Early February is a powerful time of regrowth, regeneration and perfect for sowing gthe seeds of what you wish to manifest. This week marks the Celtic celebration of Imbolc, also known as Brigid’s Day – celebrating the re-emergence of spring and new growth.. We have a new moon and the start of the Chinese New Year this week too. This is an incredibly potent time to set your intentions of what you wish to create this year and in the years to come. I highly recommend you spend some time doing a vision board, or sitting quietly and focusing in on what qualities, experiences and situations you wish to manifest in your life.
This is the time when your energy, passion and motivation will start to increase after the long winter slumber. Embrace this, make changes, focus on what you need, what you want and what you want to give and create in the world.
Excerpt from my book: ‘YES YOU CAN create a life you love’ on creating a vision board:
Creating a Vision Board
Set yourself up, ideally in a quiet space where you won’t be interrupted. Read
through the instructions below before getting started, so that you understand the
activity as a whole. Then come back to the top and read through as you carry
out the suggested steps.
Take your time with this first step. Quieten down. Contemplate. Reflect. You
may even feel that you want to spread this step out over a few hours or a few
days.
Either: a) Create a Vision Board
What you will need:
One A3 (ideally) piece of heavy duty paper or card.
Or: b) Create a Vision Book
What you will need: A beautiful journal or notebook or heavy duty ring-bound
collage/scrapbook
For both: Colouring pencils, pens or paints.
Optional: Magazines to cut up; Scissors; Glitter and glue.
Getting started
Make sure you have allowed yourself an hour of uninterrupted time. It would be
good if you are in a lovely location, feeling relaxed. You may wish to do this
outside, sitting quietly in woodland or beside water, or in the mountains. It
might be more practical or you may prefer to be indoors. Choose a lovely room
in your house, possibly light some candles, burn some incense or essential oils.
Choose a place that you feel particularly drawn to, then sit and spend some time
quietly becoming aware of your present surroundings.
Close your eyes and take a few deeper breaths. Allow your body to relax and
your mind to calm.
Now create your vision
When you’re feeling relaxed and present, close your eyes and ask yourself:
What changes would I love to see in my life?
Spend some time thinking about how you would like your life to look – in an
ideal dream life scenario. Don’t judge anything that comes to mind, just put it
down on your paper. You will be coming back to edit this at a later stage.
Suggested areas to cover are:
Wealth and finances
Relationship with life partner
Living situation and home life
Career, work, vocation and life purpose
Spirituality, nourishment, looking after yourself
Relationships with friends
Relationships with family
Health, well-being, exercise, diet
Hobbies, interests
Then start writing down and/or drawing this vision, detailing what you want and
how you would like your life to look. Let your imagination soar. Don’t dampen
down your dreams before you have allowed yourself to hear them.
You might enjoy flicking through magazines and finding words or photos to put
on your vision board.
You might like to use your colouring pencils and write keywords that represent
how you would like your dream life scenario to look.
Try and allow yourself to really enjoy this activity and get stuck in. Get
creative. Don’t hold back. Really allow it to be your ideal, dream situation. If
you want to own a speedboat – put that down. Allow yourself to daydream.
There are no right or wrong images or words to put on your vision. Try not to
judge what you are asking for. This is for you only – you don’t need to show it
to anyone. Nobody is going to judge you. It’s ok to feel like you are aiming for
a fantasy life. Do this in a playful way. Let yourself go. Dream, imagine, feel,
see, smell, visualise, daydream, enjoy.
What to do if you are you struggling with your vision board
Now some people find this visioning exercise comes to them really easily. They
are very clear about how they want their life to look and what changes they
want to see in their lives. However, there are also many people that find this
stage one of the biggest stumbling blocks. I often hear ‘yes, but that’s the
biggest problem, I don’t really know what I want to do for a job/where I want to
live/what I could change in my life/where to start/what I’m doing with my life’.
These are really common comments.
I do think we all know deep down what we want, but for some, it is so deep
down, it isn’t easily accessible. For others, judgement, fear, disbelief that we
can have it, low self-esteem, past conditioning, our negative ego self-sabotage
and/or a desire to put others needs before our own can block us from being able
to notice and hear what we want without realising that’s happened. If this is the
case for you, I would recommend you go back to basics and make a note of the
small details of what you know you would like. I have compiled a list of
questions that will hopefully help invigorate and inspire your vision and give
you some statements, ideas and images for your vision board or book.
You might feel that you need to start pondering these questions below and then
come back to it at a later point.
Questions to ask yourself
Do I want to be happy? How does this happiness look?
Do I want to be financially abundant? How much money would make me
feel abundant?
Do I want a partner? Or to improve or deepen my connection in my
current relationship? What changes would I like in my relationship?
Do I want good physical health? How different would that be? How
would that look?
Do I want a reason/passion for getting up in the morning? What would
make me feel passionate?
Do I want to feel good, loved, wanted, important and/or acknowledged?
What things/people/experiences make me feel that now?
Do I want to travel? Where to? With whom?
Do I want to go on holiday? Where, when, who with, how often?
Do I want to do more physical exercise? What sort? What do I enjoy?
Do I want to move house or location or country? Or make changes to my
current property?
How do I want my life to be, look, feel?
What inner emotions would I like to be feeling – happy, loved, secure,
peaceful, content?
What changes would I like to see in my life?
What isn’t working well for me? How could that improve?
There might be one area or there may be many areas in your life where you
want change.
For all of the above questions, please give as much detail about each of them as
you can. Dream as big as you feel able to at this stage, and then put these
answers on your vision board or book.
For example – do you want financial abundance? Yes. How much money per
month or year would make you feel financially abundant? How much are your
minimum outgoings per month? How much money would you need to help you
feel like you could do everything you want to do with your life and your
family?
For example – do you want to be happy? Yes. How will you know if you are
happy? What things make you feel happy? What things make you feel unhappy?
– this can help inform you of what makes you feel happy.
Vision board negativity and resistance
Some of your answers might have flowed really easily to you and others you
might be struggling with. The areas that are more challenging to answer, will
probably be the ones you to need to work on and look at the most. They will
also be where you will gain the most learning and wisdom.
Notice if you have any resistance or judgement to doing this exercise. This is
very common, if not inevitable, certainly in some areas.
While you are doing this activity, you may hear or observe a lot of negative
thoughts coming up for you. You may want to keep a pen and paper by your
side so you can write these down while you are doing this exercise. Notice any
negativity – that is really important. Acknowledge and observe these thoughts,
but don’t judge them or yourself. Make a note of them at this stage, that is all,
we will come back to that.
Often the phrases that people say they have coming up are:
‘I couldn’t have that much happiness’
‘I can’t earn that much money’
‘That will cost too much’
‘That won’t happen for me’
‘But I’m not educated enough’
‘That’s greedy’
‘I don’t know how to feel happy’
‘I don’t believe this is possible.’
‘I don’t have enough support’
‘But I’m not lovable or I don’t deserve or I’m not worthy’
‘Not everyone can get what they want’
‘No one has it all
‘That’s just being selfish’
These are really common and all human beings have thoughts like these from
time to time passing through our minds. You are not alone. The trick is learning
how to work through these disbeliefs, to allow abundance to flow into your life.
We will come back to this at a later stage.
In the meantime, go back to your vision and enjoy it, nobody is watching, you
are allowed to daydream.
Extending your vision board practice
You can edit and change your visioning board as your thoughts get clearer.
You may also wish to do a different vision board or separate page in your book
for each area of your life. I personally find that I like to do a general vision
board with my overall vision, and then if there is a certain area of my life that
needs more attention, I like to do one for that specific area too and expand upon
the smaller details.
‘Create the grandest highest vision for your life, because you
become what you believe’ Oprah Winfrey, television presenter
and personality
What you focus on expands
Make sure you only note what you DO want to manifest into your life. What
you focus on expands. Think about what you would like to see more of in your
life.
I often notice when people do this exercise for the first time, they can only think
about the things they don’t want anymore.
For example:
‘I don’t want to be working in this line of work anymore’
‘I don’t want to be hard up and struggling financially’
‘I don’t want to be cheated on again’
‘I can’t see how it is going to change’
Work with these negative thoughts. Turn them around into asking for what you
do want.
For example:
A) ‘I don’t want to be working in this line of work anymore’ becomes:
‘I want to retrain to become a lawyer/chiropractor/teacher’
‘I want to earn more money and work less hours’
‘I want to feel more fulfilled and satisfied in my work’
‘I want to work for myself/set up my own business’
B) ‘I don’t want to be hard up and struggling financially’ becomes
‘I want to increase my income from now.’
‘I want to become financially abundant.’
‘I want to earn good money doing a job I love.’
‘I want money to easily flow into my life.’
‘I want to be financially supported and secure.’
C) ‘I don’t want to be cheated on again’ becomes
‘I want to meet someone who loves and honours me’
‘I want to meet a committed partner’
‘I deserve to feel loved, lovable and loving’
D) ‘I can’t see how this is going to change’ becomes
‘I am open and receptive to positive changes in my life.’
‘I am opening my mind to new creative ideas and change.’
Why you are creating a vision board or book
There are two main reasons for creating a vision board or book:
1. To enable you to gain more clarity about what you really want.
2. To allow yourself to see what is holding you back from receiving.
We will be developing both of these ideas further as this book progresses.
If you are able to do this visioning in one sitting, that is fine. However, for
some, it can be a slower journey as it can bring up a lot of ‘stuff’, for example,
feelings of lack of creativity, low self-worth, a lack of deserving, despondency,
anxiety and, very commonly, strong feelings of disbelief. Hang on in there, slow
and steady progress is good and more sustainable long-term.
‘Believe in your dreams and that anything is possible.’ Usain
Bolt, athlete.
Maybe you can get started today, by just thinking of one thing for your vision
board and you could then commit to adding one thing per day for as long as it
takes until you feel it is complete. I know I often need a bit of time for my mind
to process and integrate these ideas before getting them down on paper.
Try not to engage your logical brain
Whilst you are doing your visioning and thinking about what changes you
would like to create in your life, allow this to be an inspired, intuitive process
and vision. Do not try and work out logically and intellectually how you can
make this happen. This is really important. Suspend any thoughts about
working out your plan of action for these changes to occur. You must only
focus on the what and you have to trust that the universe will deal with the
how.
You are learning to work with the energy of the universe in a different way
from how you’re used to. We are conditioned from our earliest childhood about
how to get what we want in life. However, with this process, you are going to
be learning to do things very differently: how to let your life source energy
flow; how to live in the flow of your life; how to work with universal energy
and how to open yourself to receive in inspired and unexpected ways. We will
be developing this at a later stage in this book.
Trust in this process. You are on a new exciting journey. Keep the faith for now
and watch this new journey of yours unfold. That’s all your logical brain needs
to know at this stage.
‘Most of us have never allowed ourselves to want what we truly
want, because we can’t see how it’s going to manifest’ Jack
Canfield, best-selling author of Chicken Soup for the Soul.