Which Life Map Will You Use in 2025?

TL; DR: When you’re making plans, expand your view outwards. When you can think beyond next week, next month, or next year you can develop an Adventure-oriented map that fills your life with growth and rich experiences.

Most people tend to map out their lives in a few different ways. I look at these “life maps” as tiers on an inverted pyramid. It’s upside down because the higher levels represent a bigger, broader view.

Survival: The Immediate Life Map

Most of the time, you’re probably stuck in the bottom triangle, the Immediate map. You’re thinking about the deadlines looming ahead of you in the coming days or weeks, the appointments you have and the commitments you’ve made.

All of these are intertwined with the ordinary chores like shopping and laundry, bills, and minor nuisances that are usually a part of life.

When you’re caught in the Immediate life map, you don’t spend much time thinking beyond the end of the week. It’s hard to think deeply about anything that’s not likely to happen within the next month.

As soon as you have some room to breathe, you rise into the Calendar map.

The Calendar Life Map

With the Calendar life map, you divide up your life by seasons and by what’s coming up, such as birthdays, vacations, summer and winter, Thanksgiving, New Year’s eve, and so on.

You have a better sense of control as you plan out your year. It’s fun (or at least reassuring) to repeat many of the same traditions each year.

The Calendar map also helps you make sense of your week. You probably have routines for weekdays and weekends. This Tuesday looks a lot like last Tuesday, but a Sunday rarely resembles a Tuesday.

The Calendar map gives you a few events to look forward to, and maybe some challenges to worry about. But it doesn’t give you a whole lot of room to grow, except reactively and by accident.

As soon as you start thinking about a future beyond the routine, you move up into the Major Life Plans map.

Major Life Plans

Major Life Plans signal a higher-level view of your life.

When you’re on this map, you focus on transitions such as education and training, career changes, marriage, buying a home, starting a family, retirement--and also the major life transitions of the people closest to you.

These transitions are top of mind when they come up, and once in a while you may set aside some time for long-term planning around these transitions.

The Major Life Plans map acknowledges that you are going to change, and that the way things are now is not the way they will always be.

However, there’s an important facet of your life that isn’t directly related to these three models.

The Missing Piece

Certainly, you’ll learn and refine your character as you go through major life events.

You can challenge yourself in many ways as you address the events and opportunities of each season or even each week.

And the way you handle the daily grind of existence can shape your character in positive ways.

But you could easily have a richer life where you fully develop your talents and potential. You could contribute more, experience more, and get more enjoyment and satisfaction if you adopt a new frame of reference.

Instead of thinking of weekly or monthly schedules, seasonal cycles, or even major life plans, think of your life in terms of Growth and Adventure.

An adventure is any achievement or experience you choose that is new to you, that poses a challenge, that draws upon your existing talents while helping you discover new ones, and that makes a lasting impact on your life and in the world.

When you map out your life in terms of adventure, new priorities move to the surface:

• Instead of paying the bills, you create new streams of income

• Instead of treading water, you scuba dive the coral reefs and swim to new islands

• Instead of surviving, you grow

• Instead of struggling to get through the week, you plan for several extraordinary months

I give my Changing the WIND students 9 tools for creating adventures that reflect your deepest values and strongest desires.

But let me give you something you can do today, right here and now. Here’s a simple process you can go through that will help you zoom out and map your life as a series of adventures and growth.

Use this whenever you feel unsatisfied with your life, or when you feel stuck.

Step one: Ask yourself two questions. These questions are going to help you understand what’s valuable and important to you, what you really care about, and what you enjoy.

The first question is one you might have heard before: What would you do if you knew with absolute conviction that you could not fail?

Now the second question is harder: What would you do anyway, even if you thought you were going to fail?

Whatever pops into your head will show you what you love to do for the sheer pleasure of it, regardless of the outcome.

But your answers to this question will also reveal what you do because you believe it’s the right thing to do. This is how you uncover the deep values that drive you and motivate you.

Step Two: Based on these two questions, make a wish. What do you want to achieve or experience? Going after this achievement or experience will be your next adventure.

Step Three: What is one task you can do today to get you closer to bringing that wish into reality? Do that one task, no matter how small.

Tool of the Week: Questions That Lead to Adventure

1. Ask yourself these two questions: What would you do if you knew with absolute conviction that you could not fail? What would you do anyway, even if you thought you were going to fail?

2. Based on your answer to these two questions, make a wish. What do you want to achieve or experience?

3. What is one task you can do today to get you closer to bringing that wish into reality? Do that one task, no matter how small.

Whenever you’re feeling stuck or unsatisfied with your life, repeat this process. As soon as you learn to zoom out and view your life as a series of adventures, you’re going to be in a space of growth and learning.

When you make growth and learning a habit, you become happier and healthier. You accomplish more, and you also begin to serve as a model to show the people around you how to grow and improve their own life.

Remember that for 97% of human history, we were hunter gatherers. Our days were spent climbing, hiking, hunting, fishing, building tools and solving problems.

You were hard-wired to find resources and overcome challenges.

And remember that because of that, your life is meant to be filled with adventure.

That wraps it up for this week.

If you’re enjoying these rants, lessons, and tools, I would love to hear from you.

If you’re not, I would like to hear from you even more.

Reply to this email and tell me what you think, what you’d like to see in the future, or just to drop me a line about your cat.

I don’t always have the time to reply to your message, but I read every one of them.

Jacob