Personal Opinion: 'A Recalibrated Frame of Reference'

A reframing of life events.

If you're feeling a little lost, discombobulated or untethered this could help, give you some perspective and grounding. A simple but informative exercise Timeline Exercise, to review your unique journey.

Have you thought about how your life's story evolves and how your perspective of events can change over time?

The Timeline exercise has been part of my annual review, every year since 1997, when I was first introduced to it as part of a self-development module within my MBA course. It's enabled me to think, big-picture; strategically and helped me to put important events, into perspective. By constructing personal insights I've been able to be more intentional in terms of my career strategy over the years. More recently, I could visualise the seismic shifts and take stock of how my frame of reference has changed as a Carer.

Self-inquiry and reflection have helped to ground me as a Carer.

Mapping my journey and drawing out key reference points, has situated me within my own story and secured a unique sense of belonging. Even in the most bleak or confused times, seeing this perspective and linking it back to my values is reassuring, and the personal alignment I need to keep going. Fear and insecurity dissipate when I can see the bigger picture.

Hypothesis: Perhaps it enables psychological safety or a feeling of being more in control because it offers a unique perspective of events. It's not a comparison to other people's expectations or definitions. It focuses on your subjective references; and how we rate our life events.

Beyond the frame of work, and income generation how do you assess your year? How do you mark events or measure your year?

Click here for 10 Annual Review Questions; (ARQ)  The ARQs of your 2023 reflection can help you create a space to pause and recharge before new decisions and goals are made for 2024.

How you interpret and choose to use the questions and prompts is personal. Your interpretation is indicative of your focus and priorities, at the end of the year.

Using the Timeline Exercise and the ARQs can provide a more complete review of your year and put it into context with previous events. A key part of the exercise is sharing it with someone you trust, whose opinion you value. How you narrate your story e.g. where you start, where you focus, and how you describe events, can be very telling, in itself.

A notable recalibration, brought into sharp focus

When you do this exercise you can only look back in hindsight, from that moment in time.

My ‘Frame of Reference’ looked very different when I did it in 2014, compared to today's version (see below). In 2023, the recalibration of past events, relative to new ones has produced a very different overview, given the seismic activity over the last eight years of being a Carer and setting up my business as a Mentor.

With every new experience we learn, grow and change; we differ from how we were before. Even if we resist personal change, the world around us changes, impacting our positioning & context within it. Our Frame of Reference changes over time.

Timeline exercise June 2014. 20-point total scale. 1988 to 2014

Timeline exercise August 2023. 1988 to 2023 with recalibration of the earlier years, over a 10-point scale.

My 2023 Timeline will provide a map for the content on the Carer Mentor site. The posts will be anchored to specific moments in my journey like pins dropped on the map. The beauty of a website versus writing a book is that I can write a post about a particular event or phase, anytime, and you can see where it's located in the map-context of my journey.

I could never have predicted what was to come back in 2014. I had some fantastic highs, and happy moments back then. There were chunky work challenges to sink my teeth into, some amazing teams, and many extremely talented individuals, experts in different domains and from many different cultures and countries, that I worked with. I'm blessed to have been part of serving the needs of many patients, across many countries, and privileged to have received a significant amount of training and advice from mentors.

Since then, I've experienced the full amplitude of what life is offering me, seismic and oftentimes uncomfortable. The analysis is a snapshot frame of reference, comparing life events but it doesn't show the durability of the joy and resonance I have accumulated over the last eight years of being a Carer Mentor. We can be mindfully present in the moment, and fully experience what is happening - even in the most painful moments; but we can also be connected to the bigger picture of our lives; a cumulation of experience that builds and defines us, over time.

The recalibration between the different snapshots; after one new year or after several years, offers us a new way to appreciate how we change. We can discover the evolution of our preferences and values over time.

Hypothesis: what was impactful in our younger years, is less impactful later on as we learn how to cope and navigate a similar situation more easily. The changes to our criteria; how we measure success and failure, and rate the events ultimately mean our frame of reference becomes challenged, and we recalibrate over time.

Would I have preferred a smoother timeline over the last years? The irony of my picture is that I’ve felt more, been more in tune with myself and experienced more ‘life’ after 2015 even though, I studied and worked in 9 countries and relocated 16 times up to that point. So, you see it’s a matter of perspective.

Leave a comment: What does your journey, Time line exercise look like? Has your Frame of reference changed? What's your biggest 'Aha!' insight?