A Vision Board to Open Your Heart
January 31, 2008 | 12:54 pm
I have to say from the beginning that this isn’t my idea, more’s the pity. I’ve shamelessly taken it from Nick Papadopoulos at coachnick.com, but it intersects so completely with opening the heart that I have to share it here.
There was a time — not so very long ago — that I regarded life-coaches, sales-coaches, etc. much the same way I might a viral infection: to be avoided at all costs. All that rah-rah stuff, . I’d been on company “retreats” where people were forced to interact with others in artificial, strained environments, and there was nothing good about any of it.
But since a lot of my work in the last few years has been in the world of marketing, I’ve been forced to work with some of these people, and have learned that they are not all created equal. And that — as with all people — you can take what you want from their cornucopia of enthusiasm, gimmicks, and genuinely helpful stuff and discard the rest. Saint Thomas Aquinas counseled a student to absorb the good things he hears, and forget who said them. That’s not bad advice.
So with that caveat in mind, let’s go on to the Vision Board. Quoting from his website,
An accelerated learning technique I like to use in my sales workshops is called a ‘Vision Board’. With it you can put these very potent dreams down on paper and really get into them.
You’ll need:
White Poster Board (22×28)
Glue Stick
Scissors
Magic Marker
10 Magazines
An open mind & belief that you are creating your future.
Cut out pictures, symbols, words, headlines, letters, and quotes from the magazines which best represent the feeling that you got about your business dreams. If you get excited about an image, that’s the one to clip. Cut a slew of them out, maybe by category (work, home, family, sports, etc). Paste the pictures and words to the large poster board in any order and in any place that you feel is ‘right’. You can use the marker to write in any sayings, slogans, or thoughts that come to you while you are putting this board together. Date the Vision Board.
When you are done, you should feel great about having done this 2D declaration. It’s loaded with your enthusiasm and optimism. Share your ‘Vision Board’ with your family, friends, employees, vendors, etc. When you complete your Vision Board, you should declare out loud to the people around you and to yourself on a daily basis preferably in the am,
Why are declarations important? A declaration is an official statement. Since everything is made up of energy all energies travel in frequencies and vibrations. Therefore each declaration you make carries its own vibrational frequency. When you state a declaration out loud its energy travels subconscious your body, your conscious and subconscious mind and into the universe - this energy that you release expands and grows to produce more of your desired results as you declare repeatedly - basically, by feeding your mind, your subconscious and the universe your create empowering energy all around you.
Put your Vision Board up in a prominent place so you can see it daily. It will serve as a constant reminder of your goals, what’s important to you and where you are decidedly heading in 2008. And whenever you’re feeling a bit pessimistic, you can see the truth of your capabilities and the clarity of your vision staring right back at you.
Let the content (the picture and statements) on the “Vision Board” dictate your thoughts, feelings and actions in the present.
Basically, allow the future to be your compass so that you remain focused around the things that you want to create moving forward — rather than worrying about the past. Talk about a paradigm shift!
So what does this have to do with opening the heart? It’s simple: it’s all part of the same journey of discovery that takes place in each of the Open Your Heart books. Anytime we can see ourselves more clearly, whether it’s through art, or gardening, or geocaching, or winter sports … or vision boards … the more we’ll open our hearts, and help those around us to open theirs. There’s no “right” way to do this, folks.
Take what you can learn, and forget who it was that said it.
– Jeannette Cézanne
http://www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: Opening the heart — jcezanne
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Opening Your Heart to New Things
January 23, 2008 | 9:10 am
That’s what I’ve been thinking about lately. I was given an iTunes gift card for Christmas (thank you, père Noel!) and wondered what, in my vast shopping cart, I’d choose to buy. I spend a fair amount of time in my car, traveling either to Connecticut for a site visit to a client or to Provincetown for my own times of feeding my soul, and so the tunes I put on my iPod are carefully chosen.
I like to howl along as I drive, you see.
But this time I hesitated. I looked in my journal where I’d written a few musicians’ names with question marks beside them. I remembered the NPR story about another artist I’d heard recently. And so, after thinking abou adding these new voices to my world, I listened to the scraps iTunes allows, and I spent my gift card.
Last night I drove down to Provincetown and listened to all my New Music. And the experience proved to be both challenging and exhilarating: not knowing what was next on the playlist. Okay, so for most people that is probably not a big deal; but there’s more than a little obsessive-compulsive disorder in me, and it was a stretch.
And maybe that’s the best word to use for that sort of thing: stretch. I’m seeing a physical therapist for headaches, and he is working with me to stretch my neck, to improve my range of motion. Very uncomfortable indeed, but my muscles — like my musical repertoire — could do with a little stretching.
What would be a stretch for you today? Can you challenge yourself in one small thing, step outside of your comfort zone, try something new or different? The stretch isn’t comfortable, but most of the good things in life aren’t.
So that’s my challenge to you this week: find a place where you can stretch your boundaries, your assumptions, your comfort zone. And tell me how it goes!
– Jeannette Cézanne
http://www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: Something completely different, Opening the heart, Learning something new, Difficulty — jcezanne
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Opening The Heart — Even When You Don’t Want To
January 17, 2008 | 12:24 pm
The post-primary season here in New Hampshire has a little of the post-holiday feel to it … a little exhausted, a little deflated, a little anti-climactic. It’s the first time I’ve actually worked a primary for a candidate, and perhaps the fact that my candidate didn’t do well has something to do with my own feeling of letdown. I’ve been discouraged, it’s safe to say, for over a week now.
And then something extraordinary happened.
Two climbers were lost in blizzard conditions on Mount Hood a day or so ago. They created a snow-cave and survived the night, and were in cell phone contact with would-be rescuers; but they could not give their location, as they’d gotten lost the night before. But, amazingly, they came across a geocache … And every geocache includes a note with its GPS coordinates.
At a time when geocaching started to seem trivial to me (next to what I was seeing as a life-and-death political struggle), I read this account of it saving lives, and felt my heart opening all over again. There is good to be found everywhere, and those of us who pursue the hobby should be proud to be part of it.
In a couple of weeks I’ll be giving a talk for beginning geocachers at the Manchester City Library, and I know that the enthusiasm I’ve felt waning lately will be right there again.
And in the meantime, a very nice review of Open Your Heart with Geocaching has been picked up on the wires and is also, it has to be said, making me smile.
Maybe when you don’t want to open your heart, you should pause for a moment … because that may be the best time of all to do it!
– Jeannette Cézanne
http://www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: Geocaching, geocaching books, Opening the heart, Difficulty, Overcoming difficulty — jcezanne
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Please visit my blog at snowleopard.com!
January 14, 2008 | 9:13 pm
Thank you for visiting my blog on DreamTime Publishing! Please visit my blog at http://snowleopord.blogspot.com/ to check out the Snow Leopard Bicycling Club!
Posted by: Opening the heart — srohrbach
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A Breckenridge Mystery
January 11, 2008 | 9:11 pm
As some of you might know, I am working on a project that would benefit both the Backstage Theatre and the Breckenridge Heritage Alliance. The concept involves a dramatic script that would be performed progressively as vistors visit each of the Breckenridge Historic sites.
Once I came up with the project idea, I had a major mental block about what to put in the script. Then, I came across a writing contest that asked for a 1500 word mystery story that would be written on a 6th grade reading level. The suspects needed to be listed at the start of the story, and I only had a very short time to complete it.
In a workshop at the Backstage Theatre, Murphy Funkhouser once said that you can come up with your best work under pressure. While I would not exactly call this my best work, it did get me off my butt to get the basic story. Due to word count restrictions, I was not able to do the characterizations much justice. However, it’s a start. Needless to say, when it becomes a script, there will be some obvious changes, but for now, take a look:
Breckenridge Back in Time
Posted by: Opening the heart — lmercer
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It’s All About Hope
January 10, 2008 | 9:22 am
Whew! It’s been a busy time here in Manchester, New Hampshire! For about a week the streets have been taken over by media vehicles, candidates’ vehicles, the candidates and media folks themselves, and most of all, by people loudly urging others to vote for their candidate. It’s been something of a three-ring circus, which I watched (and, it has to be said, participated in) with some bemusement.
And then, on Wednesday, it all disappeared. Oh, a few trucks were still parked in hotel parking lots while their drivers got some much-needed rest. And candidate signs lay in the slop that used to be snow, but with recent high temperatures has become muddy slush. But Manchester returned to normal: the lights were turned off, the makeup removed, and life went on.
In the aftermath of all the excitement, one has to ask oneself what meaning one found in it all. I worked hard for a candidate who didn’t have a chance of winning, and in fact did not; so the aftermath was, for me, tinged with some disappointment, sort of an emotional hangover. But the true meaning was captured Monday afternoon when I met my friend Susan — a political photographer, so right in her element — for lunch at the Gala Café. Sitting next to us were two men who had come down from Canada in order to go door-to-door, to work for something positive, even though whatever happened here would only affect them indirectly and far in the future. They were here because they believed. They were here because they had hope.
And perhaps, at the end of the day, that’s what all this hoopla was about: hope. Opening one’s heart with change, to change, through change. I felt humbled: my own efforts were local, carefully scheduled so as not to upset my life and work; but they took time off from their lives, their work, to come and do this.
So maybe things will turn out better than we think, after all.
– Jeannette Cézanne
http://www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: Opening the heart — jcezanne
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Spring Break Destinations!
January 4, 2008 | 6:06 pm
Looking for a great spring break destination? Consider a ski resort! I wrote the following articles as a “public service.” Why rely on a commercial website, when you can get the inside scoop from a local or a frequent visitor?
Keystone Spring Break
Breckenridge Spring Break
Park City Spring Break
Whistler Spring Break
Have fun!
Posted by: Opening the heart — lmercer
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Happy 2008!
January 1, 2008 | 11:43 am
I’m working on a novel right now that takes place in 1942, and recently accessed a stack of newspapers from June of that year. Each copy cost five cents, though one is invited to subscribe for a year for two dollars. A strawberry social is announced at the Unitarian church. A local boy is featured in a children’s book about a dog. Tourists are in town, though pedaling bicycles rather than riding in cars. The community center is being remodeled to provide brighter and cheerier places for servicemen to attend dances and other functions. And the dragger Liberty is towed in by the dragger Stella when she develops clutch problems out at sea.
Josephine Tey wrote that history is not in accounts, but in account-books. And she is so right. I’ve read dozens of books now about World War II, about 1942 in particular, about the homefront in New England; but these newspapers are what really make me feel I understand the time in which my character lived.
What does that have to do with opening your heart? Plenty. As the new year begins, it’s a good reminder to look behind the easily accessible information, behind the obvious, and see what’s really there. To not be contented with the “accounts” we receive from biased sources — about news, about individuals, about situations — and see what the people really experiencing them have to say.
It’s going to be a great year for opening the heart!
– Jeannette Cézanne
http://www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: Something completely different, Opening the heart, Learning something new — jcezanne
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