Latest / Good Morning From The Chicken Coop! / Season 4 - Episode 114 - The Timeline Exercise

Transcript

Season 4 - Episode 114 - The Timeline Exercise · Good Morning From The Chicken Coop!

• 0:01
  Hey everybody, welcome to the good Morning from the Chicken
• 0:04
  Coop podcast. My name is Kim Johnson and I am
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  a mastermindset coach, creative strategist, and also happen to
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  be a farmer. This is my Chicken coop and I
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  come out here every day to record a podcast.
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  To. Teach distinctions,
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  possibilities, new ways of thinking, and just bring some.
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  Joy into the world, so welcome to the.
• 0:22
  Coop and let's start your day off in a fantastic way.
• 0:27
  Hey everybody, good morning. So we're actually in my studio
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  this morning and I'm standing in front of a whiteboard because I
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  am working on a project that I haven't done in a long time and
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  years, many, many years. And it's a self timeline now,
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  what the heck is this, right? Sounds interesting.
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  Maybe sounds like why the hell would you be doing this?
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  However, it is a very, very big project of self discovery.
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  So think about this. You draw a line, whether you
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  have a whiteboard or many pieces of paper, big, small, whatever,
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  you're drawing a line across that paper and you're starting
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  to timeline things in your life that most of the time when you
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  do this exercise, they'll tell you to do it with big things,
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  like timeline the big things in your life that happened so you
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  can see them because it's really interesting to see how much and
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  how far you've come. So you put out these big things
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  in your life and you start to recognize that you can see a
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  pattern with it and it really helps you, but it also helps you
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  celebrate how far you've come, the unique things about you.
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  It's a really fascinating experiment.
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  Now, the trick to this for me, when I did it the first time, I
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  was told to do it with the big items.
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  So I did. Later on, maybe a year after
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  that, I found the papers and I started looking at it and I
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  started going, I wonder what are the less significant things that
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  I could add in there, things that I remembered.
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  So when we say they're less significant, like a significant
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  thing that was on my original timeline was my dad passing
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  away. So it my life was almost like
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  everything before dad passed away and everything after dad
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  passed away, they could see that that was a significant event.
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  There was another significant event when I was 11, he had a
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  heart attack. So that was one of those, oh,
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  that was a significant event in my life.
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  Everything prior to that was one thing and everything after that
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  was one thing. You could start to see how I
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  developed certain things, but in the second time I did it, I
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  started to go through and really think about the smaller things
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  that I could remember. They still had an impact, but
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  they were significantly smaller. They weren't like a death, but
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  they were impactful. They started to shape me as a
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  person and what I noticed in that really helped me create the
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  next levels of things that I wanted to get past.
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  Because sometimes once you go back and, and it's not about
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  processing the events, I, I, this is not an exercise of
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  processing events. What it is, is saying that event
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  happened at this point in my life.
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  It's an identifier. So you start to notice little
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  blips, little things that come up.
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  And for me, it was very telltale about how the certainty girl was
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  born, how she like had to take over where my insecurities, like
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  I could see, oh, this event happened.
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  And then I, I started to, you know, act a certain way and it
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  allowed me to, to consider and contemplate, okay, if this
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  happened and this happened and this happened, then I can
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  actually shift moving forward by focusing on making something
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  different happen. So the exercise, why I'm putting
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  this out there for everybody is based on its curiosity.
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  I mean, have you ever considered all the things that you've
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  survived in your life and gone through in your life and the
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  things that have happened? Because we spend so much time
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  ruminating on the very, the past that just happened.
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  Most of the time it's it's pretty recent past and we forget
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  how much we have conquered, how much we have traversed through
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  all of this. And then by doing that, we take
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  away our ability to celebrate, our ability to say, wow, OK,
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  look at me go, I've done a lot. And it robs us of that grand
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  experience. And it is a grand experience to
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  be able to say, look at this like when I think back, I'm
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  like, wow, holy cow, how, how did I even do that?
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  So I get to really like pat myself on the back a little bit
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  and be like, OK, this is good because no one else is patting
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  us on the back. If we don't pat ourselves on the
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  back, we're never going to get anywhere.
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  We have to be able to pat ourselves on the back.
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  Have faith that we are all connected to something bigger
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  and celebrate that. But it really does help to do
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  the timeline. So I'm going to throw it out
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  there. Try it, do it.
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  Now I will say this, we've had people do this in the past as an
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  exercise and sometimes they choose to do it with post it
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  notes. So they make it a post it note
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  for each event and they stick it up on the wall or something.
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  Now you can do it however you like, but I will tell you if
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  this is going to be a long project and you're going to keep
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  doing it, post it notes fall off the wall and it's really
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  irritating. So find a way to make sure you
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  don't lose it. I like straight lines, I like
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  neatness, so I'm going to do it on a piece of paper.
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  I'm going to do it on something that I can put a ruler on.
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  I'm going to make sure I have a nice pen that writes smoothly so
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  that it's there and I don't have to recreate it.
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  I don't like having to do things over and over if I've done them
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  once. So just get yourself organized
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  for it. Sit down and just start from
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  where your earliest memories bring you up and start with the
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  majors and move into the minors and see what you come up with
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  and really celebrate how far you've come, because I can
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  assure you, if you're listening to this, it's pretty damn far.
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  All right, my friends, I hope you have a blessed day and I
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  will see you tomorrow. Bye.