Use Visioning in All Areas of Your Life

I have written about visioning in the past and have even done a post in the past about the book I will mention today. Sometimes it is good to revisit a book from the past. The book I am speaking of is written by Lucia Capacchione Ph.D., Visioning 10 Steps to Designing the Life of Your Dreams. If you have never read it do yourself and your life journey a favor and get a copy. She goes in depth in her 10 steps in the visioning process and how to do vision collages. Early on Lucia provides a statement that I feel captures the essence of visioning: “Visioning is purposeful daydreaming applied to everyday life. It is about thinking with our heart and allowing your true wishes to become reality”. Visioning has also been described in the idea of “Seeing with your mind’s eye”. I know when I would ask college students where do we see visioning used in life students would share areas such as sports, architecture, inventors and many other career areas. Visioning is looking outward to creating a reality from what we carry in our hearts and minds. Lucia rightly describes how visioning begins with dreaming. She provides a helpful section discussing how dreaming is a foundation for our visioning. She uses in the introduction of her book the example of the dream of Walt Disney that turned into a vision for Disneyland which then turned into the reality of Disneyland. My favorite quote about dreaming is “It is not that we desire too much, but that we desire too little. Our appetites are not too big, they are too small.” By C.S. Lewis. We limit ourselves in our lives by having little dreams or saying we are too old to dream. But we can have new dreams at every stage of life. A good example of this is the story of John Goddard. When he was a teen about 14 he came up with a list of about 120 things he wanted to do with his life. By the time he was 40 he had accomplished most of the list. What many people don’t know is he kept dreaming and by the time he died in his 80’s his list was over 300. We can keep dreaming and visioning. Now in turning your dream into a vision in Lucia’s book she says to focus your mind on key words and phrases that describe your dream. Write these down on paper. Meditating on what you are forming think what is in your heart for a title of your dream? Then craft a verbal affirmation or a personal declaration related to your dream. This leads to a focus phrase that will be hook in your mind as you look for images for your vision collage. Another thing I like about her book is that she explains how moving from words to pictures helps in building a vision poster in collage form to solidify your vision and dream inside of you. So at this point you move beyond word sorting & sifting through pictures and key words that expand your Theme Phrase you created. Lucia in the book recommends looking though magazines and cut out pictures and words the speak to your about your vision theme. Be concrete and specific in your search. Sometimes your inner critic will speak up and say this is silly or a waste of time. If that happens tell your inner critic to “take a hike”. Make room for imagination and be your own Dream Weaver. Now with your pictures and words cut out, do some matching and development of your Collage Design. Move the pictures and words you cut out of magazines around the surface of your poster. Allow an order to form and then prepare to paste the pictures and words to the poster. I have provided just a few basics from her book here to create an appetite to get a copy of her book or request it at your local library. Look at your present life journey and see where and what a vision collage experience may help you keep moving forward to what you want in life. Reflection: Take some quiet time and vision yourself into the future 5 years ahead. Do some dreaming and think where do you see yourself and what do you want for your life? Create a theme for that 5 years in the future. Then get a small poster board and look for pictures and other key words to motivate your vision. Include the theme you created on your poster. Then create your vision collage pasting the pictures and words on your poster board. Keep your vision collage somewhere you will regularly see it.