Understand Your Complete Emotional Landscape
As we reflect deeply on the past year and look ahead to new beginnings in 2024, it’s time to advance beyond simply listing events, accomplishments and milestones. We need to peel back the layers further to reveal insights into our emotional landscapes - understanding what experiences and activities uplifted us and energized us, versus those that depleted our joy and increased stress levels.
This level of inner terrain mapping and self-insight provides pivotal fuel for making more empowered, aligned choices in the year we’re entering. When we understand what drains us, we can prevent it. When we understand what fuels us, we can incorporate more of it.
So today, let’s map out your 2023 emotional highs and lows in detail. Visually capturing your internal rollercoaster throughout the past year will uncover game-changing patterns, priorities and opportunities for evolution.
As we connect the dots between actions, events and emotional responses, we extract wisdom we can bring into 2024 for increased fulfillment.
Create Your Visual Energy Map – Step-By-Step
Grab a large sheet of paper or poster board and draw a long horizontal timeline across it. Mark January 1st, 2023 on the far left side and December 31st, 2023 on the far right side. This will represent your complete journey over the past 12 months.
Now on the vertical axis, draw a bright yellow smiley face emoji near the very top of your paper to visually signify happiness, positive energy, fulfillment, accomplishment and other uplifting emotional states you experienced.
Then at the bottom of your paper’s vertical axis, draw a gray frowny face emoji to represent stress, dissatisfaction, depletion, frustration or any other negative emotions you endured. This frowny face lives at the opposite end of the spectrum from the smiley symbol above it.
Your next step is to carefully plot your most emotionally significant life events, work projects, personal accomplishments, obstacles, transitions and any other milestone experiences from 2023 onto this timeline visual.
If a highlight brought you great joy, pride or positive energy – position it visually nearer that yellow smiley face at the top.
If a challenge, setback or frustration stressed you out – place it lower down vertically aligned closer to the gray frowny face at the bottom.
Use sticky notes, different color markers or code with symbols so you can easily iterate and shift items around later. The end goal here is to accurately capture your actual emotional rollercoaster over the past year – an ongoing progression of highs and lows.
Connect Your Experiences to Shifts In Emotions
Once your energy map timeline contains all the major personal and professional events from 2023 that held emotional weight for you, take a step back and carefully examine the patterns, themes and interconnected relationships between them.
Do you see distinct clusters of smiles versus clusters of frowns in certain months? How long did your highest emotional highs persist? And your lowest lows? How quickly did you rebound after disappointments and setbacks? Were there events you now realize led to emotional turning points, for better or worse?
Now intentionally trace the invisible connections between various external events and inner emotional responses, so they become conscious and visible to you.
Specifically, what conditions, actions, relationships or mindsets were present that made certain accomplishments so uplifting? What specific elements injected them with positive emotional energy for you? How exactly did you successfully overcome difficult problems or situations in 2023 – what personal qualities, supports or tactics helped you resilience and recovery?
Similarly scrutinize the downward emotional drains. What was it about certain challenges, missteps and stresses that made them so depleting or demotivating? Were there missed growth opportunities where you could have coped better or taken more self-care to lift yourself up emotionally?
Be brave here – honesty with yourself is vital for growth.
Use lines, arrows and code words to make the connections between life happenings and inner emotional consequences conscious and visible on your map. This level of integral insight fuels exponentially more thoughtful goal-setting, decision filters and self-care choices as you begin your 2024 chapter.
Extract Your Key Insights to Fuel Growth in 2024
By visually mapping your emotional high points and low points across 2023, patterns emerge that clearly spotlight what inspires you and uplifts you, versus what drains your energy and dampens your mood and motivation.
Where on your map did you feel in flow, curiously learning, productively expansive and creatively engaged? And where did you get stuck in frustration, confusion, overwhelm or contraction? Which connections and activities injected you with positive energy and enthusiasm? Which ones left you dragging, tense and depleted?
Use these freshly revealed insights to responsibly take ownership around designing 2024 experiences that feed your flame brightly and sustainably – while also preventively addressing anything that might threaten your inner light.
Ask yourself - Based on what my Energy Map shows me about how I was emotionally impacted this past year:
• What specific types of projects, activities, relationships and mindsets consistently motivate inspire and recharge me? How can I consciously incorporate more of those in 2024?
• What triggers stressful, energy-draining reactions in me – fears underlying anger – that I haven’t addressed yet? How can I employ preventive self-care so I show up proactively ready for those known emotional pitfalls this coming year?
• Who are my most positive supports and cheerleaders - at work, at home and in my community? How can I nurture, deepen and invest further in relationships with those who champion the best in me?
• What scenarios, accomplishments and activities make me feel most purposefully engaged, challenged, embraced and enthusiastically alive? How does mapping the emotional high points on my 2023 journey reveal what I should double down on in 2024?
Sustainable growth requires ruthless self-honesty paired with fierce self-compassion. Completing this comprehensive written and visual 2023 energy mapping builds self-awareness muscle so we can choose powerfully from here forward.
Share Your “Aha’s” and Discovery Moments
What genuinely surprised you or challenged you in completing this deep dive mapping of your internal 2023 rollercoaster? Please share one pivotal self-realization, “aha!” or discovery that surfaced for you emotionally.
Comment below so we can all learn from each other’s growth lessons as leaders and humanity! Let’s lift each other up.
Want Skilled Guidance Applying Your 2023 Energy Map Insights to Fuel an Outstanding 2024?
As an executive coach who specializes in guiding purposeful, sustainable growth rooted in self-understanding and mindset shifts, I can help!
Whether leading yourself or leading others, actualized change requires emotionally intelligent self-mastery paired with an empowered, uplifting mindset.
My coaching approach combines uncompromising support, encouragement and accountability with gentle-but-firm constructive pushback to shift any lingering limiting perspectives while building your highest leadership capacities.
If you see value in getting professional coaching designed around responsibly and positively applying the precious visibility gained from your 2023 Energy Mapping into building your best 2024 Chapter, let’s talk!
Schedule a free clarity call with me to discuss how we can design a coaching engagement that custom-targets your growth goals on both skills and mindset levels through positive reinforcement and science-backed techniques.
The new year brings fresh beginnings – let’s gift ourselves self-responsibility and self-mastery as your foundation for making 2024 outstanding by design. Onward and upward!