VISION BOARDING COULD BE REAL MAGIC
A few weeks ago, a new friend and previous client invited me over for tea and to see where she had placed the small Ganesh statue I had given her for the beautiful master garden in her back yard. She also suggested we use this time to create vision boards. Both of us have been struggling with the directions we want our lives to head, albeit in different arenas. My friend, let’s call her Tatiana, had read a previous blog I wrote on vision boarding that highlighted a major shift in my artistic presence in the world. She wanted to experience that kind of shift in her career.
THE POWER OF MANIFESTATION
My sister and I used to have a tradition of going to the Oregon Coast for her birthday. We would have dinner, stay the night at a hotel, talk all night, and create vision boards. Her birthday is January 11th, so this vision board activity always had a New Year Resolution theme. What did we want to create in our lives that year?
One of those weekends, I didn’t really have particular desires in mind, so I just focused on images that appealed to me. This is the result of that night.
Now see that little girl on the left holding a boom pole and the camera? I knew why I put that there, but it was a dream I had given up on. A documentary project had fizzled out and I couldn’t get anyone reliable to help me finish it. But, I put these images on my vision board anyway. And, then forgot about this vision board after it was stuffed in a close
Fast forward several years to March 2017. A filmmaker friend discovered that I had written a screenplay that was packed away in the dust from 10 years ago. He asked to read it and encouraged me to make the film myself since Hollywood hadn’t shown much interest. After that talk, events and resources appeared in my life and, all of sudden, I was directing and producing a film called IN HER BLOOD with a full crew and cast – with all the equipment I needed within my limited budget. As an independent filmmaker, sometimes you must hold a boom pole for a shoot – and I did – just like that picture in the vision board.
The movie premiered in November 2017 at our local college and will soon be available for streaming on Amazon Prime!
Shortly after the premiere, I was storing the film equipment in my closet and came across the above vision board. I realized instantly what had happened. The act of creating that vision board and trusting my truth assisted my unconscious to speak to the universe and manifest my dreams!
THE POWER OF MANIFESTATION – TAKE TWO
Now back to me and Tatiana creating our vision boards in her beautiful backyard garden.
This particular day, I was more interested in supporting my friend in manifesting her career goals and talked with her the entire time while I cut out my pictures and arranged them on my board (see below). I seriously wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing at all. My unconscious was literally in charge of my process, allowing me to be present for Tatiana.
After I left her house, I stared at the vision board and couldn’t believe my eyes. It spoke to every issue in my life – spiritual, emotional, financial, physical, and even my career. I saw its wisdom and, with my new-found respect for the power of the vision board, I took it home and put it in full view below my Buddhist altar. I immediately began chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo (my spiritual practice), in an effort to embrace the wisdom the vision board was communicating to me.
Immediately, I saw the results in my life. I gained clarity about where I compromised my time and career by accepting less than I deserved, and I decided to cancel a sub-contract. This freed up time for me to focus on building my own website and business and gaining new clients without a middleman. I saw where I allowed other people’s desires to influence my decisions when I needed to focus on what I wanted in my life. I lost most of my fear around declining requests, including from my children and partner. I am trusting they have the life skills to do for themselves, what I have done for them in the past. I developed more trust in my intuition and have completed projects that have been hanging around for some time now because I doubted I was good enough to complete them. I reached out to my network and asked for more writing assignments and was given three new writing opportunities on topics I love to write about. There is more, but I’ll stop there for now.
I invite you to try this truly mystical process and experience clarity in your life.
HOW TO MAKE A VISION BOARD
Materials
- You need magazines. Magazines I like are Oprah, National Geographic, Real Simple, Psychology Today and gardening/animal magazines of all kinds.
- A board. It can be a piece of cardboard, poster board, foam board, or even a piece of flat wood. It could even be the backboard from a large picture frame obtained from Goodwill, which would make it easier to frame later.
- Elmer’s glue, Mod Podge, or glue stick.
- Scissors
- Optional: Paintbrush to help with spreading the glue.
- Optional: A nice beverage and a few yummy snacks.
Instructions
- Flip through the magazines and tear out any picture or words that speak to you for any reason. Don’t worry about whether you will use them for your vision board.
- Once you have flipped through all the magazines, begin playing and arranging the pictures, phrases, and words on your board.
- As you get the inclination, cut the pictures down to size, and keep moving them around until something clicks. Toss a picture aside if it doesn’t feel right.
- Begin gluing your selections to the board surface, continuing to allow your intuition and vision to speak to you. You can’t do it wrong.
- Continue until your entire surface is covered and glued.
When you are done, place the vision board somewhere special, somewhere you can see it every day. Maybe you would like to put a candle next to it and light the candle, while you meditate on the images. Maybe you will decide to frame it and place it on the wall next to your bed so that it is the first thing you see every morning. Allow it to work its magic within you, while you journal about what you dream for your life… and develop your plan of action to make those dreams come true.
I never make promises about outcomes, but I can tell you this: Every vision board I have created has either contributed to the manifestation of long sought-after goals in my life or has assisted me in true clarity and direction towards living the life I want to create.
This is an exercise in trusting yourself and allowing the universe within you to reveal a vision and see real magic in your life.
