What is Exploring Timelines?

Written by Reeta Luthra - http://reetaluthra.com

Exloring Timelines is adapted from the Timeline Therapy™ work of Tad James and also integrates techniques from NLP.

Everybody has their own sense of time. It's one of the fundamental building blocks for day-to-day living and amongst other things, it influences thought processes with regards to organisation and prioritising.

For example, it is impossible to make a "to-do" list at work and put the items in order of importance without having a sense of time as it is time that gives the urgency. It is very possible however, to lose sense of time and skip items from your list and give yourself a sense of panic later on in the day. A sense of panic that, over time, can turn into a slippery slope of guilt, failure and poor self-esteem.

In coaching and therapy, timelines are used in a number of ways to determine how your representation of time impacts the problems you are having. One way includes exploring the timeline to determine when problems first started and how your sense of "past", "present" and "future" is keeping that problem going.

Subtle shifts in your representation of time enable you to see and do things differently.