaped who you are today. It also gives you an opportunity to change the old story into a new one. You decide to make new choices, break old patterns and limiting beliefs, and take control as a “master of your fate” and the “captain of your soul”.

Have fun with this!

Four Tips to Get You Started

1. Make a list of events, circumstances, and people who have made a significant, major impact on your life.
2. List both the positive and negative – negatives are just as important if not more so because some of those have caused you to grow into the more resilient, stronger person that you are today.
3. Include a short description and add either dates or your age at the time. The list will need to be put on the timeline in chronological order. At the end of each statement put a P for positive or an N for negative. All the positive events, circumstance and people go above the timeline, and the negatives go below.
4. Set boundaries for your timeline. You may need several sheets so that you have space for related events. Click here to download copies of the timeline.

Suggestions for Creating a Personal Life Timeline

• Traditions
• Celebrations
• Major Regrets/Missed Opportunities
• Achievements/Successes
• Vacations/Trips
• People of Influence/Mentors
• Family/Friends
• Personal Relationships
• Accidents/Medical
• Environment
• Life Milestones (college, career, marriage, children, divorce)
• Challenging/Pain Moments
• Death/Tragedy
• Serious Setbacks
• Glorious Memories That Stick Out In Your Mind

You might need several of these timelines taped together. Once you have completed the timeline, look it over and journal answers to the following:

Learning From the Past ~ Personal Reflections

In order to figure out where you are going, you need to review where you have already been. Then, you decide to take the road less traveled to a more purposeful journey.

• Name a major decision you made that was the right choice and enhanced your life. Why was it positive and effective?
• Can you find an opportunity for a positive mind shift from a negative experience you’ve had in the past? Looking through today’s eyes, do you see it from a different perspective?
• Write about one activity or event that gave you pleasure or fulfillment that inspired you to be more creative to try something different and move out of your comfort zone?
• Looking back at painful challenges in your life, are there any lessons you have learned as a result of having had the experience? If so, describe the most profound one.
• Is there anything that strikes you or sticks out at you from your life’s journey that you didn’t see as clearly as before?
• Looking over your timeline, what wisdom have you gained that will have a profound effect on the way you live your life in the future?
• If you were to draw a new timeline for the future, what three positive events, circumstances, or people would be part of it? Close your eyes for a moment and imagine what you want, and see it in your mind, and focus on every detail. Describe them in your journal, then make a copy and tape it where you can see it every morning!

Please Join the Conversation:

Have you created a Personal Timeline before? How about listing the positive and negative events that have shaped your present identity? Do you think this exercise can reveal the lessons you have learned or need to learn?