Simplify, digitize, systematize and make it portable are the key ingredients to much of my life’s magic. In my first official lesson in the Life Is an Art Form series of classes we’ll apply these 4 mantras to a creation of the vision board – a manifestation tool made popular by the movie The Secret. If you haven’t yet experienced its power, please trust me and just do it. If you have, then you need no convincing but perhaps a few techniques in making the habit stick. Most, if not all, of my amazing life experiences started as a humble image physically or digitally pinned to a board.
Supplies required for this class:
- Dreams (the bigger the better)
- A device with Internet connection
Ready? Let’s begin…
- Open Google e images search in browser (Cooliris makes a browser plugin and an iPhone app that make it prettier but not essential)
- Think of something you would like to be, do or have (aka DREAM)
- Type in your dream into the search and find the most inspiring image
- Save the image to your hard drive or mobile device
- Repeat steps 2-4 until you run out of dreams
- Set the folder with your new images into slideshow mode, sit back and fully immerse yourself into your dream life. I recommend about 1 minute per slide intervals to really focus on each image, recreate the dream scene in your mind and feel all the emotions, colours and sounds that go with it.
The minimalist version of the digital vision board ends here.
Advanced students can perform this additional step:
Those using a mobile device or wanting to make the vision board portable need to sync the images to the computer, place them in separate folder outside of you main cameral roll and sync that folder between the mobile device and the computer. This way each time you add new images to the folder, they will be automatically transferred to the mobile device.
I personally use mobile device digital vision board a lot more than my computer one. It accompanies me while I brush my teeth, have a contemplative cup of tea, listen to music or simply muse. I set my synced dreams folder on my mobile device into (shuffled) slideshow mode and enjoy.
Manifestation mastery students should consider going full scale and add the extra final step to the creation process which will produce an online version of the vision board accessible from anywhere, sharable, viewable, blog embeddable.
- Sign up for a free Flickr account
- Create set “Vision Board“
- Upload your dream folder images to the set (I use FlickStackr iPhone app to upload from iPhone or Windows Live Photo Gallery to batch upload from computer).
You can now view your vision board as a collection of thumbs or a slideshow any time any where on any computer. You can share it with friends or embed in your blog. It eliminates the need to advanced step 2 above as you simply sync flickr set to mobile device (through FlickStackr or FlickrHD apps) for portable view.
A few more tips for creating a truly useful omnipresent vision board:
- I use Photo Joy (google something similar for Mac) to create beautiful dynamic screen savers and desktop backgrounds with my dream images folder.
- I have created a separate life essentials board which is similar to a vision board but where vision board hosts images of things I want to experience in the future, life essentials board contains the images of things that truly make me happy in my day to day life that constitutes the majority my present. Viewing this board helps me focus consciously and subconsciously on the things that make me happy thus prioritizing my time and filtering out the non essential “noise” of life.
- I openly share both vision and life essentials boards on my blog, have new Flickr uploads automatically posting on my Facebook wall and constantly add and remove images from the boards to keep them fresh, inspiring and alive.
- I don’t limit the boards to only dreams but add affirmations and other things I want to focus on and develop.
Please discuss your own methods and uses for digital vision boards in the comments below and share this post with other aspiring students in the Life is an Art Form school who would be interested in mastering the art of manifestation.
