Focusing On Your Creative Self

Create a monthly vision board of out magazine images for work or home. Yes, you’ll be creating a collage for April but don’t let that stop you! There’s plenty of year left.

Gather a calendar, a few magazines, scissors, glue sticks, journal and pen and a bag for scraps.

Create your space. Find a quiet space where you won’t be disturbed for at least an hour. You can listen to music, but choose instrumental. You want a peaceful atmosphere to access your intuition. Take a break to make tea, etc. But try to finish the collage in one session.

Select a Creative Self. Once settled take a moment to center and close your eyes. Allow yourself to relax. As you breathe allow an image of your creative self to arise. This self is your partner in your collage creation. Silently ask it to reveal itself to you in an image.

Open your eyes. Select a magazine and flip through the pages, scanning for your creative self image. It can be a flower, a sunset, a child. The creative self on this calendar was the woman in the center of the kids. Cut out your image and set it aside where you can see it.

Find a focus. Choose a theme for the month. Themes can include a new home, a healthy lifestyle or having a relationship. In above example, I didn’t use a theme, but simply choose the images that I liked.

If you have a theme write it out in a simple phrase. “My ideal home.” “A healthy body.” “Inner peace.” Place your phrase next to your creative self image.

Grab what Grabs You. Quickly flip through the magazines and tear out images or phrases that grab you. Don’t trim, just pull out the entire page. Dig that bright alligator pillow? Grab it. At some point you’ll probably hear an inner grouch grumbling complaints like “Oh, that doesn’t go with the theme,” or “this won’t work.” Don’t listen to that critical voice.  This is your time. Just keep moving. Drown out doubt with the sound of your magazine being torn. This is a fast process. If you find an article you want to read, set it aside.

Select & Trim. Once you gather several pages of images, it’s time to sort. Look at your Creative Self image and phrase. Decide which images feel right. This is an intuitive process, so don’t think too hard. First, sort the pictures into two piles: Yes and Maybe. Don't use the scissors yet. Wait until the next step.

Design. Take your Creative Self image and place it in the center of your calendar page. Now place the images around it. Overlap images, use a small piece of a landscape, set one image inside the other. Trim all of the Yes images and set the Maybe pile aside. Don’t glue yet. This is only the design phase.

Talk Back to the Critic. Once the design is done, stop. Gaze at your layout and listen for any grousing from the critic. Now take your journal and set a timer for 2 minutes. Quickly jot down any internal negative chatter. Don’t filter. Just let the words flow onto the page. After two minutes, stop.

Read what you wrote. Notice how your body feels. If your chest tight? Feeling tired?

Next, reset the timer for two minutes. Hold your pen and imagine you are a feisty little kid that’s going to talk back to the critic. Now read the words again. Start the timer and quickly scribble your response. Let that critic have it. Four letter words allowed. When the timer goes off, read your response out loud at least three times. Really talk back. Take a few minutes to write about what you experienced.  

Glue the Collage. Now it’s time to glue. Take your time. Now that the critic voice has been dealt with, the images might end up in a new arrangement. This is natural. Before gluing, flip the image over and see if there is a picture on the other side that you like better. You may be surprised. This is the time to add images from the Maybe pile.

Reflection. Hooray, you have a finished collage! Journal about the process and the images. View your collage for at least 15 minutes a day. Allow the images to speak to you, and reflect on their meaning. Be choosy if you decide to share. Pick someone who is supportive, not judgmental. Remember, this is your vision. Share as little or as much about the process as you feel guided.

Next month, you’ll learn techniques on how to work with your vision board.

Check out dorothysegovia.com for more information on Visioning(R).

Our Allowance Receiver Meter

I recently lived a manifestation of my new collage. And it relates to what Esther Hicks, the popular speaker of the Abraham talks, calls The Art of Allowing.

I was in a Dodge Dart rental. Driving home after work on Highway 46 was an act of spontaneity. While driving, I realized I was inside the image of the car pictured on my collage. That is, I was in a squeaky clean new car, driving through rolling hills...listening to an Esther Hicks CD.

The next day, I decided to write to the image using the Dominant Hand/Non-dominant method. This method used both hemispheres of the brain to let our heart speak. Basically, we have a conversation with the image by asking questions with our dominant hand and answering with our non-dominant hand.

I intended to write to the entire image of the car, but became interested in the little diamond shaped antennae above the back windshield.

DH: Dear Diamond on Car, who are you in my collage?

NDH: I am your allowance receiver meter.
DH: How do you feel?
NDH: Like I am flying along ready to continue the journey!
DH: Why do you feel that way?
NDH: Because you are open to listening to your Self in a way that you never had before.
DH: How can you tell?
NDH: How excited, content and satisfied are you?
DH: Why, I feel the best and most excited in a grounded way, than I ever had before.

To take this understanding even further, antenna's are how we perceive our environment. That is, when you encounter someone in a bad mood, do you take it personally? If you aren't able to complete a project on your own, do you seek help or just give up? Do you allow yourself to enjoy a vision for your future, or do you habitually cut the dream off as soon as it appears because you can't imagine how it will happen?

Allowing ourselves to perceive through our heart, feel our joy, practice visioning and use right-brain journal techniques, keep life's magic alive.

What are you visioning for yourself today?  

The Next Wandering Step

Now that I've achieved my dream: living in a safe and sacred home in Ventura, I've been reluctant to create another collage. I don't want to trick myself. Being in the safe and sacred home in Ventura happened when I showed up at a particular house, with a particular warm and loving family. And here I was hoping that my collage meant that I was going to be living and working in Ventura. Well, I did. But what I meant when I created the collage was that I be working and living in Ventura longer than four days.

Instead I am wandering between Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. This afternoon I let myself follow a clearly marked trail through the orange groves in Cayucos, trying to find the fence line. Yesterday morning I was standing on the deck of a home on the back bay in Los Osos with a cup of tea, and last week I was in Carpinteria buying asparagus at Farmer's Market.

In my search for the "right job" and the "right place" it is easy to lose sight of what my heart knows. My heart knows that right now is a pretty good place to be if I like being buzzed by hummingbirds and don't mind the cute-faced dog Sammy-Sam-Sam sticking his black and white snout on my lap, hoping for another Premium Saltine.

 

I didn't know I needed to walk through groves of oranges and lemons, or listen to the birds chirping above traffic. But my heart knew. My heart knew that I needed to rest in the sun on a ranch without cell service and barely an Internet connection. My work today is looking up how to tell the difference between flying bald eagles or hawks when they are circling the valley. I'll also need to look up the meaning of lizards and deer on an animal-medicine card website.My heart has led me to a place where a lovely woman named Grace walks every night down the long road to follow the constellations. My heart has always known me better than my head does and for that I am grateful.

What does your heart know in this moment???

Please be bold, comment!

Stepping into the Dream Stream

Recently, after receiving guidance to do a specific task, I had to call transformational guide Leyla Atwill, author of Ten Secrets of Living Your Dream, for a phone rescue. See, I've been applying for job interviews in Ventura, but I clearly got the download to go ahead and apply for work in Arroyo Grande. I did try to make myself feel better by stating that “well, Arroyo Grande is on the way to Ventura,” but waaaaahhhhhh!!! I want to be in Ventura already and feel that anything less is failure.

Leyla told me to think about it like this:

“The length of time it takes for me to accept and allow Ventura, is equal to the time it takes to manifest Ventura.”

Now I'm just scared.

According to her book, the top secret is for me to feel love for where I am, right now. This is the most important work that I can do. Developing a self-love practice is at the core of reaching my dream. The reason is vibrational alignment. If I feel as if not being in Ventura right this second is coming up short, then I'm coming from lack, which is a feeling place of not being enough.

However, if I see myself standing on the shore of a big river, with Ventura on one side and me on the other, my intuition to take action towards Arroyo Grande represents a stepping stone in the river. I can't jump the whole river at this point, but I can step across the water, stone by stone.

Now the question becomes, can I love myself while standing on an Arroyo Grande stepping stone on the way to Ventura? If not, why not?

These questions are presented as a guide to recognizing habits that keep me from wading into the river in the first place; habits that I have developed as a coping strategy to avoid uncomfortable feelings.

Once when a friend and I were hiking in the Angeles Crest mountains near Pasadena, we crossed a small but swiftly moving stream. We had to step quickly across four or five stones to continue the hike. As we approached, we saw a couple on our side of the stream. The man was standing next to a woman crouched on the bank staring into the water. She seemed hypnotized. He seemed impatient.

Her analysis paralysis kept her from taking the first step. I know this feeling well. In my quest to unwind the feelings behind procrastination and doubt, it is easy to get caught crouching at the edge of the water. Paralysis is different every week, sometimes every day. Television, DVDs—especially the educational ones, ice cream and even voracious attendance of 12-step meetings, can keep me from following my guidance.

That crouching woman could have easily been me. But I trusted my buddy's sure-footed step. I watched where he placed his feet and quickly followed. This is the same as trusting my guidance. Quite frankly, when I look back across all of the streams that I have crossed, my inner guide has never left me stranded.

Despite my hesitation or my enthusiastic jumping into the stream for an icy swim, as long as I was listening, I have always safely reached the opposite shore.

Right now Ventura is my dream. It symbolizes expansiveness, opportunity, and connection. These qualities do not live in Ventura, they live in me.

“The length of time it takes for me to accept and allow Ventura, is equal to the time it takes to manifest Ventura.”


Leyla Atwill is a transformational coach in Los Osos. She creates a safety net for her clients to recognize, embody and release the habits and choices that keep them from reaching their goals and dreams. She can be reached at (805) 439-0268.