What to Write in Your Lifebook
Before you ever print a single page, it helps to sit with yourself for a moment and ask honestly – who are you, right now? What feels right for the person you are today?
Are you someone whose life and mind shift quickly, who outgrows things fast? Then maybe a bound book isn’t quite right for you. Something ring-bound, where you can slip pages in and pull them out as you change, might feel so much freer. Or maybe you love the feeling of an actual book in your hands – printed, bound, whole – with pages already holding your favourite quotes, your images, and the sections you chose with love. There’s no right answer here. Only your own.
You could make a Lifebook for one year, one season, or let it carry you until your next big shift. Thin or thick, whatever feels true. A fresh one every year, or one you fill slowly over years, until it becomes something close to the essence of your whole life – your dreams, your visions, all gathered quietly in one place.
But once you’ve figured out the shape, the next question is still sitting there, isn’t it? What do I actually write?
If you love to write, the way I do, it can help to keep a separate everyday journal beside your Lifebook –somewhere for the fast thoughts, the daily to-dos, little doodles, the lovely ordinary clutter of a busy mind. That way, your Lifebook has room for the dreams, stories, and reflections you want to return to, without getting buried under grocery lists.
And I know the empty page itself can feel intimidating. I’ve talked about that before, and I know it so well. So here are a few little doors in, if you’re sitting there not knowing where to start. Just some small sparks, in case your own ideas haven’t found you yet.
What if you wrote as your future self, just for a page? Moments from a life she is already living. What her early morning feels like. An ordinary dinner with people she loves. The work she does, lit up from the inside. A dream that’s already come true for her, described the way you’d describe your actual Tuesday.
Maybe you let her write you a letter. Maybe you write back, and let a conversation grow between you. Maybe you keep a little diary in her voice.
Tuck in the poetry and quotes that are circling your mind lately. Jot down what you’re learning, what keeps catching your attention, and the visions taking shape for your life.
Draw, if that’s your language. Make a map or a collage. Glue in pictures, colours, and little scraps that mean something to you. Create an imagined keepsake that doesn’t exist yet: an invitation to your own exhibition, a menu for a gathering you dream of hosting, a book cover with your name on the spine, a postcard from a trip you haven’t taken.
Write a letter to a dear friend from your imagined future, telling her how your life feels now that something you wished for has happened. Tell her about the small details, too – what you did this morning, what’s growing outside your window, what made you smile.
And leave room for the quieter pages – the ones about noticing. What you love. What you’re grateful for. The small, easy-to-miss beauty of an ordinary day.
Because a Lifebook isn’t something you have to fill all at once, or get right the first time. You keep coming back to it – a page at a time, a feeling at a time – until, slowly, it starts to sound like you.
