Life Map: Draw the Highs and Lows of a Life

Dieses Tool auf Deutsch: Lebenslinie

What a life map is

A life map shows your life at a glance: time runs from left to right, the beautiful moments sit above a zero line and the hard ones below it. Researchers use the same picture: Gramling and Carr describe it as “a visual depiction of a life history, displaying events in chronological order and noting the importance, or meaning, of events.” In German adult education it is called a Lebenslinie, a life line with highs, lows and turning points.

On this page your line becomes more than a drawing on paper: a film of your life, with music written from your line alone. The most beautiful and the hardest moments stand side by side, the way they belong to you.

How the Life Map works

The moments. You add five to seven beautiful and five to seven hard moments, each with a year, a month if you know it, and your own rating from 1 to 5. A beautiful moment rated 4 sits four steps above the line, a hard one rated 4 four steps below it. A moment without a month sits in the middle of its year; two moments on the same date keep your order. At the end you say how your life feels today, from −5 to +5: that is where the line ends.

The line. Between two moments, the line never climbs higher or drops lower than the two moments themselves. It never invents a high or a low you did not enter.

Why the beautiful and the hard moments get different questions. Lyubomirsky, Sousa and Dickerhoof had college students write, talk or think about their worst or their happiest experience for 15 minutes on three days in a row and measured how they were doing four weeks later. For the worst experience, writing or talking helped more than thinking it over in private. For the happiest it was the other way around: “Students who wrote about their happiest moments--especially when analyzing them--experienced reduced well-being and physical health relative to those who replayed these moments.” Writing about a best moment, and even more so taking it apart, left people worse off than living it again in their mind. So for the beautiful moments we invite you to close your eyes and live each one again, and we ask for only a few words, not an explanation. A few words are still writing; the reliving is the point, not the text. For the hard ones we ask “What did it do to you?”, because there, writing helped. Nobody has tested whether this particular tool works that way.

Why the highs and the lows. In one life story study by Grysman and Hudson, participants described exactly these scenes: “a high point, low point, and turning point narrative.” McAdams and McLean describe the story people tell about their own life as an “internalized and evolving life story, integrating the reconstructed past and imagined future to provide life with some degree of unity and purpose.” People who find meaning in hard times tend to do better mentally, but the authors say themselves that cause and effect are still open. So we will not tell you that every low was good for something. Some lows were only loss, and they belong to you too.

The film. Time runs from left to right, with the year counting along. Each moment shows your age when it is certain: when you give your month of birth and the moment’s month too. If either month is missing, or the moment falls in your birth month, the film shows the date alone, because your age could be off by a year. The one exception is the year you were born: there it always says “in the first year”, because that is true either way. Flowers grow from the beautiful moments, bigger the more beautiful they were; roots grow from the hard ones, deeper the harder they were. Each moment stays on screen long enough to read all of it. We allow 0.3 seconds to find each piece of text and one second for every 15 characters, and we count only the time it is fully visible. So a moment’s words stay while the line grows on toward the next one, and a long sentence makes the film longer. At the end the camera pulls back and you see your whole life: the flowers above, the roots below.

The music. It is written anew for every line, in D major. Beautiful moments sound on major chords with rising notes, hard ones on minor chords with falling notes; the higher a moment sits, the higher its note. Between two moments the melody climbs or falls quietly toward the next one. The same line makes the same piece, a different line a different one. You can turn the sound off at any time; the video is then silent too.

The ending. The film ends with you, today, not on your hardest or your most beautiful moment. A study by Diener, Wirtz and Oishi hints at how much an ending counts: when people rated made-up lives of others, how those lives ended weighed heavily, “suggesting that a life's ending is weighted especially heavily in judging quality of life.” We do not rearrange your life so it ends on a high. But the film’s last words are for you: “And the line goes on.”

After the film. A life map becomes more than a picture when you stay with it a little longer. So below your film there are a few questions, to think about on your own or to talk over with someone you trust. You do not have to write any of it down:

• Where are your turning points, the places where your line changed direction?
• What or who carried you through your lowest points?
• What do your high points have in common?
• What do you want more of on the line ahead of you?
• What surprised you when you saw your whole line?

Printable life map template

Prefer paper, on your own or with someone? Download the blank template or print it right away. Mark your moments as dots, the beautiful ones above, the hard ones below, write a word next to each and connect them from left to right.

Download the templatePrint the template

An example: Sam’s life map

Sam is not a real person; we made up this life so you can see what a finished life map looks like. Sam was born in June 1987 and added 5 beautiful and 5 hard moments. The line starts with “Summers at the lake” in July 1995, at age 8. The lowest points are “Dad moves out” (March 1998) and “Mom’s diagnosis” (September 2017), both at −5. Today Sam rates life at +2. The film runs for about 102 seconds. You can watch the example film in the tool above.

Sam’s life map: 5 beautiful and 5 hard moments, in the order of the film. The rating shows how far above the line (+) or below it (−) a moment sits, from 1 to 5.

Life map questions

How do I make a life map?

Put the moments that shaped your life on a timeline: the beautiful ones above a zero line, the hard ones below it, higher or lower the stronger they were. Connected, they become your line of highs and lows. In the tool above, you add five to seven beautiful and five to seven hard moments, each with a year, a rating from 1 to 5 and, if you like, one sentence. Your device turns them into a film with its own music.

What is a life map exercise in therapy or coaching?

A common way to make a life visible: important events go on a line in the order they happened, marked by what they meant. It is used in adult education, in research and in clinical practice. In therapy or coaching you usually draw it with a professional and talk about it afterward. This tool is an exercise for you and does not replace therapy.

Is there a printable life map template?

As an image file, yes, and as a PDF through your print dialog. Under “Printable life map template” above there is a blank template in landscape format. “Download the template” saves it as an image file (PNG) you can print from any device. There is no ready-made PDF file: “Print the template” opens your device’s print dialog, where you can usually save the template as a PDF, on one page. After your film, “Print your line” prints your finished line with all your moments on one or two pages.

How many events should a life map have?

There is no fixed number. We ask for five to seven beautiful and five to seven hard moments: enough for a whole life, few enough that every moment gets its time in the film. In one life story study, Grysman and Hudson asked for three scenes: a high point, a low point and a turning point.

Why relive the beautiful moments but put the hard ones into words?

Because in one study the two worked differently. College students who wrote or talked about their worst experience were doing better four weeks later than those who only thought about it. With the happiest experience it was the other way around: writing about it, especially analyzing it, left people with lower well-being than replaying it in their mind. So the tool invites you to picture each beautiful moment again and asks for only a few words. For the hard ones it asks “What did it do to you?”.

What if a hard moment is too much?

Stop whenever you want; nothing has to be finished, and two words are enough for a moment. In a life-threatening emergency, call your local emergency number (911 in the US) or go to the nearest emergency room. In the US, you can call or text 988, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, free and open 24/7. Elsewhere, Find A Helpline lists free, confidential helplines in over 150 countries. If a moment still fills you up or happened very recently, it may be better to look at it with someone you trust or with a professional.

Are my moments saved or uploaded?

No. The Life Map runs entirely in your browser. Your moments, the line, the music and the video are made on your device, and none of it is sent or stored. The video only leaves your device if you share it yourself; “Save video” keeps it on your device. When you close the page, your moments are gone.

Can I share my life film on Instagram or WhatsApp?

Yes, on most phones. “Share video” opens your phone’s share sheet with the apps it offers, such as Instagram, WhatsApp or TikTok. In some in-app browsers on Android, for example when you opened the page from inside Instagram, that does not work. Then save the video and share it from your gallery, or open the page in your browser. Keep in mind that WhatsApp Status and Instagram Stories cut long videos short or split them into parts. Your whole film stays in the video you saved.

If a moment is too much

We left out a warning up front on purpose. A review of all the studies on such notes found: “Overall, we found that warnings had no effect on affective responses to negative material or on educational outcomes. However, warnings reliably increased anticipatory affect.” Instead, you decide: you write only what you want, two words are enough, you can change or delete any moment, and you can stop at any time. Next to the hard moments, you always see where to get help:

The Life Map is a reflection exercise, not therapy. If a moment still fills you up or happened very recently, it may be better to look at it with someone you trust or with a professional.

What happens with what you enter

The Life Map runs entirely in your browser. Your moments, your name, the line, the music and the video are made on your device; none of it is sent or stored, and the page writes none of it into the address bar. The video shows everything you entered, just as you saw it. “Save video” keeps it on your device. It only leaves your device when you share it yourself, with “Share video” or later from your files. If you try to leave the page, it asks first, because your moments are gone after that. If you agreed to the site statistics, they count which steps were used (for example, that a film was played), never your moments.

Sources

All sources retrieved on November 1, 2026. We archived a copy of each and checked every quote word for word against it; for the studies we read the abstracts.

• Gramling, Carr (2004): Lifelines: A life history methodology, Nursing Research 53(3).
• Grysman, Hudson (2010): Abstracting and extracting: Causal coherence and the development of the life story, Memory 18(6).
• McAdams, McLean (2013): Narrative identity, Current Directions in Psychological Science 22(3).
• Lyubomirsky, Sousa, Dickerhoof (2006): The costs and benefits of writing, talking, and thinking about life’s triumphs and defeats, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90(4).
• Diener, Wirtz, Oishi (2001): End effects of rated life quality: The James Dean effect, Psychological Science 12(2).
• Bridgland, Jones, Bellet (2024): A meta-analysis of the efficacy of trigger warnings, content warnings, and content notes, Clinical Psychological Science 12(4).
• wb-web, Deutsches Institut für Erwachsenenbildung: Lebenslinien zeichnen (German Institute for Adult Education: drawing life lines; in German).
• Help: National Institute of Mental Health: Help for Mental Illnesses; 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline; International Association for Suicide Prevention: Crisis Centres & Helplines.

Published November 2, 2026

A reflection exercise, not therapy and not a diagnosis. The 1 to 5 ratings are your own, not a measurement. If a moment still overwhelms you or happened very recently, it may be better to look at it with someone you trust or with a professional. The content is general information and does not replace individual medical, legal, tax or financial advice.

Keep growing

Where you stand today in each area of your life: the Wheel of Life. If remembering stirred you up: a few calm breaths with the breathing exercise timer. And once you know what you want more of on your line: the habit formation calculator shows roughly how long it takes for something new to become a habit. All tools are under Tools.

Content and tools on Wild Garden are published by the Wild Garden Editorial Team. How we research, check and correct errors is set out in our editorial standards.