Day 6: Create a Base Map

Today you will make a map of your life at this point in time - a chart of the relationship between your core values and principles and your top priorities - to help clarify connections and renew your sense of purpose. Your Base Map is a "mind map", which is a combination of words and diagrams that engages your whole brain in a creative way. 

As with many exercises like this, the process is more important than the end result, so take your time. Start with a messy rough draft to get out all your ideas with no concern for how it looks, and refine it later if you want:

• Get a largish piece of paper and a pencil. 

• Start in the center: Draw a symbol for yourself, or write out ME. 

• Begin to add your core values and principles around the central shape. Add them one at a time in a way that seems natural and right: You can make them equal or rank them; group them according to type or significance; connect them to each other or only to the center; add clarifying words. If anything doesn't seem to fit, put it off to the side with a question. 

• Now add in your top priorities and show how they connect to each other and your values. Use connecting lines to show how your thoughts flow from one concept to the next, and sometimes create new concepts. 

For example, my priority of Home connects to my values of Simplicity and Love, and also to my priority of Family, and in that joining I wrote Sanctuary, a new concept!

• Re-read your vision walk and Rosy Future writing. Sometimes the Inner Guide talks to us in poetry, and it's not clear at first what the message is. Do any new insights, values, priorities, or connections occur to you?

What you have now is a Base Map. In the simplest form, it's a doodle of your thoughts with circles and arrows. Or with extra effort, you can add color, decoration, symbols, poetry... whatever your imagination suggests.

Add a date, and remember that this is a snapshot of the present; values and priorities both change over time, so you might need to add to this map, or make a new one once or twice a year.