Looking at your lifeline – a visual representation of the times when you are the most and least fulfilled in life – can help you gain access to authentic information about yourself: your personality, strengths and core values.

The horizontal axis represents your life’s timeline (focus on the span of time between your teenage years and the present day). The vertical axis represents your level of fulfillment during a certain point in time. Creating your lifeline gives you an opportunity to identify 1) the things that fulfill you and 2) your core values.

Check out an example lifeline here.

Rather than being all things to all people, great leaders know what they are like at their best and bring that self to the foreground when it matters most.

Our values are principles that we hold as important to live by – when we live them, they positively shape our thoughts, actions and others’ experience of us.

While many of us align with some basic values like honesty, equality, or integrity, we also all identify with two or three values that specifically shape our leadership. For example, the core values of Mother Theresa might be love and service, whereas the core values of Usain Bolt might be excellence and speed. The clearer we are on these values that make us unique, the more likely we are to be able to express our authenticity in our leadership.

Our lifeline can help us to see what we truly stand for.