If anyone out there is trying to create a vision of your ideal life or business and is tired of staring into a devastatingly blank computer screen or pad of paper, I encourage you to shift directions and think visual!
In this month’s ezine, I describe a number of tactics to discover your creative vision including:
- Purchasing a large bulletin board or piece of foamcore to put on your wall and collect great images
- Go to the bookstore and buy your favorite 6 magazines and pull out headlines, pictures, and ads that stoke your creative fire
- Imagine you are a photojournalist that has the assignment of capturing images that reveal your ideal life. Take pictures for a month and see what emerges!
- If you are a bit of a (closet) exhibitionist, participate in the wildly popular art blog PostSecret
- Create a personal deck of soul-tending cards using Soul Collage
- Search for stimulating pictures in online photo directories such as iStockphoto.com
- For the technically savvy, create a PowerPoint or Flash presentation with key images and words (like I did for my mini movie to inspire oppressed cube dwellers around the globe: My Declaration of Independence)
- Paint your picture – literally
Get the details here.
Any other good vision-creating tactics that you have used involving images instead of words? Please share!
Hi, Pam,
While creating my first drafts, chapters, of my novel, Sun Child, Prince of Egypt, on my iMac OS X 1.3.6, Panther, and using the very versatile Appleworks, I employed visual graphics to keep me inspired.
A chapter template with heading graphics, and extra graphics for different chapters. My old iMac is on the fritz, so I can’t send you a screenshot of what that was like, but you can see a little of what it was like with my chapter preview at http://reneodeay.com/chapt1prevu.html
I used some great graphics for my desktop too on that old iMac and on my first Mac OS 8.6 laptop (we’re talking dinosaur).
They definitely helped solve that ‘blank computer screen or blank word-processing screen”, and were great inspirations.
René O’Deay
Gotta love those foam bulletin boards. My old office had one, my home office doesn’t and I MISS IT!
I just wrote about something complimentary to this yesterday and I’ll add a link to this post. We often need to define ourselves positively and get stuck trying, so this is a way to break that blok and SEE something better.
Great advice. We’re big believers in thinking visually and creatively to solve problems. In fact, we’re building a place that we hope will be a source for kickstarting lots of great ideas -themuzeum.
Our vision-creating tactics are to browse the galleries and exhibits in themuzeum (dot com) to get ideas and inspiration.
Apologies for the self-promotion, but we’re very excited about the potential of a ‘global nation of creatives.’ It will be a great place for self-expression, idea sharing and problem solving.
Excellent article and fantastic advice. If I had to name the single hardest question I’ve found for people to answer honestly and with immediate certainty, it is What Do You Want?
Lindy
Congratulations on your pregnancy, Pam. Thank you for this post. It is great advice and makes me even more motivated and excited about what I want to create in my life. I love your blog. Thanks again!
Congratulations on your good news, Pam! I will know and affirm for you a smooth pregnancy with a calm stomach and an abundance of energy.