I recently took a fabulous online course called Magical Mornings by Meghan Genge, which I thought was just about creating a morning ritual but turned out to be so much more than that. (I highly recommend the course if you want some really lovely, deep practices to help you “find clarity on who you are, and a sustainable way of creating a life full of wonder”: check it out here.)
Anyway, one of the practices she suggested was a vision book, which is a twist on the vision boarding process. If you’re not familiar with vision boarding, it’s where you go through magazines and cut out pictures that appeal to you—perhaps places you want to visit, or ways you want your home to look, or specific items you’d like to own—and paste them on pieces of cardboard or foamcore. Generally, people create vision boards to represent things that they want in their lives.
Meghan’s idea was more about evoking feelings. She talked about a picture she had found of a tree house overlooking the sea in Scandinavia. The picture called to her not because it was a house she wanted to live in or a place she wanted to visit, but because it made her feel a certain way: “excited, delighted, and slightly squirmy with possibilities.”
In this practice, you choose images because of how they make you feel—whatever feeling feels good, and that you want more of in your life, whether it’s excited, full of potential, happy, intrigued, open, or something else—and cut those out. So instead of a specific car you want, you might choose an image of a woman driving down a coastal highway in a convertible, because you like how free and adventurous it makes you feel. Then you paste the pictures in a journal or sketchbook that you can flip through at any time.
Years ago Kate Spade ran a magazine ad that featured a woman dressed up and smiling—obviously having the time of her life at some sort of elegant party—and the caption was something like: “She had a glass of champagne in her hand and confetti in her hair.” I was completely captivated by that ad and that sentiment, so much so that I tore it out and taped it to the wall. I wanted to feel like that woman more often—carefree, on top of the world, beautiful, fun. That’s the sort of image I’m talking about.
Go through a variety of magazines and cut out any image that appeals to you on that gut level, even if it doesn’t make any logical sense at the moment. Once you have a nice pile, select the ones that really resonate—that make you feel “squirmy with possibilities” or just feel like a deep internal yes. Then put those aside for a day or two. Come back to them after that time, and sit with each one, seeing if it still feels wonderful. If so, paste it into your journal.
Then whenever you want a lift—when you want to connect to those wonderful feelings—pull that journal out and slowly flip through the pages, allowing the images to bring out those feelings in you. You can make this a daily ritual, to plug you into those emotions every day.
Add images as you come across them. And if at some point one or more of the images in your journal no longer feels right, tear it out or paste over it! This journal should be evolving, not static—just as you are. Sound like fun? Try it for a while, and let me know what you think!
