The Mandala Key Exercise

Most of us are unaware of the details in our lives, what each part actually requires us to do. That lack of awareness makes it very easy to lose control and to increase our stress.

In this first exercise, we are going to increase your awareness of the totality of your life and how everything relates to everything else. You will learn how each part of your life that you have chosen, both adds to the quality of your life and takes away from the quality.

What comes next, when we begin to work on reorganizing your schedule and redefining how you view your time requires this step to be completed. This realistic awareness is the beginning of you regaining control and leaving stress behind.

The mandala may look complicated at first, but it consists of only six parts that are repeated There is not one person who is reading this, that with twenty minutes of quiet concentration, will not be able to fill out their mandala and begin.

The center circle, the one marked with an 'A' represents you and how you see yourself. Write down one word in the center that describes who you are, not what you do - but who you are. Do you see your identity as a teacher? A Leader? A thinker, a musician, an artist, a manager, a creator - pick one word that you identify with and write in the center of the circle.

Now, I want you to write one word above it, and one word below it that describe the kind of person you are: are you strong, compassionate, empathetic, thoughtful, creative etc. again, these are not words that describe what you do - these are words that you feel describe the kind of person that you are.

This is the person you are. This is the person you want to be. If this is difficult for you to do, or feels uncomfortable, I recommend you do the exercise, 'The Roots of the Tree', that exercise will help you discover what are your core elements.

In the outer boxes marked 'B' write down the main elements of your life: work, home, relationship, school. These are broad categories which is why there are only room for four of them. Later, after you have mastered this exercise, you can use it for relationships, business etc., to start to see the connections and cross effects of what exists within those environments.

There are three lines underneath each main element box (marked 'D'). In the order of their importance, I want you to write down the skills you use in each of these elements (not technical or specific, but general skills).

Honesty? Integrity? Love? Success? Money? Write those in the boxes marked 'C'. Beneath the box, write down three words that describe the skills you need to be to have these things.

By now, you have probably noticed in the examples from my own life that there is a relationship between what is important to me, who I am, and what I do for work. If I were to just look at each one separately, I would be the last to say that every day, for eight or ten hours a day, I am actually using and practicing a skill that I bring home to my relationship. I would have typically told you that all my job does is supply money and make demands on my time that takes me away from my relationship. While that remains true, now I begin see that there are skills in my workday that if I chose to pay more attention to them, will benefit me in my home life. Now, at work when I am frustrated, I remember that I need this for the success of my relationship and I back up and rethink what I am doing at work and learn to do it better because it has a value to elsewhere in my life.

On the blue lines marked 'E' write what each of these elements brings to your life. Do this as simply as you can. Work brings me money, maybe prestige. My relationship brings me comfort and strength. Go around the circle and fill this in, do not spend a lot of time on it, usually your first reaction to the question for each element is what is true about it.

On the red lines marked 'F' I want you to write down what each of these elements takes from your life. Work takes time and often takes emotional balance from me. Love can be a huge source of emotional insecurity. Integrity can cause discomfort because you have to self-examine and judge yourself at all times.

Go around the circle and fill these in. Be brief, but be as honest as you can about how each element in your life effects you adversely.

Now you have the beginnings of a map to your actual life. I want you to look at it for a bit and then put it away. Wait about three days then take the mandala out again, read over it once more. Then I want you to write a paragraph for yourself about what it is you have noticed about your life. I want you to answer the questions: What fits well with who I am? What doesn't? What is in my life that takes from me more than it gives? What, in my life, involves skills that are not required anywhere else in my life and why is it there?

There are no decisions to be made. The mandala is only to increase your awareness of how the totality of your life functions together. Later on we will get to examine what is in your life and learning how to make changes.

You can use the mandala to make a map of your relationship or any other element of your life to gain a better understanding of it. Begin by putting the relationship in the center and describing it and then surround it with all the aspects of the relationship. You become one of the four main elements, as does the other person in the relationship. When you are done always go back and place it side by side to the mandala of your own life and compare. Don't judge, just notice.

We will bring this awareness into the next exercises and begin to redefine your life.