New dream board tool on Oprah.com

Check out this new free tool on Oprah.com. You can create a beautiful vision board in minutes. The photos are from Getty Images so there’s plenty of inspiring ones to choose from.

It’s the first time I’ve created a vision board on my PC. Always gone for the manual way before. I think there are benefits to both. This is a lot quicker but I enjoy flicking through the magazines and selecting the photos. Both are great fun though…and both work! (See my old posts).

Great article from O Magazine also, written by Martha Beck, about how to best create a vision board. Covers the importance of letting go of the ideas once you’ve ‘put them out there’. You create the vision and put the power into it while you’re making the board, after that you can let it go. Makes a good point – when you hear of people who’s amazing visions have come true, they always seem to say: “It was only two years later, as I unlocked the door to my dream home, that I remembered that vision board” etc.

The important thing I think is to put all your creativity and effort into it while you’re doing it. Get yourself ‘in the zone’ by doing whatever feels good for you. Whether it’s lighting a candle while sipping tea and listening to soothing music or ordering a pizza and cranking up the ACDC (air guitar optional). By the way, there’s no limit to the number you make or how often you can make a new one. I have four now – the one I made in England, the one I made at the vision board workshop when I arrived in California, one I created for my novel, and now the Oprah one.

Dream on people!

How life can change after you make your first vision board…

Where, oh where, have the months gone?

A quick summary…

1. Was invited to a vision board workshop at beautiful ranch in Topanga a few weeks after arriving in LA. (Hadn’t even heard of vision board workshops before this). Met the fantastic ‘certified vision board facilitator’ (Ditto).

2. Competition to win a one-hour session with said facilitator. Guess who won it? That’s right. Me. Shock number two – she hands me her card. She is an editor and I am writing a novel. My novel includes a vision board (*insert twilight zone music here*).

3. Had a fantastic session with said facilitator. She suggested using it to look at my book since we’d made vision boards at the workshop. Judith Fine-Sarchielli. Fantastic editor, vision board coach, and Tuscan chef (she lived in Italy for 20 years)

4. Re-wrote some of book as a result and uploaded to ‘Authonomy’ website run by Harper Collins. Bit of a time-consuming site but worthwhile for feedback.  My pen name is ‘Amelia Field’.

5. Volunteered to help Judith with vision board workshop. Watch this space…

6. Now have a second updated vison board made at the workshop. Love it. Also made one to depict my book’s plot at Judith’s suggestion. Amazingly useful. Made a third vision board for friend who gave me a wonderful intuitive healing session. Her professional name is ‘Loving Essence’. First time I’d had anything like that and I felt a bit awkward but she was so kind and wonderful that it was a complete pleasure and very interesting. Board I made was themed around ‘gratitude’ (pic below). Another idea from Judith. Vision boards as gifts! Great idea.

7. Loving LA.

NUMBER 2

from The Dreamer, Manchester, England

From The Dreamer, Manchester, England

I put my dream board together really instinctively. There’s a quiet room in the house where I can go and write and that sort of thing so I chose a time when I wouldn’t be interrupted. Someone had told me that it’s important to get into the right frame of mind so I lit a couple of candles and put on some music which inspires me. I got together a pile of magazines covering a range of topics so the photos would be varied including Health& Beauty, Easy Living, Homes and Gardens, Psychologies and newspaper mag supplements.

Then I just started flicking and chopping. Now and again I fancied a photo but the ‘critic’ voice in my head which says all of this is airy fairy nonsense (we’ve become quite well-acquainted of late) would tell me it was ‘wrong’ or there was ‘no point’. I ignored it on purpose and cut it out anyway. Then at the end I laid all the pictures out and looked for gaps in different parts of my life. So there were lots and lots of spas and yoga pictures (I was having quite a bad time at work at the time. Also I am a sucker for a nice spa) but nothing about money. This is an area I tend to be a bit scared of so I purposely added an image with sums and hearts and a yellow piece of paper (my favourite colour) with ‘Money’ written on it surrounded by £££s. I added other bits of paper with words written on them as well to balance this out. The words which came to mind were: Love, Beauty, Joy, Peace.

I left it all for a few days then before coming back and starting to arrange the pictures. I did this a few times over about a week before sticking them down. I chose a big piece of card and left spaces so that I can add more as this feels right to me. When it came to arranging the pictures I just went with my instinct again and enjoyed doing that.

The result was very pleasing. I felt a wave of excitement in my stomach. Every day after that I spend say five minutes, sometimes less even just a quick look if I was busy, looking at it and really feeling the images. Some days I looked more at individual pictures. There’s a picture of a boat with a paradise island in the background with the words ‘Splendid Isolation’. There is a picture of a woman meditating by a lake. There are two women running along a beach which especially appealed to me. I had also chosen people playing musical instruments. I didn’t know why but just went with it. The words ‘Changed my life’ and ‘Creating the me I want to be’ leapt out at me a lot. Other days I would look at the whole, just breathe it in. I felt an amazing calm and optimism doing this. I think it works because it is just perfect for me. I created it. No-one else could have done.

Here are the results so far. As above, it immediately made me a feel a lot better and more optimistic and focussed on what I wanted in life. Not in a specific sense as such, but in terms of the feeling I want more of in my life – calm, peace, relaxation, health. Also in terms of some of the things which make me feel happy – the sea, yoga/spas/running, books, healthy food.

Now that’s all very nice and lovely etc and it would be fine if it ended there. What has happened though is that really from nowhere during the last few weeks I’ve been able to leave a job I wasn’t enjoying, a person who was making my life very difficult has been removed from it, the time and resources have just appeared to help me feel much happier and healthier, and most amazingly of all I am going to live overseas in an amazing place beyond my wildest dreams by the sea with all set-up expenses paid.

So basically if you are feeling unhappy with your life or even if you’re on the right track but want to speed up realising your dreams, give this a try. And please do let me know how you get on!

You could be amazed.

The Dreamer.