This is the magical Tree of Life

This powerful 10-min exercise from narrative therapy will change your life

Oct 02, 2024

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Your life is a story – and I don't mean this as a metaphor. Your brain perceives and processes your existence as if you are the lead character in some kind of narrative – and how you tell this story is crucial because it can make the difference between feeling like you're sketching out an epic saga, or living a bleak, perilous or uninspiring story.

What's your story?

Why should you do this? Because, if left to our own devices, we tend to focus on the negative. This is a survival instinct – the mind wants to pay attention to the threats and failures in order to avoid similar things happening again in the future. Which is fine and necessary, but if left unchecked, this protective strategy can mean that our life stories start to feel a little bleak.

So, please, grab a piece of paper (at least A4 size), along with a pencil or perhaps a set of colouring pens and give yourself five to ten minutes to complete this magical exercise, called the Tree of Life. It’s not only a way of retelling your story, but also an exercise for developing what's known as a "riverbank" perspective on life – that is, the ability to observe yourself and your experiences from a distance, as if watching the flow of a river from the verge as opposed to getting swept along with the water. This is also known as self-distancing and it's a very powerful thing. So let's dive in.

The Tree of Life

Reference: "Retelling the Stories of Our Lives" by David Denborough

Step 1: Draw a tree

Step one of this process is to draw the outline of a tree. It could be a particular tree from your life, or one you make up now. Obviously this doesn't need to be a good drawing, but your tree does need to have the following features, because you're going to write on these individual parts of your diagram:

roots
the ground at its base
trunk
branches
leaves
some kind of fruit
flowers or seeds (although you can probably add those things later).

As you're sketching your masterpiece, you might be interested to know that, archetypally, the tree symbolises human life and development, the inner process of becoming conscious and the innate urge towards individuation – that is, becoming who we really are.

"[The tree] grows and develops undisturbed within us, irrespective of what the ego does; it is the urge toward individuation, which unfolds and continues independent of our consciousness."
– Marie-Louise von Franz, "Shadow and Evil in Fairytales"

In other words, the tree you're drawing isn't just a pretty framework for this exercise, but a potent archetypal symbol that speaks to your unconscious mind about who you are, where you come from, what you're reaching for and growing towards, etc.

Okay. I trust you have your tree now, so onto the next step.

Step 2: The roots — where you come from

On the roots, write where you come from, your biggest influences and the things you love.

For example: your country, town, ethnicity; your language and culture; the people who have taught you the most in life; teams, groups or associations you've been a part of; and your favourite things, such as places, songs, films, games. These are your roots, the things that connect you to life, support you, and inform who you become.

Step 3: The ground – what you choose for yourself

Along the ground, write what you choose to do with your time – for example, some of the regular activities you do over the course of a normal week. However, as you do this, be sure to only write the things you *choose* to do and not the things you're forced to do. Because it's the things you choose for yourself that ground you.

Step 4: The trunk – what you value and the skills you possess

Along the trunk, you're gonna list your values, accomplishments, skills and abilities. These are the things that give you strength and elevate you. But don't worry if you don't have immediate ideas for all these categories because some of that information isn't necessarily going to be that conscious right away.

If you need a little help tuning into your values, you can look at the things you've written along the ground for inspiration. Your values dictate your behaviour whether you're aware of them or not – and that means the things you choose to do demonstrate your values. So, if you've written that you spend your time "walking in the woods" and "wild swimming" then it's likely you value nature, or perhaps fitness, whatever makes sense to you.

Similarly, the things that aren’t a part of the ground for you are probably not real values – at least, they're not practised values for you – they could be aspirational values, but that's not the same thing. So, if you're tempted to write "nature" as a value, but your grounding activities all include staying indoors, playing computer games or cooking, then nature probably isn't a genuine value of yours, but rather something you think you should value. This would be an important piece of the puzzle, so keep an eye out for discrepancies.

Once you've got some values down, add the skills and abilities you've developed and demonstrated over the course of your life, along with accomplishments and achievements you've made. These can include obvious things like qualifications but also the subtler skills of caring, kindness, organisation, humour, etc. My tip for if you struggle with this step is to imagine what your best friend, a loving family member or even an imaginary objective observer would say you're good at.

Finally, when you've taken a little time to get all of these things down, give yourself a moment to see if you can trace the history of each item. Who taught you these things? Where or how did you learn those skills? Any new answers to these kinds of questions can be added to your roots.

Step 5: The branches – your horizons

The branches of your tree represent shared hopes, dreams, goals and wishes. These will include hopes you have for your own life, but also hopes for your community, family, and individuals who mean something to you, too. They can be long- or short-term dreams; big, challenging goals and small, relatively easy ones.

For example, you might write something like "build my family a home in the mountains" and also "my niece passes her driving test on Friday."

When you have these items, you can trace their history, too. How long have you had these hopes? Where did they come from? Did anyone else play a part in these wishes? And from your answers to these questions, any new information can be added to your roots.

Step 6: The leaves – significant others

On or around the leaves of the tree, write the names of those who are significant to you. Think: friends, family, teachers (including those who have passed away), but also heroes, role models, and important characters from your favourite stories. If relevant, you might include your animal friends, plant friends, invisible friends…

To honour those who have passed away and to keep their energy and memories alive in our lives, Denborough suggests these optional additional prompts: for each person, consider writing, next to their name, about a particularly good experience you had with them, what felt most meaningful about your connection with them, or something you remember them saying. And, finally, consider whether this person would appreciate that you remember them and that they're on your tree.

Step 7: The fruit – legacies and gifts passed on to you

The sweet, nourishing fruit of your tree represents gifts that have been passed on to you, or contributions others have made to your life. So, consider the people listed on your leaves and then answer this question: what have those people given you?

For some, you might think of things like self-belief, courage or empathy. For others, you might list material gifts, or taught skills, etc.

Step 8: The flowers and/or seeds – gifts and legacies you wish to leave

We have reached the eighth and final step. The blossoms or seeds or your tree – i.e. the parts that are there for reproduction – represent the legacies and gifts that you wish to pass on to others. These might be similar to the gifts you've received, or they could be things you were never offered and that you want to make sure other people have access to.

In other words, what is the difference you want to make to the lives of others? What is the mark you want to make on the world? Write these on the blossoms or seeds of your tree.

Your Story

When you have everything written down, sit back and review your tree of life. You might like to identify and illustrate the connections that run, like threads, through your story from the roots to the trunk, branches and flowers. Making links between your past, present and future, or between your values, skills, hopes and contributions is a way of identifying the individual storylines that play out within the grand narrative of your life.

"This is not a storyline about problems. This storyline—this Tree of Life—is about what you give value to, what you stand for in life. This is a preferred storyline."
– David Denborough, "Retelling the Stories of Our Lives"

As Denborough points out, these are not storylines about problems, pain or trauma. They're about the person you choose to be, the life you choose to live and what you stand for.

So, I have one last task for you. When you look at your tree, along with all its components and the storylines that run through it, what are the first three thematic words that come to mind?

Just take a moment to find three general themes visible in your tree. They may be things like "love", "creativity", "freedom", "transformation", or really anything at all.

Whatever you come up with, use those three words to complete this sentence:

The story of my life is about… (theme 1), (theme 2) and (theme 3).

And then just reflect on how that feels. Does it resonate? Does it feel right and meaningful and authentic, or is there anything missing? Because the trees of our lives never stop growing and blossoming and yielding fruit. So, if there's anything else you want to be in there, then you can make it so, starting with the ground, and working up from there.

As always, I truly hope this helps. And I would absolutely love to hear your themes in the comments, along with any other thoughts and reflections you might have.

Thank you for reading!

We’re Hazel (ex boxer, therapist and author) and Ellie (ex psychology science writer). We left our jobs to build an interactive narrative app for self-awareness and emotion regulation (Betwixt), which you can try on Android here and on iOS here.