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.

Big Bend Bucket List Item

In my book, Living More Than Ok, (found at Barnes & Noble and Amazon – don’t tell me yes a selfish book pitch!) I encourage following Dream lists in the spirit of John Goddard. Some call them Bucket Lists. For years visiting Big Bend National Park has been our list. This past week we crossed that off our list and we were so glad we went there even though we were told it was the off season due to it being so hot.

We have visited Grand Canyon and were awestruck by the grandeur of the canyon. I visited years ago Rocky Mountain National Park with my brother. The sight of the mountains there is a majestic picture of nature’s beauty. What amazed me about Big Bend was the diversity as you can see in the pictures above. Up in the Chisos mountains you have pines trees and greenery. Then on the lower levels where ranches once stood, you have desert plants and canyons. We were told in April the desert floor is a sea of red and yellow from the cactus flowers. So we plan in the future to go back during that time of year.

We took several of the scenic drives where at every turn the splendor of creativity is seen. You could drive the same route and never be bored as there is so much to see. For each of us different things stood out on each drive. It was so hot we did not see much wildlife except for rabbits and road runners. A family staying near us said they had seen deer and they come across someone who had seen a mountain lion with cubs (personally I had no desire to see a mountain lion—I don’t like the idea of being a snack for another species).

Speaking of the family who stayed near us, we lodged at Big Bend Casitas in Terlingua. I highly recommend staying there. The cabins had an old west charm and were clean and neat. The staff at Far Flung Outdoor Center, who runs the cabins, was friendly and helpful about the area. With Far Flung they do guided river tours, ATV tours and jeep tours. We took a morning jeep tour on our next to the last day. The tour was supposed to be off road in a specially built jeep but there were flash flood warnings from early morning rains so our guide took us into a paved road run in the National Park. Our tour guide, Randy, was amazing with the historical knowledge he had about the area as he drove us down to the Castelon visitor center and the Santa Elena Canyon. Coming back we experienced the flash flooding as a roadway that had been dry 30 minutes earlier was covered in a flowing stream so we had to wait for the water to go down. That impressed us as well with the Far Flung team, as they were interested in safety of their customers.

In Terlingua being such a small town the restaurants are few in number but still very good food. If you go there or I should say when you go there; don’t miss out on eating at La Kiva. The experience is like eating in a cave with beautiful wood tables. There pizza is fantastic. I am usually not fond of white pizzas but their’s with spinach, artichoke hearts and tomato slices is a wonderful taste treat. The staff at La Kiva I felt were the friendliest of the restaurants in town.

If you enjoy national parks add Big Bend to your bucket list. The sunsets and diverse beauty captures the imagination. It is a place to find solace and think over your life. Since I look at life from a Christian world view, at the park and while looking at the night sky made me ponder about the God behind it all and my place in His purpose. No matter what your worldview the Big Bend experience is a must within your life journey.

Reflection: Click on the hyperlink to Big Bend National Park above and look over the pictures. What do the pictures of the park make you think and feel? Reflect on your favorite times in state or national parks. What are your favorite memories? When do you plan to visit Big Bend?

Following Your Dreams!

Sloughing through life in OK mode leads to a life as Henry David Thoreau verbally pictured, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” A great number of people move through life unfulfilled-- watching reality TV, spending free time roaming shopping malls, or surfing the internet or absorbed in their iphones. Not living up to the potential that is within. One of the many ways to Live More Than OK is how I often end emails to students – “Follow Your Dreams!”

Developing your dreams and following them unleashes potential in your life to maximize your experiences. Walt Kallestad says in his book Wake Up Your Dreams, (can be found in libraries or used bookstores), “Dreams can help us see the invisible, believe the incredible, and achieve the impossible.” Creating dreams of what you want out of life can wake up passions for new hobbies, life adventures, new career paths, and new relationships. They allow us to achieve more in life than we could ever imagine!

John Maxwell in his recent book, Put Your Dreams to the Test, mentions how some people live their lives based on the dreams of others. This is seen in young people doing sports their parents want them to do. Students who aim for careers their parents want them to do. This can cause lack of fulfillment and future anxiety as we were not made to live another’s dreams. We were made to live the dreams we were meant to live. Maxwell then takes the reader through a series of questions to reflect over in creating and developing their own dream.

One of the best examples of a person who is an amazing dream maker and dream follower is a man named John Goddard. His story amazed me when I came upon it while internet surfing ideas for a lecture to students on dreams and goal setting. I have used it ever since, with College students to open their minds to the potential each one has to do so many things in their lifetime. John when he was 15 on a rainy day took out a pad of paper and wrote out 127 things on his “My Life List”. The list included places he wanted to go, things he wanted to learn, careers he wanted to follow. Some of his adventures in traveling around the world are noted in his book, The Survivor. Here are some examples from his list: explore the Nile river, climb Mt. Ararat, visit every country in the world, visit the Great Wall of China, visit The Taj Mahal, ride an elephant, study native medicines follow the John Muir Trail, high jump 5 feet, read the entire Bible, read the works of Tolstoy, Plato and Aristotle, play Claire De Lune on the piano. At the time of writing his book he had completed 111 of his original list and expanded the list to 500 items. That is what I call dreaming big. What I admire about the story as well is; he did not stick to just his list of 127, but has kept over his years expanding his possibilities. Do check out his website and read his amazing story -- http://www.johngoddard.info/index.htm

Set aside some free time on a weekend or evening and create your own life dream list. Dream Big about the things you desire to do, places you want to travel to, things you want to learn! If you do Journaling, write your list in your journal, or you may want to make a creative poster of your dream list. Do write it down so you can begin checking your dream items off as you accomplish them.

You may say how does this relate to my previous post on our choices towards Happenstance events or as I see them as God Moments. If happenstance is where it’s at, why plan anything or dream dreams?? Having recently, the opportunity to hear Dr. Krumboltz speak on the issue of Happenstance and life; he pointed out that he is not against dreaming or goal setting. Instead he encourages people to be open and flexible to new possibilities instead of rigidly hanging on to your dreams. Hanging on to a dream may bring you near destruction. I remember when working at a warehouse when I was younger; I had lunch with a lady who shared how she had been almost killed by her ex-husband and needed plastic surgery from the beatings. I asked her why she stayed so long with him until the near fatal beating. She replied she had thought he was her dream prince charming. A dream that nearly killed her. Again thinking of John Goddard’s list, he after many years did not complete everything on his list, instead he opened his mind to 373 new possibilities.

Follow your dreams! But keep open to new possibilities!