Empowering Mind Maps
When was the last time you seriously asked yourself where you want to take your life? Do you want to dedicate part of your December to mapping out your aspirations and putting them in motion next year?
In Mindset Secrets for Winning , top stock trader and performance coach Mark Minervini says: "Ask crappy questions, you get crappy answers. Ask empowering questions, you get empowering answers."
His 10 empowering questions are a great starting point to discovering what we truly want out of life:
What would i do if anything were possible?
What would I try if I had no fears?
How can I make my life more fun?
What am I excited for this year?
What would my perfect day look like?
What areas of my life am I ready to transform?
What am I grateful for right now?
How can I make a difference in the world?
What is most important to me?
What do I love about myself?
I took things a step further by turning the questions into daily Empowering Mind Map exercises spread across 10 days.
Mind Mapping vs Writing
Why did I Mind Map my answers instead of writing them in bullet points?
Writing is a linear process that forces you to organize your thoughts right away. Whereas with Mind Maps, you don’t have to worry about the sequence of incoming thoughts, therefore it's more open and creative. No matter how wild your ideas may be, you can just draw them out as they come. The exploratory nature of these Mind Maps allowed me to go into spaces that I've never thought about.
You’re able to drill down into the most interesting elements to explore deeper. I expand every node to ask myself the driving motivations behind why I want to do something. I recommend giving yourself 10-20 days to properly go through these questions. It’s a taxing process and you'll want to give your mind a break in between sessions rather than banging them out in one sitting.
Having the big picture in front of you means it’s much easier to see patterns and connect the dots. Your Mind Maps will become increasingly detailed as you progress through the days and become better at mapping out your inner motivations. I began to see recurring themes and nodes that were linked to previous days. The number of annotations also increased to reflect the interconnections between Maps.
Mind Mapping is a type of visualization. Effective visualization involves being specific about what you hope to achieve and seeing yourself living it. By expanding the nodes, you are actually breaking down your wants and goals into their specific components, thereby forcing you to visualize your reasoning and steps.
Day 1: What would I do if anything were possible?
Let’s walk through the first Empowering Mind Map together.
Step 1: Write down whatever comes to mind.
I like starting from the right side, working through the map in a clockwise fashion. My first node is “Live in a new city every 1-3 months” ending on “Learn Spanish”.
Step 2: Expand each node with specific examples.
Be as specific and concrete as possible, but don’t struggle if you can’t think of anything beyond the conceptual.
I expanded the “new city” node into LATAM (Latin America), London, and Kyoto. I’ve been to London and Kyoto so those cities were easy for me to list, but because I’ve never been to LATAM, I just left it at the continent level. I did the same thing for martial arts (which style?) and singing (which genre or song?). I can always do research later and update the map.
Step 3: Expand each node with your reasoning.
This is even more important than giving concrete examples because it gets into why you want to do something in the first place. I usually do this after the map has expanded a bit to identify any emerging patterns and connections (step 4).
In my Map, I noted that I want to live in new cities in order to know the people of each region, which is driven by my desire to build lasting relationships and be meet local clients in person.
Step 4: Connect the dots and note the concentration of arrows.
This is where things get interesting. Step back to evaluate your map as a whole and draw arrows between related elements. Also note where arrows originate and land. A cluster of arrows could be a sign of key drivers.
In my case, I realized that I want lasting relationships because I love having meaningful conversations, which in turn contributes to my growth as a teacher on YouTube.
These two elements also had the most arrows, which told me they were core driving reasons for why I wanted to do the things on my Map. Finally, I starred these key drivers for easy reference in the future.
Congrats - you just finished your first Empowering Mind Map! At this point, you’ve already uncovered more about your inner motivations than most people who stop at surface level answers.
In my case, I discovered that having meaningful conversations and connections is one of my reasons for being - my raison d'être.
If you want to solidify those insights and turn into them into actionable steps, then read on. Otherwise close your notebook and pat yourself on the back :)
Bonus Step 5: Instill into Insights and Actions
Earlier I noted the advantages of Mind Mapping over writing your answers. On the other hand, writing the Insights that came from the Map is a different story.
Writing is more “emotional”, emulating how we talk to ourselves. Contrast that with mapping, which is highly analytical and effective at breaking things down, but doesn’t elicit the strongest emotional response.* At the end of the day, we respond better to emotions than pure logic.
That’s why I phrase my Insights as affirmations.
In my case, I wrote:
“I live for meaningful conversations with interesting people.
To do that, I must:
1) Overcome my social anxiety of approaching strangers.
2) Expose myself to more places and people.
3) Carve out time and space to genuinely engage with people through stillness, inner peace, and good will.”
Listing these three contributors opens the door to concrete actions like initiating conversation, traveling, mediating and doing more nature retreats - all of which I can plan and execute through the 2-week sprint system .
It’s easy forget about why we do what we do
I hope these exercises will help you discover the intentionality behind what your aspirations and actions as they did for me.
If you’d like to see how I approach the other questions, I’m launching the Empowering Mind Maps challenge course this Sunday (December 11). It’s free for all MMN members. Given how successful our last community challenge was, I’m confident you won’t want to miss this one!
*This synergistic relationship between writing and mapping is why I always keep both lined inserts in my Traveler’s Notebook. I like to map out complexity, then distill the insights into writing.
Make the most of your mind maps
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