Transcripts
1. Trailer: Hi, friends. I'm Nadia Payan and this is In Plain Sight, a class that's devoted to deepening your intentions around your creative life and aspirations. I'm an artist, a graphic designer, and a brand strategist that's focused on supporting and encouraging conscious creatives in their brands and their creative practices. I share what I know through online classes like this one I also co-host a beautiful retreat for creative women identified people, and I also host a small group program called Conscious Creative Circle, that's open to all creative people who are interested in learning, creating and growing their brands from a place that comes from truly deep within. My hope with everything that I create is that, I can be helpful and supportive to conscious creatives from all over in building their creative businesses and their creative lives. In Plain Sight is a little bit different. It's all about deepening our practice around the creative practice of vision boarding. During our time together, we'll really horne in on different ways to deepen our intentions around this practice of creating your own vision board for your creative business and your creative life. By the end of this class, you'll have created a beautiful vision board for yourself, for your creative vision, for your creative life, for your creative business, that when you look at it, moves you into inspired action and motivates you to keep creating. When you're ready, let's dive right in.
2. Introductions & Mindset: Hey friends, I'm Nadia Payan and this is In Plain Sight, a workshop style class where we're going to be deepening our connection to our creative vision, and are creative dreams. We'll be moving through a vision boarding process with layers of intuition and intention in it. Before we begin, I want to share a little bit about who I am. I'm an art director, a graphic designer, and a brand strategist. Since starting my business, I've worked with a lot of different businesses, organizations, and people, and now I'm focusing my energy on supporting conscious creatives in making a beautiful life from their creative work. Now, I'm moving into sharing what I know through online courses like this one and my first course, visionary branding course, also co-hosted retreats for creative women, identify people with a retreat that I co-host with two friends called Magic Jungle, and holding space in a container called Conscious Creative Circle, where a small group of us move through creating, growing, and learning, and getting really into branding and marketing for our creative work and our creative vision. It's pretty awesome. My hope is that with everything that I create, I'm able to be helpful and supportive for creative people to make a living and live a creative life from their creative work, but in a way that's really true to who they are from deep within. Why did I decide to make In Plain Sight, why did I make this class? I really believe that in every creative process there's always pivot points, times of transition. It's a moment in time where we might feel like, we've been doing things one way and now we're ready to do them another way, and it's a time that I think as a creative is really important to make the space to actually like move through that process, and take some time to reconnect, and reflect and really see why we're wanting to change or why this evolution is happening and bring it more to live, make it more clear, have more clarity around where we've been, where we are right now and where we're headed. In Plain Sight is basically, I see it as a resource for visual thinkers. The truth is like so many, and kinetic thinkers as well. Visual thinkers we can see and through how we look at things or make things visually, and express our ideas in a visual way, it becomes more clear. Then kinetic thinkers are ones who, when you make stuff using your hands or with movement, it also becomes more clear. If you're either one of these types of thinkers, which I'm both, then this class is going to be awesome for you to move through in creating something really beautiful for you to look at, but also provide a sense of clarity through deep reflection. Throughout this whole process, we'll be connecting more and more and using what I'm calling deepening practices, to connect more and more with our inner selves and our inner guidance system, so then that way it's not just a transition around like, I was making this before and now I want to make this new thing. It's really about being very intentional about where you're headed to next. We'll get into it. It sounds really like a big idea right now, but there's so many little things that we can do that will just connect to more to yourself as you move through this whole process. By the time that we're done with this class, you will have created a vision board that is drenched in meaning for you. It won't just be like a lot of times I see and I'll get into this later, but I see vision boards that are just like yachts and mansions and cool cars and just superficial stuff. The way that we're going to be approaching creating a vision board for our creative lives, will be a lot more about the meaning of the images and less about the surface level things. We're going to go deeper. At the end of it you'll have a vision board that you've completed that feels super potent for you. That it's like has a lot of energy and energizes you every single time that you look at it, you'll just get inspired and hopefully move into action. Let's talk a little bit about the approach to this class. I always like to talk about how I hope you would approach any class that I present, so I always have three guiding rules, if you will. One is be open, two is question everything, and three is show up consistently. What do I mean by this? Be open just means staying curious. A lot of times we might be like, I've already done a vision board for example, or I've already done this and that, I've already heard of this concept. But I think it's really helpful when you show up with what's called a beginner's mind, and just instead of looking at all the things that you already know, maybe asking yourself like, what new ideas can I learn from this? Yes I already understand this concept and what else is there? What else can I learn or find out or discover in this thing that I'm already pretty familiar with? I think that changes the interaction a lot like when you're watching a course. The second guiding idea is question everything. Basically, all this means is taking time to check in with yourself. To me question everything is like just a part of living a healthy life. It acknowledges the fact that me as the presenter of this idea, I'm a flawed human being, which I am. I'm just a regular person, and just like you, I'm also still learning and growing, so as I present my ideas and my information, always check in with yourself and be like, is this for me? If it is, awesome, apply it. Do what you want with it, and if it's not just, move on and keep going. The third part is showing up consistently. Basically, what this is like, what to do when we fumble. It can be really easy to just sit back and watch a class on Skillshare, listen to a podcast, watch a recording on YouTube, whatever, and you just sit back and you relax and you take in the information and you're just consuming. But the thing that I know for sure is that it's a balance. There's sometimes when we get into consuming too much, we never get around to creating and that is the last thing I want with anyone diving into this class. Yes, to showing up to this session and listening to the different perspectives that I'm bringing to the table and applying what you enjoy to your own vision boarding practice, or maybe try vision boarding for the first time just because you feel inspired, and also yes to actually making the thing. I really highly encourage you that even if you get started and then you forget and you can just come back and get back into it and really follow through and make the thing, consume, listen to this class, but then also go out and make the vision board. Yes to actually making the thing, and also remember that before anything we are first and foremost creative people. Creating takes time, it takes energy, it takes focus. When we actually show up for all those things, we can really cultivate joy and expansion and a beautiful vision. Even if you fall off, just show up again and take a small, imperfect action. Even if it's cutting out one thing from one magazine, it doesn't matter, just show up and get back into it.
3. What is a Vision Board?: Now we'll go into what is a vision board? I looked it up on the interwebs and according to Wikipedia, the definition of a vision board is a dream board or vision board is a collage of images, pictures, and affirmations of one's dreams and desires designed to serve as a source of inspiration and motivation, and to use the law of attraction to attain goals. Very cool. Sounds complex. My definition of a vision board is pretty simple. It's a visual tool that helps me remember all the dreams and goals and feelings that I have for my creative vision through a collage, through something visual that I made. I have certain musts for our vision board. One, I really think vision boards should be beautiful. You should really love looking at them, otherwise, what's the point? They should be simple. So a lot of times I see vision boards or people doing vision boards and it's 10 million things all over a board. To me it always feels this board or piece of paper or whatever is shouting at me like, there's so many things to look at. I get overwhelmed when I look at stuff like that. You might end up feeling overwhelmed or even worse, you might end up ignoring it and have total indifference because you've seen this thing so many times and it's got too many messages on it, and you can't even register it anymore. This is why for me it's really important for a vision board to have a simple layout and we'll get into ways of doing that. Then also for it to be accessible. What I mean by this is a lot of times like people make vision boards and there super proud and they have it out for like a day, and then they put it away. For me and I'll explain why in a moment, it's really, really important. This is why the beauty part and the simple part is so important. It's important to have your vision board out somewhere where you interact with it all the time, that you can see it that you like register that it exists. I'll get into that in just a second. Why vision boards? Why do I feel like there are effective? For my perspective, I do a combination of like my experience in advertising because I've worked in that industry, before starting my own business, I worked in advertising for like a decade. Here's the thing, with marketing, there's so much around an idea being top of mind or a brand or a product being top of mind. Exposure is the key to making that happen. I think vision boards are basically your advertising your own ideas to yourself. A vision board is as if you are creating a commercial for you to interact with every day of stuff that you actually want to buy into because you're the one who made it up. That's part of the reason why I think it's important. Then the other part of why I think why vision boards work, is because of energy. I really believe that what you focus on manifests, when you put your energy towards something and you focus in on it, it happens. Then also I feel what you measure, I've heard this sentence like what you measure gets managed. It's like if you're trying to build muscle, then measure what you do in your workouts. If you are trying to get better at painting, then practice every day, at least some technique. I would measure growing up a whole lot of things around playing violin, and I would have, I'm going to work on this bowing technique until I have it whatever and I would keep track of my progress. I think that there's an aspect of that that happens when you create a vision board. Where when we're making our vision board, it's going to bring us back to the feelings that we had while making it. To me that ends up creating like a desire for acting on the ideas that you put on the board. The problem with vision boards that I see though, is that usually they've gotten super, super popular to do. But they basically end up being a shopping list of things that you want, mostly just material stuff. There are no real ideas for you to hold onto. I think that that's why we end up finding like vision boards end up in the back of your closet or you don't interact with them much because honestly like for how long are you going to really want to look at a picture of a car or I don't know, a bag or whatever, a piece of clothing or even whatever it might be, whatever you might end up putting on your board. If it's just a shopping list, it doesn't have any emotional connection for you. Like it might be a goal for you to like, I'm going to save up and get a new car. Fantastic. But I think ideas are more potent, they stay with you longer than the stuff. That's really why I wanted to share how I've done vision boards in this process of mine that I've been developing over the last four years. Because it's really, really ideas first, feelings first, and then we get into all the rest of it of what's it going to look like and what are some imagery that we can use or what are some images that we can use to bring us back to those feelings, so then that way we actually make the thing that we want to make happen. Let's talk about when the right time is to make your vision board. I'm a dork, I have to say this, but if you're watching this class right now, probably the right time is right now. But there are also other times that I want to bring up that you can take advantage of what's happening in your culture or around the world, and think about timing for creating your vision boards to add some, I don't know, energetic juice to it. In your larger community, some traditional times that you might think about where people naturally think about transitions and shifts in life and they're in a time of reflection and consideration, could be like for the New Year or a new season, or a new month. Or even like if you follow the lunar cycle, if your culture follows the lunar calendar, then following the lunar cycle can work for that too. But basically you got the idea. The idea is that you're looking at what your culture is and what's happening in your community and thinking, oh, there might be certain points in the year where I'm not the only one thinking about the future or I'm not the only one, it's natural for you to think about transitions or pivots or making change. That's always really nice time to get together with other people, with your community and create the vision board together or alone. But it's a nice time because everyone's in that headspace. Another really good time to get into the vision boarding process is not based on the calendar, it's really, really personal. Anytime that you are going through a big shift or a big transition in your life, that is a good time to do a vision board. Feel your feelings, go through your stuff. When you're in a good place to consider the future or consider the change that you're going through, vision boards can be a really nice tool to bring that to life. They work really well. I do a lot of vision boarding and you'll see when I show you all like my process, I really like to use them as a tool for my creative business. But they work really, really well when you're in a personal transition 0.2. Honestly like as creative people like, there's not that much difference between our creative expression, our creative life, our creative business, and who we are. If you're going through a big personal change, and it doesn't have to be like something extreme has happened in your life. It might just be internal that you're, oh my gosh, I'm learning something new about myself and now I'm seeing the world differently. That's a transition. Using your world differently is totally a transition and that can be a good time to use this tool to get more clear or to move through that and get some clarity around your ideas. This is exactly the same for your creative business. Whenever you're feeling like there's a huge transition in your creative business, even if it's not so, so tied to your personal self, it's also a really good tool to leverage and make one just for the business. Like I said, I do that a lot, and for me there's a lot of intertwining that happens, a lot of overlap. But, if we're feeling there's time for a change in the business, the going through the practice of doing something a bit more abstract like the board over a business plan can help us get more clear on where we're headed with our business or maybe what in our business needs to let go and that we need to get rid of, and then what we're going to be bringing in instead. With businesses, just like with ourselves, it's really, really nice to start with ideas. Then afterwards, once you're done with your vision board for your business, then you can think about like, now I'm going to come up with what? Now that I understand the feelings that I want to bring into my business or the ideas that I want to bring into my business, what does that look like for the actual services or products or arts or programs that I'm creating in my business, so it's really good for that too. Let's quickly go over all the things we covered in this lesson. Some takeaways are, vision boards are like advertising from ourselves to ourselves. They help us keep our ideas top of mind and they focus our energy on our goals and our dreams. Some of my musts for a vision board are that they are beautiful, that they are simple, and that they are accessible. Some good timing for, right timing for vision board making is times of transition in your larger culture or community. So like a New Year or a new season, like that, times of transition and shifts in your personal life, and times of transition and shifts in your creative business. Next we'll be talking about all the materials that you need for making a vision board.
4. Materials You'll Need: In this lesson, we're going to be talking about materials. This tends to actually be a huge part of when I do these vision boarding workshops in person. When you're prepping or when you have things prepped, like for vision boarding, making, or for any creative endeavor, it pays off so much because once you're in the zone, you're not going to want to think about like, yeah, where did I put my scissors or where did is the glue again? You get to just stay in your focused, creative zone and make something great for yourself. In this video, I'm going to be sharing a list of basic materials and some extra ideas of things that I like to use. You'll get to see like the actual brands I enjoy and all of that. Maybe that's available where you live, maybe not. Maybe you'll find something similar. It's all good. Let's get started. The first thing I want to show you is probably the most obvious thing that you're going to need, scissors. When it comes to scissors, any scissor will do. Just make sure it's super sharp. I actually also want to give a little extra shout-out bonus thing. If you are the type of person that when you collage, you like to get into all the details, consider maybe instead of having scissors, getting the exacto knife or both, and then having a cutting mats. I'm not super into that, so I don't have that. Scissors for me, that's enough. Just know how detailed you want to get. Those are the scissors. Next is all the paint pens. I'm super into paint pen. I have a bunch of them. But what I've found is there's this brand called Pen-touch by SAKURA and they come in silver, gold, and I think copper. I love the silver and gold ones for writing intentions, little foreshadowing about what we're going to be doing. I think they work really well on the canvas, which we'll talk about in a moment. But I also really love colors. I also like to get these paint pens by a brand called Molotow. They're just like acrylic paint pens, I believe, and they have really beautiful colors. Whatever you enjoy, it's your chance to really make your vision board yours. I like adding color, and gold, and silver to mine. Those are the paint pens. Now I want to talk about glue. A paint pen was on the loose. For glue, this is the brand that I really like. It's called Mod Podge. It is the mat glue that they have. But from what I understand, a lot of people who are into scrapbooking and just arts and crafts, they swear by this brand and I've used it in all my workshops. It works really well. It does the job. It glues the magazine cutouts that you've cut out to the Canvas, which we'll talk about in a moment. Any glue that does its job and actually is an adhesive would work. This is just one that I like. Now, let's talk about what we're going to use to spread the glue. I like using these little foam brushes. They are really inexpensive. You can get a bunch of them if you're doing vision boarding with a group, it's really helpful. They come in all different sizes, so if you want bigger ones, that's available to you. I find that this one, it's a one-inch size. I don't know what that is in centimeters. We'll find out and it'll flash. I think that that's a good size in general to work with because sometimes you might find an image that's a little bit smaller that you're super into. It's just very versatile. You dip it in, we'll show you how, and you spread the glue. Next is Canvas. I'm going to talk a little bit about why I use a canvas instead of just paper. We'll get to this little ugly piece of paper. But it's just that I want to show you-all the brand. But first I'm going to talk about why. What I mentioned before about the vision board being something that's accessible, this is a key component to making it accessible. When you create your vision board on a piece of paper, or on a cardboard paper, or whatever that might be, but it's flimsy, you end up not knowing where to put it. What I found when I was doing my workshops is, and I'll show you when I show you my past vision boards, the very first one is on a poster board, and it was the first time I ran a workshop and I realized everyone was leaving with stuff. The moment there was a breeze, it would fall over and I wanted something sturdier. For me, that's this. Ta-da. The idea with a canvas is that you can get one that is really inexpensive, have it be already stretched, have it be on a backing that is really sturdy. The brand that I found at the art store is called Practica, and it's literally called economy stretch canvas. I went and found a size that I liked, and they came impacts of two. I just made sure that it seemed sturdy. We're not actually painting, so we're just gluing magazine cutouts onto a canvas. It doesn't have to be the best canvas. It can be whatever is the least expensive, as long as it's sturdy, so then that when you put it up in your space, it will not get knocked over at the first little bit of wind. Those are my thoughts on canvas versus paper. Then there's the last category that I want to share with you-all in terms of materials, which is anything else that might open up your mind, your spirit, your heart, all of that. For me, some of these things could be incense, oils, or candles. I actually brought a candle here that I'll use for this class. I've totally already used it. If you're into it, you could use oracle cards or tarot cards. I'm into that thing, so I brought some oracle cards that I like from different creatives that I love. Both of these are women who have made their own cards from their imagination. This one is based in nature stuff. This woman, Marcella Kroll, it's called Nature Nurture, made a whole entire oracle deck around the different symbols of what animals represent in different cultures. Not just animals, but also trees and stuff like that, and plants, and our whole little planet. I love it for working on this. Then this one is by a friend of mine, Jennifer Elsner, who actually is a graphic designer and an amazing photographer, and came up with this idea of creating cards around having a creative business. Sometimes you'll pull something and it really has something very specific to being a visual business person, so like for designers or for people who work with clients and they're doing creative work. I love this one too, it's really cool. Also, I don't have any here, but if you're into crystals, you can add that too. If you're into meditation, we are going to have one for this class. But that's part of getting into your zone, and this is also something that I wanted to share. It's something called flash paper. Flash paper, it's a lot of fun. If you like playing with fire, I highly recommend flash paper. You can find it on any magic trick store. I'll include that, where I got this one from, in the worksheet, or in the checklist, there's a word. But this is a lot of fun. I'll get into why this is great a little bit later because we're going to use it. Then also, a journal. This is my journal, it has all my secrets. Sometimes doing a little journaling session before you get into your vision board gets you clear and gets you focused, and moves other stuff out and it's helpful. Then of course, another thing that I'm a big fan of, I have a musical background. I grew up playing violin, and I've played violin professionally. For me, it's really important, like playlists, music. It's such a part of getting into myself, into my heart, into my body, into my mind. Whatever music moves you into that space, listen to that. Get something ready for yourself. It's the pre-work for the vision board session. That's it. Those are all of the different things. We've got the journal, candles, incense, crystals. Actually, I have a crystal right here. There you go. If you have little things that just make you remember an idea or something, this I brought from home, that have some significant value for you, use it. Create your little creative space for vision boarding. The oracle cards or tarot, if you're into that, the flash paper, which I'm really excited to show you-all what this does. The candles, or incense, or aromatherapy oils, whatever. Those are all the additional things that you can use to enhance your experience of your vision boarding session. Now we'll get into what kind of magazines and how to pick them and all of that, because that is something you obviously are going to need magazines for your vision board. But I didn't talk about it in the materials because there's a whole process that I want to share with you-all.
5. How to Choose Your Magazines: Now let's talk about the most important material evolved for vision boarding, the magazines. This is always such a huge topic because people get stuck on, which ones to get or they can never find what they're looking for. I have four things that I want to share with you all that are my guidelines to finding the right magazines to have a really beautiful, simple and accessible vision board. What to look for when you're looking at the magazines? Little-to-no ads. Beautiful design illustrations, photography. Also, just good design. That's what I mean by that. Then also abstract ideas. Usually, this is really good for if you see a lot of nature or a lot of art in the magazines, but just that the ideas in the magazine are focused on something that is not so straightforward. Then finally, the last one is positive messaging. We'll go into all of them now. The first point is really straightforward. It's little to no ads. This is very simple to figure out, you just flip through the magazines and if every other page ends up being another handbag or if a lot of times if you're a woman like that's what we end up with, in terms of advertisements, is like clothing and accessories. If you are looking through the magazine and that's all you see is accessories and clothing, that's probably filled with advertisements. You're wanting to find magazines with very little or even no advertisements. They're out there. The other thing that you're going to be looking for is design and beautiful illustrations or photography. It's pretty clear when you're looking even just on the cover of the magazine, whether or not they have a style or an aesthetic that you're into. If you see something you like, flip through the magazine and if you start seeing a nice design that you enjoy or a nice topography or illustrations that you like, that you find inspiring, then run with that. So next is abstract ideas, nature and art. When we're creating our vision boards we're working a lot with our feelings and big ideas. It can help reinforce these feelings to have magazines that focus on arts, on nature, on something a little bit more abstract because let's be real. Feelings are abstract. There are feelings. Art is rooted in emotion and process. There's not always like a super specific message. Even if there is, it's subjective. However, you are interacting with the art is how you'll have those feelings. Having access to art magazines and magazines with abstract ideas can also open up a different way of thinking. I'm actually realizing that in this magazine it's a lot more about a creative business. We don't have so many abstract ideas. This is a good example of one. We'll talk about it in a moment. But in this magazine is a lot of photos of water, see that's already been used and different images that might mean different things to you, even though it's a magazine about people surfing. Again, water can represent a lot of different things, a lot of different emotions, and you can use that to create more depth in your vision board. Actually I have a story to tell you about that. One of the years that I was doing the vision boarding workshop, I ended up with someone who was visiting Miami from Germany and she was heading up this initiative to have a cybersecurity conference. As a woman in cybersecurity and in technology, she had a very different outlook about what cybersecurity meant. She was getting frustrated because actually in my workshops, I buy all the magazines ahead of time. I'm the one who shows up with the magazines and I go through the sorting process. She was getting frustrated because I had all these artistic magazines and the abstract stuff and a lot of creative business-oriented magazines. She was like, I'm not finding anything that represents cybersecurity or the World Wide Web. Since we were in a group, I told her, why don't you ask for help? We made a shout to everyone in the group, "Hey if anyone sees anything that has to do with cybersecurity or the World Wide Web, let us know." She was in a room filled with creative people. Immediately people started being like, there's this Cat's Cradle. It was two hands with yarn in between and they're like, this could be the World Wide Web and all this other stuff, but these more artistic, more abstract images. She ended up finding on her own a different image. It was the image of a mother who was a Syrian refugee at a refugee camp holding a baby. When I asked her about it, it was huge. It took up a lot of her vision board. I asked her a question, "How did you end up with this image? What does it mean to you?" She explained to me that she realized that from her point of view, I don't know, maybe she was a mother, I'm not sure. But she felt like specifically cybersecurity and technology and the relationship between the two was like a mother taking care of a child. She saw this image of a woman in the refugee camp holding her baby and really taking care of it, even though there's a lot of turmoil around her, it's not a safe space. To her, that became the meaning of why she has created her entire career in cybersecurity, her relationship with technology and her calling and her role in her purpose in it. This is what I mean that when you open up your sorting through magazines and you ask yourself questions of what is the feeling underneath the idea. Having the abstract and nature and having these different resources and types of things for the ideas and the magazines can come to life. You never really quite know where you'll end up and it can be a really powerful image, for her you could tell she was so moved by this image and hadn't realized she hadn't made the connection yet that she felt like cybersecurity and mothering this protective energy was one and the same for her. Yeah, really powerful things can happen. Then the last point is positive messaging. This one can often get overlooked, but the truth is, if you're creating a vision board for yourself, chances are you're not trying to reinforce negative things in your life. You're trying to reinforce positive ideas and positive changes and things that you view as positive in your life. These magazines here, I mean, they are very positive, they're very beautiful and they're very empowering. But there are some magazines like this one, that's the whole point of the magazine. Sometimes you end up finding some magazines that they're completely dedicated to this idea of positivity and mindfulness. They have a lot of positive messaging. They'll have a lot of quotes and stuff inside that you'll be able to use. Yeah, see like always be a beginner. Maybe that's something you want to focus on. Positive messaging is really important. Take some time to actually look and see what the magazine says inside. We're looking for the imagery, but then also being very conscious of certain words and placing certain messaging for ourselves when we interact with our vision board is really important too. In general, finding magazines that are around mindfulness, around creativity, spirituality, meditation, positivity is probably your best bet. Also, there might be like this one, for example, is actually a good example of a magazine that the focus is not positive messaging, but it is focused on uplifting creative women or creative people. But probably judging from the design, mostly women identified people that are in creative business. The focus is on having a creative business, but overall they have a whole thing about empowering and uplifting women identify people in creative business. You're going to have a good chance of finding some positive messaging that resonates with you in magazines that have to do with what you're doing. That their focus is to uplift that community. There's that too. Magazines are one of the main reasons why I suggest that people do their vision board in a group setting. Real Talk, magazines costs money and magazines with fewer advertisements usually cost more money. The reason why is because instead of the advertising paying for the production of the magazine, like the nice paper and all the creatives involved, like the writers, the photographers, the illustrators, all these with the editors. Magazines with a lot of advertising, the advertising covers the cost of a lot of the magazine, of the making of the magazine. But when you're going for magazines that have this quality over the quantity, then the price goes up and it's just facts. So for me this trade is really, really worth it and at the same time, I want to be mindful that when you are working with a group, it brings the cost down for everyone. In general, I've seen magazines that are very beautiful, like the ones I've just started showing you and the ones we'll go over in a moment but they'll range anywhere from like $10 US dollars to $40 US dollars. I've actually had workshops where I hear a pause and someone goes like, "This magazine was $40 and I'm cutting it." Yeah, you are. Enjoy it, find the perfect image. The other thing I will say is, I think the process of sorting through magazines is really important because it kind of leaves a little bit up to fates, I guess, in a way, but you don't really know what you're going to find in them because you're just kind of flipping through them quickly, making a decision and then getting it. But if you are certain that you want certain things in your vision board, then also remember that the Internet is a very big place and you could probably find, download an image, cut it out and the quality might not be the same paper as if you got it from a magazine but it'll be good still. The other thing I will say is if you are deciding, okay, I'm going to go the magazine route and me and five or six of my friends we're all going to pitch in and pay for the magazines together, then there's two things to keep in mind. One, you can either have one person that the group trusts and maybe the group says certain themes that they want to work on to go and buy all the magazines and then everyone just pays that person or you go together and the magazine finding is group activity as well. What I would say is just stay open because sometimes we can start being in this, "Am I going to find what I want or find what I need in the magazines?" You always will. That's what's cool about it, is it has you thinking creatively based on what you see in the images and the ideas that you're wanting to bring into your life. You will always find what you're looking for or better like every single time. So that is my $0.02 On buying magazines. Keeping that in mind and then why I advocate for you to do vision boards in a small group because one, it's more fun and two, it ends up bringing the cost lower for everybody. Now we'll be going over some of my favorite magazines. I wanted to share with you all some of my favorite types of magazines and if they're accessible to you, you might have ideas and go to the bookstore and find these exact ones or something like it or the idea is for you to start getting ideas of different types of magazines that are out there. I have different sort of categories and the first one will go over is these, which is a lot of the people who show up to my workshops for vision boarding are women identified people. So this is kind of like the my girl power section for creatives. There's a magazine that is called No Man's Land. It has a lot of stuff around women, women in business and a lot of really kind of cool and fun, wild designs, typography. I actually really loved this magazine because of the look and feel of the magazine. It's called Good Company and it's relatively new but see, they have the tagline is, "Where creativity meets business," I love that. The thing that I like a lot about this magazine personally, it's one of my personal favorites is the illustrations and the photography, it's like really joyous and they have a lot of different types of creative people and they talk about really important things for creative business owners. This edition of it, actually has a whole thing about money and yeah, so they have all this focus around money and paying your bills with podcasts, it's pretty neat, so it's got good content but the focus is creative people. This magazine has actually no business focus usually, but it is specifically geared towards African American women and I love diversity. It brings a different perspective to a lot of things, ideas, maybe something that you haven't thought about and it has beautiful design, beautiful photography inside. So I love this magazine, it's called Crwn. I wanted to bring this specific one for us to look at, but if you look at the name of the magazine, it's called Frankie Magazine. That brand is its own magazine and this was a special edition of that magazine and I love the Frankie magazine. It's super geared towards artists and creative people and it has a lot of gorgeous illustration inside and it's really inspiring to look at. I fell in love with it and held onto it because it has specifically different creative people's workspaces inside and I think that's always so cool to look at especially if you're at your own pivot points. Chances are you're wanting to maybe get inspired by other creatives and this is basically a book, there's such a big focus on different kinds of spaces and different creative businesses and different makers. It's really neat to see and also, yeah, beautiful typography and beautiful design inside as well but any Frankie Magazine has those things. Again, this one I actually just found recently, it's called In Her Studio Spaces and Stories of Creative Women. Going through this magazine is really nice too, because it's just like this other one that we just looked at. It has a lot of different types of spaces that you might find inspiring and might end up representing something interesting for you. You open it up and you can just oh, Morocco, get inspired while you're looking at things and start cutting things out. So that's this one. Then finally, I also found this magazine called Radiant, which is I believe a publication from the African continent being sold in the United States and in the UK. It's awesome too. Super beautiful design inside, really, really beautiful imagery. It brings in again, a different point of view that might open up your ideas for what does womanhood mean to you? My womanhood means accepting myself, flaws and all. What a beautiful message. This is my girl power section. Magazines that have a lot of focus on creative people, creative women, creative women identified people, it's creative spaces, that's creative business. Those are some of the magazines that I really love. There are so many more. So I'm going to put those in a pile. Next, I want to talk about the mindfulness and spirituality type of magazines. I brought two of them. There are many, many more brands. I can name a few, but you can see them in resources. But these two, I thought were really nice, they're very different. This first one is called Flow. Like the tagline says, it's celebrates creativity, imperfection, and life's little pleasures. So in here, in this magazine, it will have a lot of positive messaging, which is one of the things that we're looking for, nice photography and again, really beautiful design, illustrations. I think they even include journals and stuff with this magazine. It's pretty interesting. I don't remember if this one came with one, but yeah. Here we are, slow-down postcards. So that's Flow. Another brand that I know is similar to this one is one called Happiness, but it's spelled funny, so let's include it as a resource. Then this one is specific, it's called Conscious, and it's for conscious business owners. But again, it has a lot of positive messaging. This specific one, I think is focused on mental health. It's talking about the real parallels of life and living and what it means to be a conscious. Maybe you end up having some of this imagery at the base of your vision board representing where you are right now, and then on top of it, you can put other layers. We'll talk about layers in the next lesson, but showing where you're going from here. This magazine, I think is also great. There's always really insightful, big type. Even on the back it says, "Change the conversation," which is pretty cool. That might even be something that you want to remember for yourself. I also want to share two examples. I'm water obsessed, so both of my nature examples right now are going to be focused on water. I find that surfing magazines are amazing to find beautiful photography and different ways of presenting the water element. But because of the nature of surf, you'll also find land, beach. You can see this person ends up being a creative, this guy's an artist, and I'm assuming also a surfer. There we are. Again, these magazines that is focused on surf culture, I find have usually great design and incredible photography of my favorite element, which is water. I also love fire, but we'll get into that later. Actually, I think this is going to be in my vision board. Then this one's called Foam Symmetry. This one it's priced at $10 USD. I don't know why, the quality is really high. I was really surprised. Then this is the example that I showed you all earlier called the Surfers Journal. Same deal. It has incredible images of water images. This one. All of these magazines have been used in workshops. You can just see. See, it's missing. Those are the surfing magazines for me, water magazines, but any other magazine, like if you have another sport or maybe a campaign one or adventure or travel, could also have really beautiful elements and spaces in nature in the mix. Then finally, I want to share with you all one magazine that people often overlook. I think it's such a great idea, which is to find old National Geographics. I actually bought a lot of these in a bundle on eBay. I did not bring the whole bundle with me, I just brought one. But again, it brings in a whole other texture. It was a different time. I like finding National Geographics that are from the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s. Look at this beautiful landscape that you could use for your vision board, but it has a nice grain because the photography was just done differently. With National Geographic, I think, if you're not looking for them to be in pristine condition because we're going to just cut them up anyway, like I said, I have like 20 of them and I take them to all the workshops. Some of them now are missing the covers, they are missing the back. Look at his old advertisement, how funny. But they're great. It's a treat because you really don't know what's going to be inside. I just bought 20 at once and it's really cool to see what comes out. I didn't know which ones I was going to get. So those are all the different categories and magazines that I really like. Hopefully you got some tips. Now, we'll actually talk about the actual vision boarding process.
6. Deepening Your Practice: Now we're going to go into deepening practices. A lot of times when we go into creating our vision board, I think this is a huge step that we often overlook. The idea of opening up like the creative, intuitive and energetic space to make the actual vision board from that space, and not from the superficial space only. A lot of times we'll just jump right in without setting any intention or without even putting any thought to it. Really what this whole process of in plain sight is, is adding a lot of depth to a process that's pretty simple. We're actually going to talk about a few different practices that you can do. First to open up your physical world then your inner world, and finally, your non-physical world. Setting the mood in your physical world. What do I mean by physical world? Your physical world is your physical space, the actual physical place where you're going to make your vision board. One of the big things that I suggest is that you take some time to tidy the place up, declutter. Just get your magazines ready, get your materials ready, and just have this space set up in a way that sets the mood for you, that makes you feel open, free, creative. Then that way you can create your vision board from that space. Some other things that you can do that I like to do is adding things to the space that inspire your future self, like, your vision for yourself. I like to add plants or flowers. We talked about some things in the materials section like incense or candles. If you're into crystals, you can add some of that. If you have artwork that inspires you, you can put that around you. You can even have past division boards there too. If that's something that you want to look at, you can see what you made in the past and then move forward from there. Whatever opens you up, everyone is different. This is a great practice because it's something that you can do in advance. If you know that you're planning on doing this vision board session for yourself on a Friday evening or on a Saturday during the day? Well, throughout the week, you can little by little tidy up your space, and get it ready for you. You'll be putting all that good energy and good vibes, I guess, as your leading up to the moment where you're making the vision board. Another thing that actually helps really nicely. I think that I'm putting it in the category of your physical world is music. I had mentioned this before, I'll mention it again. Music for me is so important and a big part of my own life. I think that sometimes music can really speak to us in a way that words and even visuals are not able to. Maybe creating a playlist or compiling music that you love and just having that ready to go. Then at that point where you're ready to dive in and make your board, you have amazing music that makes you feel really, really good, ready to play. Now let's talk about our inner world. That is what I'm calling, getting in touch with yourself from within. For me, this is part of the process of getting in touch with the feelings that we're trying to create, the ones that we're wanting to embody, and basically the whole purpose of the vision board. My favorite thing to do for this is journaling. Specifically, there's a specific type of journaling that I want to share with you-all, which is called future self journaling. You can just journal, feel free, but future self journaling I think is interesting because it's all about journaling as if you were already the person that you're wanting to be. You are happening now with the person who's writing, your writing as if you were already there. The prompt that I want to share with you-all, is my favorite way to start any future journaling process. There's a lot of other resources and a lot of other ways to do future journaling. I'm not making this up, it's a thing. My favorite prompt is starting any journal entry with the words, I'm so happy and grateful that. I'm so happy and grateful that now my businesses flourishing, or my art has changed, or I've entered this new stage, and you just keep writing. You just start with that sentence, I'm so happy and grateful that, and you start listing things and you can get real specific. At one point I was journaling for something to happen and I was writing down dates. Like I am so happy and grateful that, and I would write down the date like today is, and I wrote out the date which was in the future at the time, now it's in the past. But I would write today this happened and by now I'm seeing these results and I'm so happy and great. Every single time I would get stuck, I would just keep writing, I'm so happy and great for that. It's in your journal, the only person who is reading this is you, it only has to make sense to you. No one else is going to like, it's not even going to end up on your vision board, literally no one else is going to see it. That's my favorite type of journaling practice as a deepening practice. The other thing that I like to do in addition to journaling is meditation. Meditation is a wonderful way to get in touch with your inner world. You can use the guided meditation that's in the next lesson. But you're also welcome to just sit and meditate and get in touch with what feelings you desire to embody more of with the making of your board on your own. Just sitting inside its silence and listening, working with your breath and meditating from there. Those are ways to get in touch, two ways to get in touch with your inner world. Now let's talk about getting in touch with the non-physical world. Now, the practices that we just talked about with the physical world and your inner world help you get connected to your physical space, and also with your inner voice. But there's a third element that often times we don't talk about, there's a lot of different ways and this is the non-physical world. To me what this means is connecting to all different things. I would encourage you to trust yourself and be guided by your own belief system. I'm just going to talk about a few different ways that maybe you might want to connect, so that you can understand what I mean by the non-physical world. Perhaps you might want to connect to God. Perhaps you want to connect to your intuition or your inner voice, to your higher self, to your guides, to source energy, universal energy. However, you connect to the non-physical world and whatever practices you have for that. I would take the time to do those things right before you start engaging in your vision board. It's just going to add another layer of death in your vision boarding practice. The final thing that I want to share with you-all in terms of a deepening practice that I'm a big fan of, and is always a real big moment of inspiration when I run my workshops in person for vision boarding. This is the process of naming your desires and also naming your fears. Now you're in your physical space, you've gotten in touch with your inner world and the non-physical world. One of the things that you can do to form this place, bring it altogether, is releasing our fears and then calling in our desired feelings. On a paper, or in your journal, you can write out the fears that you have. Feelings that you have that are keeping you from the things that you want to embody more of. This can be insecurity, feelings of shame around something, or feeling like, I'm still beating myself up about something, a mistake I made in the past. Whatever that might be. It doesn't always have to be just feeling words, it can be a specific thing. Maybe that you're like, I just wish this thing that I lived just would disappear, like go away, so then that way I can bring in and embody something else. This is where I have the practice of the flash paper. What I do is, you can take some out. This one is already dried, you usually have to dry it like the day before, and a little goes a long way, you don't need very much. I'm going to put this away. For me I love using physical elements that come from our planet to enhance our experience and bring home ideas. I feel like if you can hear it or if you can see it, or you can touch it or you can taste it, it becomes more real. That's why I really love this practice. You can use this whole paper. I prefer not to. I just like to just cut a little bit, maybe just cutting it into two smaller pieces. In this case, we would be using our senses of sights. We're going to watch ourselves write it. Our sense of sight as well when you see what the flush paper does. These are matches. That's a hint. For me also, getting to write something down physically, because maybe you might have a digital journaling practice. But getting to write something down physically changes everything. In this case, let's say we are calling in feelings of abundance. I'm sorry. Actually, let's start. I'll write down abundance, but I actually think it's super important to start with what you're releasing, the fears that you're releasing. I'm just going to explain why real quick. To me, it's about making space. When you're focused on your desired feelings and what you want to embody in the future, and you're trying to bring that into now, if all of your inner world is filled with fear or feelings of inadequacy, then there's no room, there's no room in you to be able to bring in the stuff that you want. We'll actually start with the fears. I'll write some things down, I'm going to write shame, that's a big one, insecurity. Insecurity, or just not feeling good enough. I'm going to write not good enough. Usually we don't do this out loud when I'm doing the workshop, but I've seen people write really small on these papers and write entire stories, and it's really profound. They'll get very, very specific about things that they're wanting to let go. I'm just going to write in here memory. But what I mean by that is I have a specific memory that I want to forgive myself for past mistakes, I'll write down mistakes. I've had people like I said, fill up both sides, write super small, whatever you need to do to make room for you and yourself, do it. Now what we do is, and I'm actually going to move this. We use a physical elements, fire, and we light it on fire. That was a lot slower burning than I thought. But basically, the flash paper, what's cool about it is it disappears with nothing left. When you do it outside, when there's more room and not in an enclosed space like what I'm doing. Don't do that. What ends up happening is it just disappears. That can be used in both ways. Like that's such a beautiful way for you to physically see your fears disappearing. No ash, nothing is left behind. There's nothing left. Then at the same time, fire is like one of these elements that has a lot of different aspects to it. It can burn and destroy, but it's also the same element that keeps you warm and allows you to cook food, and it helps you survive. The same element can happen. You can write your fears on one, and you can write what you're calling in on the other. Then now, it's just another way to see this feeling thing happen in front of you. Then you can write out things that you're calling in, abundance. Maybe you're calling in independence because you're starting your own business, or maybe your calling in more joy, whatever that might be. Same thing, I'm not going to do it. You saw the fire ones. Here, but you can also do the same and have it just disappear. Then you're calling in those feelings for yourself. That is my flash paper obsession, and why I love it so much. It just adds a whole elements of something magical. Now we're going to talk about getting into your inner world. What I mean by this is getting in touch with your feelings, the inside stuff. Other the things that make up who you are. In this case, we're specifically talking about two ways that can help you access your desired feelings. Those are the feelings that you're wanting to bring into your life. You'll be focusing on when you're making your vision board. The first thing I want to talk about is journaling. Generally, journaling is just a great technique to get feeling stuff out there. You can write, it moves your hand, you can see what you're writing. It involves all the senses, and you can generally journal, I want to feel more like this and here's why, and that's more than welcome. I also want to tell you about a type of journaling called future self journaling. Future self journaling is pretty cool. It's this concept that you write out a journal entry as if you are yourself, but in the future. You've already accomplished or already embodied. You've already done the thing that you're hoping to do, the thing that you're calling in now, you're already there. There's a lot of different resources for future journaling. But I'm going to share with you one of my favorite ones, which is one line that you start the journal entry with. The line is super simple. It's just, I am so happy and grateful that, and then you start writing. I have this cool story to share with you where a friend of mine was buying a house and was having trouble with closing the house. I was really rooting for them with this house situation, and I decided to try future journaling, literally not even for myself but for my friend. I would start writing out, I am so happy and grateful that blah, blah, blah, was able to finally work through everything on their house. I got so specific that I even wrote down the date, like today is. I'm going to make up a date. It was like May 13th, whatever. Today is Friday, May 14th, and blah, blah was able to close on their house and everything now is moving smoothly for them. I'm so happy and grateful that this is happening, and that they're able to move into their house and whatever else. That friend reached out to me the day after, and let me know that they had closed on their house the day before, and that they hadn't told me about it because they didn't want to jinx it. They've had been having so many problems beforehand. Take what you want from that story. But for me it really left a deep impact. I've also put in real specific stuff. I've also put in with my creative business, like revenue goals. Like I'm so happy and grateful that my business is creating this much per month. Or I'm so happy and grateful to that, I was able to launch this new program and that it's a success and people are enjoying it because of X, Y, and Z. There's a lot of different ways that you can take this beginning and really get very specific with what you want. Whenever you get stuck, just keep writing. I'm so happy and grateful that, and keep filling in the blanks. Even if it doesn't make sense, like it doesn't read like a beautiful story. Who cares? Your journal is for you. It's not for anyone else. You're not going to put it on your vision board if you don't want to. It'll just be an entry, so it doesn't need to make chronological sense or it doesn't need to make much sense at all. Just keep writing. I'm so happy and grateful that, and then write your feeling like that I feel good, that I'm at my best health, or that I'm creating more than I've ever created, or I'm making more, whatever you're feeling, or that I feel abundance, or I feel prosperous, I feel wealthy, I feel good. Then you can get more specific. Anytime that it's starts slowing down until, just try writing I'm so happy and grateful that, and keep adding to it. That is my favorite journaling before doing a vision board, the future self journaling.
7. Guided Meditation: Preparing to Make Your Board: Welcome. This is a guided meditation to support us and deepening our vision for our creative lives. Please find a comfortable seated position or general comfortable position for your body. Feel free to use plenty of props and support as you need. Make sure your spine is as elongated as possible. Your shoulders are resting down and away from your ears. If it's possible, maybe roll your shoulders up, back, and down a few times so they can settle. Stretching your neck gently from side to side, and eventually bringing it back to center. Finding a place to rest your head. It's not stretching out too far forward or back, just right in the center. Floating on top of your spine. Feeling the crown of the head lifting up so that the rest of the body can in a way hang in a relaxed way from this lift upwards. Feeling an energetic force lifting you up and you can just relax and release. You are lifted up through the crown of the head and also anchored through the base of your body. Whatever parts of you are touching the ground, allow them to be heavy and rested. The lift up from the crown of the head feels light and easy, and below the base of your body and whatever is touching the ground feels heavy and relaxed, feeling both sensations of lifting and relaxing at once. Knowing that you're being held in a way that feels comforting and supported, in a way that feels affirming and open. Begin to notice and observe your breath. Observing the rhythm of your natural breath. As you notice your breath, begin to elongate the breath in and out, perhaps taking a pause between breathing in and breathing out. Breathing in and pausing and breathing out, releasing the breath. One more breath in and pausing, releasing your breath. Now begin to imagine a beautiful creamy white light around the base of your body. It's the color of a beautiful bone, a polished pearl of the shell of an egg. It is gentle and energy rich. This creamy white light supporting you from the base of your body from the ground up. This white lights can gently swirl around you and encompasses your entire body. It is supportive and warm, holding you in a gentle embrace. A sweet embrace of white light. Feeling your body receive this energy along with encouraging feelings of freedom, healing, and creative connection. Relieve this light here as it swirls and twirls around and through us in a gentle and protective embrace. Now turning our attention to a spot above our head and imagining a beautiful violet light streaming down into the crown of our head. As it pours into us, we feel it move through our mind releasing tense thoughts, through our face relaxing our expression. This violet light gently streaming into our heads supporting us in relaxing our forehead, our eyebrows, allowing our ears to drop and our jaw as well. When this beautiful violet light reaches our forehead, it slows down softly and gently, caressing our temples and relaxing our face. As we feel this violet light swirling softly around our head, we feel tension being released. Our head feels light and we receive this beautiful violet light through encouraging feelings of artistic expression, alignment with your soul's calling, and connection with the energy that is present around us all. Now we have a beautiful white light creating a shell around our bodies and a gorgeous violet light gently supporting our head. The two lights begin to slowly come together and merge and blend. As the white and violet lights dance and merge, a deep indigo light forms right at the center space between our eyebrows, and we receive these messages, these affirmation, "I'm a creative being and expressing myself brings me absolute joy. I'm grateful for every experience that has made me, me. I openly and lovingly asked for divine guidance in all areas of my life. By simplifying my life, I free myself to answer the callings of my soul. I emanate joy and love, complete presence and openness towards all beings, including myself. I embrace the spiritual force that I know exists inside me. I know this force supports me as I create and as I grow." Taking three deep breaths as these messages take root in our energetic bodies, breathing in. I'm a creative being and expressing myself brings me absolute joy, breathing in and out. I openly and lovingly ask for divine guidance in all areas of my life. One more breath in and out. I embrace the spiritual force that I know exists inside me, letting these messages settle into our body. Knowing that we can always return to the support of these colors, these lights of white, violet, and indigo, this energy to move us back into our fullest creative expression. With your own timing, begin to gently wiggle your body awake. Taking one more breath in, this time energizing our physical bodies. When you're ready, gently open your eyes and you can sit in quiet reflection with any insights you've received or reach for your journal if you're desiring to do some writing. Lots of love and so many blessings. Bye for now.
8. Making A Vision Board: Step by Step: We have finally reached the point that we've all been waiting for, which is making the actual vision board. The first thing that I want to do is flip your canvas around and this is actually one of my favorite things to do, to just write out what your intentions are, what your desired feelings are, what you're creating. Write it out on the back of the vision board. That way you'll never forget, like sometimes we can get so obstructed with our vision boards and everything that we end up like, why did I put that there again? Writing on the back of your canvas allows you to be able to just flip your vision board around and see, okay, what is it that I'm trying to embody? What is it that I'm trying to remember. I'm going to get mine started and write, connection, community, and intentional growth. So I'll just write growth and actually just even thinking about, I just said intentional growth and I decided to write growth, but I want to write underneath, all with intention. For me I've done different things and I'll show you when I share my past vision boards, but I'll sometimes add a little decoration, or maybe I'll just, write over the silver with gold to kind of give it another layer. This is as much a part of the process as the actual vision board. You're just making it your own. I've seen people write whole affirmations on theirs, again writing an entire story. For me, I like having just the words, and of course writing the year, that way you remember which year was it that you made this vision for because for which time-frame. So for me, this is the vision board that I'm working with for the year 2020, and I might do something really nice and fun that I like for that as well. Maybe write it directly on the wood. There we go, with my silver and gold, and then maybe I'll take one of my colored pink pens in these colors that I love so much and write 2020. So maybe I'll just write that here, 2020. I don't know, you can just do things. Oh, no is this one out of pink? Let's see if this one works. Add whatever you feel like adding. I'll put one up here too and I'm going to keep this simple for this time around, but I've had boards where I'd really have, go all out on the back. That's already kind of its own process in it of itself to have the feelings that you want to embody and these ideas that you want to make official, by putting it on your board and then now we go ahead, and we finally flip the board around and start the process of vision boarding. So while you're flipping through magazines, one of the things that I like to do is, I take the same approach to flipping through magazines as I would when I'm making a design, and that is all ideas are valid when I feel attracted to them, and then I start sorting afterwards. So without thinking too much about it, I'll just tear stuff out if it attracts me. So like, I love how here there's like a dance for home-grown talents and I know that one of mine is growth. One of my embodied feelings is growth, and so I feel like that's kind of an interesting idea and I just put it aside, and I keep flipping through. Let's see, these are like beautiful, maybe something around riding the waves or being inspired by water and you can be as gentle or not so gentle as you want when you're tearing things out of the magazines. I've had moments where I see an image and I want to get like exactly the right edge and there I'm like really, really careful, but if it's just like a general idea, I don't really worry about it. Plus I actually like the jagged edge thing, so sometimes I'll just keep it like that and go. This is cool, one of my embodied feelings that I'm bringing in is community, and here are all these hands reaching for one another, that's kind of nice. Let's see, it looks like maybe I've already gone through this one. Problems can become opportunities when the right people come together, Robert Redford. That's interesting too, I like that. Yeah, that's how I approach looking through the different magazines. I don't think too much about it. If I just see something and I'm like, "Huh, that sparks an idea," or for whatever reason I'm attracted to it, I just rip it out and I end up with big piles of cutouts. But who cares? That's the point of having these magazines available to us, anyway. As I mentioned, you tear a bunch of stuff out of all the magazines and here's a lot of tear outs that I have. Actually, this is technically over years of doing vision boarding. Because one little tip that I love to share is when I'm done with my vision board, I actually don't get rid of the tear outs that I have from the years before. I put them all in a folder and I keep them because, clearly, they connected to me once, they might connect to me again. I want to be able to take advantage of that at a future time when it might make more sense. Maybe something ends up not making it on your vision board, but you do still want to have it around for another year or another time to see if it might make sense at a different date. Now, it's just about starting to sift and sort. So again, thinking like more of a designer and more of an art director, you've got your canvas and you can just start putting things on top. One of the things that I love to do is I love to create a base layer. I think I work a lot in Photoshop, so I think in layers when it comes to my layout. Also, depending on how deep you want to get into it, I like to think about the layers as, okay, you're going to cover up the entire board with different ideas. I like to actually cover as much of the board as I can. Maybe this is how you might see, even how you layer the feelings that you're bringing in or the goals or the dreams that you have. What would it take to build your dream from the ground up? Maybe that can be how you lay out your ground layer, right? There's a lot of different ways to look at this and see what works. Maybe just bringing in different images that appeal to me. I have a limited workspace here, but this gets really messy really fast. So make sure that you have a lot of room. A lot of times, I'll end up with my vision board in one spot and then a bunch of cutouts all over the floor. I personally like to do my vision boarding, usually, on the floor. But yeah, there's something there. Again, I have this focus on intentional growth, intentional connection, intentional community, all in my creative business. This year, I'm thinking about things from the business perspective, and that's what I want to bring in. I'm actually looking at some of these and really liking these different textures of the water, like I mentioned before, I really love everything water. I feel like I need to permanently live near water. I think that there's a lot of overlap with being in business and being a creative business owner and this idea of going with the flow, working with or against currents and deciding, in the moment, what it is that you are wanting to do. Is this something where you're willing to ride this tide or these currents or is it something where actually you want to do something totally different and you're willing to put in the extra effort that it's going to take to go countercurrent. Yeah, that's me and how I think about water. I'm really digging these darker colors, which is odd. When you see my boards from past years, I usually have a lot of colors. But there's something about this year where I made a big shift in my business and wanting to share more of what I know with the world and my point of view. For me, there's this idea that's forming around having fertile soil. Fertile soil, what I mean by that is soil is it's dark, it's this creation space and it's where when you plant seeds, they grow. I know I'm not working with any dirt pictures, but I'm liking how these photos all feel in the black and white or deep tones and colors, or even this black one could be nice. I found this image of bees working together and I have stories around bees that add significance in my life, as an animal in my life. I'm actually really loving this image and I like that it's still like a super dark tone, and it reminds me of community, for me and my story. I feel like there's something interesting there. So now you're starting to see I have some layering happening on the board. I'm not quite sure where things are going to go yet, but I like what's happening. One of the things that I like to do is every so often when you look at your board and you're like, "Whoa, this is feeling really good," grab your phone or a camera and take a picture of it. The reason for this is because it'll actually give you freedom to document what you're doing in the moment and then come back to it. You can mess it all up and start again and put something new there. But it's nice to be able to take a picture of something and see where it's at, what you're digging about it. It's a reference point for yourself of your own ideas. Well, you'll see at the end, but I'm constantly taking pictures so then that way I can take some things off and put new things on see how it works. I've been sifting and sorting and moving things around and now I have my board and a place that I really like where it is. It's very simple, it has some key messages that mean a lot to me. Like I said, this year I'm really focused on my creative business because I've been doing a lot of changes in what I'm doing and I'm really liking this layout. It has community represented here with the bees, the foundational underlayer is dark, which is supposed to be like fertile soil but it's actually made up of different textures of water because water means a lot of different things for me. Then I also found this woman in a beautiful space that I find to be my style in terms of how it's set up and it's gorgeous and creative, so putting her in the center and she's at work which I like. I found a couple of images that have what I'm about when it comes to business, so when purpose meets business because I really believe that purpose comes first and your feelings come first and then from that space you create your creative business. Here I'm interlinking it with this gorgeous little image that I found of people planting seeds, and then the seeds they're actually money, coins and then blooms into this pretty flower bouquet thing with different money and that's representing my business growth, intentional growth. I just like how empowered this woman looks and she's also got flowers which I love but then really what struck me about this here is trust, authenticity, social impact, purpose, storytelling, positive change and sustainability. All of these are really nice reminders for me to embrace more and more as I grow my business in this new way. Then of course, I have a couple of other quotes. Again, I like four things to be beautiful. I like for the vision boards to be simple, and so I'm very intentional with the words that I choose to put on my vision board because that means they have that much more strength when I look at them, that much more power for me. I also included a small quote that says, "The healing strength of community and telling your story." This is a lot of what I see happen with the small group program that I'm doing now, that is my new thing. The conscious creative circle and it is a very small community and people are really getting to practice how to tell their story from a branding and marketing ways. It's really cool and it takes a lot of courage and I found this quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. that's on black and can be one of my foundational layers, "Courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear." I'm very pleased with this. I've already taken another picture of what it looks like in its final phase because now I'll pick things up and cut them out. If I wanted to, I could cut the lines here but I like how jagged everything is. I'm going to cut this a little bit. There's a tip that I want to give, which is that with the pieces that I'm not using, like I said, I hold on to them for other vision boards in the future. But actually, one of the people that was in one of my workshops I saw her keeping every single little piece of anything, like any quotes or even the smallest thing, not just big pictures. I tend to save the big ones. I asked her, why are you saving all these little pieces? She explained to me that she actually holds onto little quotes and little pieces and uses them as bookmarks and she uses them in her daily life to remember and remind herself of her own. It's like taking the vision boards to go which I thought was really cool. You have your big vision board at home but then you have also these little hints and reminders in your daily life, which is amazing. Maybe you could do that with your leftovers, with the quotes that didn't make it onto the main board but still inspire you that can turn into bookmarks. They can just get infused into your daily life. Now, I have my vision board in a way that I really love. I've made all of my decisions and I even ended up taking some little money butterflies and moving them across my board and I'm ready to glue. I'm ready to put the glue down and put everything together. The first thing I'm going to do is actually take one more photo of this final layout, so then that way I can take everything off and I know where everything goes for this gluing process. I've already done that. Actually, I didn't mention this before. I forgot to put it in the materials section but there's this really cool thing that I use in my workshops called Invisible Care. It says right here invisible barrier to help protect against paints and harmful product. S contains skin conditioning emollients. Basically, you put it on your hands. Some people really take care of their nails and they've got their manicures, you can see I'm not that person. For me I don't really care but my vision boarding workshop people are usually very grateful to have this around and you just shake it and put it on your hands and then it acts as a barrier between the glue, like if you get glue on yourself it just comes off, everything comes off more easily. There's that that I wanted to share. Now, I'm going to take my glue and my phone brushes and get started, which means I take everything off my board so I'm going to organize myself a little bit. Here I'll list carefully, take my little butterflies, all the tiny pieces and take really good care of them. Because they go on top anyway, we have a top layer. This is essentially my base. Sometimes they don't exactly quite fit, I can fix that later with scissors but I'll just take a look here, I have my photo for reference and I can start gluing. Moving some things over. When it comes to the glue, I don't know. Sometimes I get it right, sometimes I don't. In general, if the paper is thicker then you can get away with a bit more glue. If it's thinner, be really careful and mindful about how much glue you're putting on. I'm being a little lazy right now with you all but in the workshops I actually put the glue on like little bowls and plates, but that's because we're in a group setting and this is a thicker paper, so I'm getting away with way more glue. In the workshops were in a group setting, so I tried to just make sure that the glue is evenly distributed amongst everyone. There's always going to be some little variations because you're probably not going to put it exactly in the same spot as you put the first one and you are a human being. It's all right. It's all good. It's a process not a science. [MUSIC]
9. Sharing My Past Vision Boards: Now, we're going to do a little bit of Show and Tell where I'm going to share with you vision boards that I've been making since 2015, so for the past five years. This is actually my very first one. Well, technically, it was my second, but this is the one where I started deciding to take vision boarding a bit more seriously. You can see, I hadn't yet decided to do the Canvas thing, but after this workshop and seeing the people walking out with their flimsy boards, I decided, yeah, Canvas is the way to ago. But on the back, I still wrote my value words that I wanted. I wrote First Full Moon of 2015, and sisterhood, and just the little things that I wanted to remember. Here, I was still trying to combine everything on one board, like my personal life, my business. I had just started my business the year before. There's a lot of abstract ideas, I don't quite remember anymore. I do remember this, though, I had a detail where I loved how this tree went up and then there was these many generations looks like a family, and I felt like they were more of the tree. That, I remember. Again, you can see some of the layerings, some ideas here, some key messages, connect what will you make today, conducting energy, things that I wanted to remember. I don't have it here but now, because it's so flimsy, I actually ended up putting this in a frame, just like a frame from IKEA. Just that then it has a home so then it doesn't die on me. Every so often, even before filming this, we just had to like glue some things down again. That happens too when you hold on to them, it's nice to remember and sometimes, you might have to do some upkeep. But this is the one from 2015, I don't know where 2016 went, but this is from 2017. Then here, you can see, I started doing one just for business, and I still was using a Canvas. Core feelings; supportive, spiritually guided, abundant, limitless, thoughtful activism, feminism, and then my theme was equilibrium. Here, another little detail that you can see I've grown out of, I was always very picky about the edges of my board and so I was literally gluing things down along the back to be able to not have it go off the board. But you can see now, I'm not worried about that anymore. Here, I did, again, layering, at the time when I was building a design studio and I was trying to work with the bigger corporations that wanted to do positive change. There were certain things that I wanted to work on, so I was working on public speaking, I was working on building a team, and I was just working on my own self, like having a good seesaw, it says like, a conscious coming together. Then this, I don't remember where I found this, but clearly, it really struck me, empathy and corporate America, just like this combination of things. One thing I will say that I did this year, in 2017, that I didn't do on other years, is I printed out pictures of myself, like literally in my old space with people that I worked with and hired as part of the design studio, and use pictures from a photoshoot from that, so then I could literally see myself in my vision board. In 2018, things changed a little bit. I'm actually going to flip the board around. You can see here, I was super inspired, so I use the back of my board to write out things that I wanted to remember all around the edge of my board. I call 2018 the deepening, and I wanted to be focused, artistic, aligned, and prosperous, like super simple. Yeah, I wrote all these messages to myself along the back. That's another thing that you could do with your Canvas, if you want it. For me, this felt like a little mantra or prayer to myself. This was the only board that I made, but in 2018, I was really focused on me. I knew that my business was not where I wanted it to be, it wasn't the business that was for me, and I was doing a lot of self-exploration to see where I wanted to go in my life and in my business. I have a lot of pictures of women that inspire me, and there's more messaging to myself happening in this year, more quiet moments, and then just like quiet power, and it was a very introspective year that changed a lot for me. Twenty eighteen, I just evolved a lot as a human being, as a creative, and even looking back at this board, this is what's really nice about having it on the Canvas. Looking back at this board, I can remember all these feelings and things that I went through in this year and what space I was in when I made this board. It's making me emotional, just wow. It's cool to see this time capsule and remember everything, like all the stories and what that year entailed, and then know where I am now. I feel very grateful just looking at this board. So 2019, things started changing again. I decided to get a bigger Canvas. Actually, let me flip to the back and see what I wrote. I had very specific motivations here. Twenty nineteen, I called it the year of the magician, and for me, it was about from inspiration to action. Makes sense, the year before, I was very introspective, but 2019, I was ready to get out and make my vision real. My themes were spirit led clarity, devoted discipline, open freedom, consistent action, and creatively focused structure. Then I had these foundations that I wanted to work on. Really cool. Here, you can see there's a lot of color, there's a lot of ignition and fiery energy. I remember when I made this board, I was really wanting to move from the introspective year into a year of doing an action. I started expressing myself creatively differently, so I have a lot of arts here. This woman by the fire, the fire represented that action-oriented layer, but she still looks very calm, so it's like not action to the point of burning out but action that is focused and intentional. Twenty nineteen, I also really dove into my training in Montessori education for early childhood. I included some little ideas that was becoming a bigger part of my life. This actually ends up being a combination of business and personal because 2019 was when I made the decision to have more of a business around my own creative expression and teaching and educating and sharing. Really neat to see these two and remembering again, all the feelings that I had of moving forward, and this is actually something that I would look at every single day for all of 2019 which is always inspiring to see. Then of course, that brings us to 2020 which you just watched me create. On the back, I have my themes for 2020, connection, community growth, all with intention. Who knows? Maybe I'll feel inspired to add a little more. I have the room, that's the other thing that's nice about that. This is my present endeavors. Another thing I'd like to point out is, in 2019 and 2020, I just lost the interest in having a picture-perfect Canvas and I actually love the frayed edges and how it's a little raw and a little put together and that combination. I won't go in too much detail about this one because we talked about it in the other video. I wanted to share with you all examples of vision boards throughout the years because it's interesting to see how you evolve and how you looked at things and what you were going through, and it's almost like a quick reference point for all those feelings, all those dreams, all those goals that you had in the moment when you are planning out your endeavors for your creative visions for that year. That is my Show and Tell.
10. Your Final Project: We've reached that time, it's the end. Now, a time for your final project. Of course, your final project is your vision board. In the community space, in the Projects area, feel free to take a picture of your vision board and share it with us or share your layout picture, whatever stage, or even show us the progress, that would be really, really cool to see. I would also really love to see your vision board in your space. You don't have to show us your whole home, but if you end up deciding to put your vision board or share where you ended up putting it in your space. I've had people put it in their bathrooms, because they go in there every day. I've had people tell me that they put it right next to their front doors, so then that way, it's the first thing they see when they enter their home. Then there's also people who just leave it in their bedrooms, it's the last thing they see before they go to sleep. I would love to know where your vision board is, and if you're willing, share it in your environments or just show us a picture of the vision board. I can't wait to see them.
Nadia Payan, educator, speaker, artist & montessorian
