Hello, Universe! It's me, Mandy

A work colleague of mine from years ago used to write a wish (dream, goal, intention) on a piece of paper and tuck it away in the back of a drawer. It was a mindful and purposeful way of telling the Universe what she wanted.

It’s not a new concept. Visualization, meditation, lists, journal entries, vision boards, intention boards all help us clarify what we want from life (in a career, in a partner, in friends).  My sister faithfully creates vision boards each new moon. Now before you react to the woo-woo-ness of that, let’s look at what such boards accomplish.

Thoughts usually run willy-nilly through our addled brains. In the busyness of daily life, we rarely take the time to think about what we want…what we really want. But when we start looking at pictures (from magazines or catalogues or Pinterest or Google images), we engage a different part of our brain. Pictures help us create a child-like sense of play without the judgments that often crop up in journaling (this happens to me!).

I thought about how this might work for authors. Even before I start outlining my next book, I’m exploring how to use a vision board to capture the feelings that bubble up when I think about the characters and the time period – the visuals that will lend themselves to words later on.

I stumbled across an author who uses a Pinterest board in that way. It’s cool that we can go as low-tech or high-tech as we want when setting our goals and intentions.

Have you done anything like this before?