The Lifeline Lens Exercise
Trace formative highs and lows to reveal the lens shaping present decisions.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 98%
The Lifeline Lens Exercise maps six formative events: three highlights that elevated or redirected your worldview and three difficult experiences that hurt, destabilized, or constrained you. For each event, identify the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that followed it. Then examine a current decision and ask how those inherited interpretations affect what you notice, fear, prioritize, or dismiss. The mechanism is not to erase the past but to make its influence visible. Once the lens is named, you can distinguish current evidence from an old protective pattern and consider options that were previously obscured. Repeating the exercise across decisions builds greater self-awareness and reduces automatic, history-driven leadership choices.
Origin
Mona Patel facilitated the Lifeline exercise during the mindset-focused second day of the Vive leadership and growth accelerator.
Core principles
- 01Formative experiences influence later decisions.
- 02Positive and painful events can both create persistent assumptions.
- 03An unexamined lens hides part of the decision picture.
- 04Naming the lens creates room for a more deliberate response.
How to run it
- 1
Mark three defining highs
List three positive experiences that significantly changed how you viewed yourself, other people, or what was possible.
Pro tip Choose events that changed later behavior, not merely pleasant memories.
Watch out Do not select events only because they sound impressive to others.
- 2
Mark three defining lows
List three painful, destabilizing, or disappointing experiences that continue to influence your expectations or behavior.
Pro tip Work at a level of detail that feels emotionally safe.
Watch out Pause and seek appropriate support if the exercise becomes overwhelming.
- 3
Extract the lens
For every event, write the belief, feeling, or decision rule you carried forward. Note whether it helps, limits, or protects you today.
Pro tip Use sentence stems such as 'Because this happened, I learned that…'.
Watch out A belief formed from a real event is not automatically accurate in every later context.
- 4
Apply it to a current decision
Choose an active decision and identify which formative lenses are shaping your interpretation. Look for options or evidence the lens may be filtering out.
Pro tip Ask a trusted person what they see that you may be missing.
Watch out Insight alone does not guarantee that an entrenched response will immediately change.
- 5
Choose with the fuller picture
Retain any useful wisdom from the old lens while making a response based on present conditions. Record the decision and the reasoning behind it.
Pro tip Revisit the decision later to compare your prediction with the outcome.
Watch out Do not reflexively choose the opposite of the old pattern; the goal is awareness, not rebellion.
In the wild
A founder realizes that an early betrayal created a belief that senior employees cannot be trusted. While evaluating a strong leadership candidate, she separates that inherited fear from the candidate's references, work history, and proposed accountability structure.
→ She makes the hiring decision from current evidence while retaining sensible safeguards.
The accelerator's mindset work helped Jasmine recognize that she was holding tightly to a particular perspective about building her business. Guided reflection created space to challenge that perspective and consider a team-led model.
→ She began reconsidering how her masterminds, leadership, and team could operate.
Common mistakes
Creating a biography without beliefs
Listing memorable events is insufficient unless each event is connected to the assumptions and behaviors it produced.
Treating the lens as destiny
The exercise is meant to reveal a filter, not prove that past experiences permanently determine future choices.
Forcing unsafe disclosure
Participants should not be pressured to reveal painful experiences publicly or process trauma without appropriate support.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for leaders, founders, and professionals facing recurring patterns or consequential decisions.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal as a substitute for qualified mental-health support when reflection surfaces trauma or severe distress.
From the transcript
“They call it a lifeline.”
“we were supposed to identify three highlights in our life that changed our perspective of how we view the world, and three things that have…”
“If you acknowledge the lens and you understand the feelings and thoughts that are associated with that decision, you then have a fuller scope and…”
From the episode
Gary Vaynerchuk’s Growth Accelerator Program: My Experience and Key Takeaways (So Far)