20 Ways to Change Your Story
7. Make Picture Stories
A picture, it’s said, is worth a thousand words, so you can imagine the immense story power a picture holds.
Why do you think Vision Boards have become so popular?
Images capture our emotions and imagination in ways that mere words cannot. Even with the most skillful writing, a story captures our imagination most powerfully when the words cause our minds to make mental images.
Anyone at all familiar with the Law of Attraction is probably familiar with the idea of Vision Boards or Dream Books. You decide you want a new car, for instance, so you find pictures of the exact car you want – make, model, color, every detail – and you glue them down in a journal or on a piece of poster board. Maybe you even cut out a picture of your own smiling face and place it behind the steering wheel. You might add a picture of the open road unfolding before you and your brand new shiny car.
This is great. And it works. Especially if you take time every day to look at your Picture Story, to dream your way into it, and to imagine yourself living it and feeling the joy of it.
What can be even more powerful is to let your heart and soul do the dreaming for you.
This is the Visioning® method I learned in my Creative Journal Expressive Arts (CJEA) training with Lucia Capacchione. Her trademarked ten-step Visioning® process is a profoundly life-changing (and story changing!) practice. You can read more about this method in her book, Visioning: Ten Steps to Designing the Life of Your Dreams.
Instead of deciding in your head what you want, get quiet and invite your heart and soul to speak to you through images. Pose a specific question, if you like, such as, “what is my perfect work?” or “who is my soul mate?” or “where is my perfect home and what does it look like?” Or, you can be a bit more general and begin with a broader focus phrase like, “the year ahead” or “my soul-centered life”.
Now give yourself 20 minutes or so to browse through magazines, not looking for any specific images, simply allowing images to show up and grab you. Which images speak to you? Cut those out. You don’t need to understand what they mean. Glue them down. Spend some time with them and listen to what they have to say. Listen to their stories for they will soon become your stories.
It may happen quickly or it may take some time. It will require action on your part in addition to dreaming.
I just realized an amazing story manifestation in my own life today.
Once upon a time, many years ago, I painted this picture as a gift for my husband. I gave it to him – for a birthday or anniversary – and I told him, “I’d like to live here with you someday.”
The painting was not based on any “real” place that I had seen. It came out of my heart’s imagination.
That painting has stood on the mantle of my fireplace for the past 30 years. I see it every day, without really “seeing” it anymore as it has become such an ever-present thread in the fabric of my life and surroundings. An ingrained, subconscious part of my reality.
Recently, we decided to buy a piece of land on which to build our retirement home, the home in which we intend to spend the rest of our lives. We looked at a lot of properties. A LOT. The moment I walked onto the land we eventually purchased, I was drawn to the beautiful pine that stood, alone, in the center of a cleared area. I stood under the tree and heard the wind sigh through her and I experienced an instantaneous and heart-centered feeling of homecoming.
As I sit on that property today, admiring the view, a powerful flash of deja vu reminds me of the painting I created so many years ago.
It occurs to me that the dream of my heart has become real. That picture I painted, of no “real” place, bears a striking resemblance to the view I’m now enjoying as we plan together, my husband and I, just where our new house will sit.
More than 30 years ago, my heart showed me its dream, and through a long and winding road, it has led me to it.
I still want to live here with my love. And someday has become today. I can just picture it.
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This is the 8th post in a 21-post series sparked by Chapter 9 of Fallen, The Adventures of a Deep Water Leaf, in which Lizard suggests that Alora change her story.
#20WaysIn20Days, #ChangeYourStory, #Fallen
