We have seen how effective mind maps can be for organizing your thinking about your Forward Story. We have also seen what happens when you add a time element to your mind map to aid in developing your Forward Story. In the second of those two  articles we introduced a fictional teenager named John and set up the structure of his mind map with various timeframes.

Now the question arises: “What should John include in each timeframe to develop a powerful Forward Story?”

His main purpose is to use the mind map as a resource for writing a narrative about his future. Therefore, he really needs this map to include all of the areas of his life that are important. Let’s brainstorm a little about what is likely to matter to John and his life. I suspect he is going to care about:

• Family
• Health
• Fun
• Education
• Money
• Career
• Spirituality
• Service
• The World

That is not a complete list, but it gets us started in thinking about what John is going to want to include. I think we can further group these items under three headings:

• Family
• Spouse
• Children
• Parents/Grandparents
• Extended Family
• In-laws
• Personal
• Body/Health
• Fun
• The World
• Spirituality
• Career
• Education
• Work/Business
• Money

Here is John’s mind map set up in his most distant timeframe (at age 30) with the three headings we just developed:

You may choose to add more or fewer areas to your mind map and to your Forward Story. The main thing is to use this framework as a powerful tool for covering all of your bases. With this framework John can dream big and develop a story for what he wants his life to look like at age 30. Developing a map and narrative for his future does not mean that John is predicting the future. It simply means that he has chosen to write his vision and will work to make it a reality. He is creating something that is uniquely his own and that is powerful for thinking about the future and for acting.

In our next article we will further expand John’s map to include some specifics in his Family group.