👥 Serves: 1 person, 11-25 people, 2-10 people

🎚 Difficulty: Medium

⏳ Total time: 61-120 minutes

🥣 Ingredients: Paper, pens, pencils

🤓 Wholebeing Domains: Accomplishments, Awareness, Discomfortability, Meaning

💪 Wholebeing Skills: Adaptability, Centring, Clarity, Direction, Legacy, Ordinariness, Purpose, Significance

👣 Steps

Step 1 – Visualisation (10’)

The following script can be read by someone in the group, or you if you are doing this alone, you can read it before and guide yourself through the steps of this visualisation at your own rhythm:

• Close your eyes if you are comfortable or soften your gaze and look down.
• Take three long breaths, inhaling in your stomach and exhaling as if from a straw, expelling all the air out. With each breath, let your body relax deeper and deeper.
• Come back to the natural rhythm of your breath.
• Put your hands on your heart and breathe into our heart. With each breath, feel like you are breathing in light and breathing out darkness. Now bless your heart for caring. Bless your heart for recognising the suffering and wanting to do something about it. Bless your heart for feeling doubts and continuously choosing hope, even when the voice of hope is hard to hear. Breathe into your heart and bless it for a sincere desire to contribute to making a more beautiful world. [Here you can add anything that is specific to what you or your group are focused on, e.g. collective liberation, serving marginalised peoples, etc.]
• Start feeling your heart expanding like a big ball of light, filling up your whole body with light and expanding until the light is flooding everything around you. Feel love and warmth being sent to all of the cells in your body and to everything around you. 
• Now recentre yourself and put your hands on your knees, feel the air coming in and out your nose.
• From this place of deep love and care, start imagining or visualising a door. When you open that door, you see your future (higher) self two years from now and ask them: What has made you come alive? What have you learned? Who have you become? Take a full minute to hear or feel the answer, being curious about whatever comes up. 
• You thank your future self and see another door behind them. You walk towards that door and when you open it, you see yourself ten years from now. You sit down in front of them and feel deep love and admiration for whom you have become. You ask your future self: What has made you come alive? What have you learned? Who have you become? Take a full minute to hear or feel the answer, being curious about whatever comes up (words, sounds, feelings, sensations, etc.). 
• Take a deep breath and thank them. Behind them, you see another door – you walk towards it and open that door. It takes you to the future yourself on the last day of your life. You are old and radiant, there is a halo around you and a sense of peace and completeness, wholeness. You sit and look at your old, wise, luminous eyes and ask your future self: What has made you come alive? What have you learned? Who have you become? Take a minute to listen. 
• Thank your older self and walk towards the last door behind them, the door that takes you back to this moment, to your body, the sensations at the bottom or your feet, at the tips of your fingers.
• When you feel ready, open your eyes.

Step 2 – Reflections (10’)

Take a few minutes to write, draw, or express in whatever form you choose what came up for you in this visualisation. End your reflections by completing these sentences:

• My life calls me to…
• I intend to…
• I come alive when…

Step 3 – ​​Setting your Guiding Star (10’)

Take a large sheet of paper and pens, pencils, and anything else you would like to use to make your personal Life Navigation Map. This map will have one Guiding Star and three key constellations.

For millennia, across cultures and continents, people have looked to the stars to navigate when they were lost. Celestial bodies have exerted a magnetic pull over people’s lives and imaginations. Constellations create recognisable patterns in the sky and they provide reliable reference points for astronavigation. Imagine yourself on a boat leaving your shore and navigating towards an unknown destination only by using the stars and constellations to give you a sense of direction.

The first star you want to identify is your Guiding Star. Look back at your journaling reflections, in particular to the last three sentences, to decide what to call your Guiding Star.

Step 4 – Your constellation of inquiry (10’)

Now that you have defined your Guiding Star, you can move to the first of three constellations: the constellation of inquiry. This is made up of the core learning questions that guide your life forward. We recommend choosing between a minimum of three to a maximum of twelve questions.

To identify these questions, look back at what you have been consistently curious about throughout your life and reflect on what came up when you asked “What have you learned” to your future self in the visualisation.

Include your shadow question, which is a shy but persistent question that hangs around, sometimes without you realising. Often it is about something you would love to explore but perhaps you don’t think it sounds important enough or that feels too personal.

Step 5 – Your constellation of being (10’)

Now move to the second constellation: the constellation of being. This is made of the practises and rituals that help you feel anchored. Reflect on what daily, weekly, monthly, or seasonal practices and rituals you would like to have in your life.

Step 6 – Your constellation of action (10’)

Time to move to the third constellation: the constellation of action. This is made of your “power activities”, meaning the activities that enable you to express your authentic power. We recommend choosing three core activities and to identify them, you can reflect on what you would be happy doing every day and imagine what would be the impact in your life if you were to practise these activities month after month, year after year.

Step 7 – Sharing (30’)

If you are doing this activity in a group, we invite you to divide yourselves into pairs (20 minutes) or triads (30 minutes) and take 10 minutes each to share your Life Navigation Map and reflect on how you might use this map when you are lost.

End the sharing round by reflecting altogether: What patterns are we noticing? How will we use our maps going forward?