Make Your Own Dream Board – Free

We know that it’s important to take periodic time-outs for ourselves throughout the day. We make time to regroup our energies, refocus and influence our thoughts in efforts to keep our heads in the clouds. There are a lot of ways that we can do this, and this post will outline another easy tactic that you can use to keep up the upthinking.

Here’s one easy trick I like to use often if not on a daily basis. I call it the “free to dream board” – haha, no I’m kidding, you can just call it a dream board. Yah know, just like the dream board they had in The Secret and other movies, except this one doesn’t require much of any manual labor – just a lot of clicking and browsing for pictures/files on the internet. This is the digital dream board! Since a significant amount of these last couple generations are regular computer users, what a convenience it is to have our very own dream board right here at our fingertips!

You can create your dream board on a lot of different sites, but I use picasaweb. Why? Because I already had a gmail account anyway, and I like the google.

This is what my dream board looked like:

The pictures you see there are just pictures I googled up on the web. You can go to a picture search engine and pick out all that you’d like on your own dream board. These pictures aren’t going to be used to sell anything or make money – they’re strictly for your personal dream board, so don’t worry about accidentally leeching/stealing. The pictures on my board remind me of what my goals and dreams are. Their precise function is to help me keep my head in the clouds.

If you’ve got perfect vision, you might notice there’s little text at the bottom of almost all of the pictures within my dream board. Those are affirmations I wrote up or picked up off the web – heh, I’ve got a quote from dune in there, and even a quote from Aristotle. In my book, if a quote hits you hard enough in the soul, it’s just as good or better than any affirmation.

Here’s one of the normal affirmations I’ve got on my dream board:

When I’ve got the time, and the privacy, I’ll throw up the dream board with some peaceful background music on pandora, place my skull between the headphones, and recharge my energy for about 10 minutes with this dream board in slideshow mode, repeating affirmations over again and finally closing my eyes so that I see myself there in the moment remembering when I used to sit at my desk and repeat the affirmations to myself.

Try it out.

(the picture there in my board is from behancemag.com – Surround Yourself With Progress)

Visualizations On The Wall

One way to really focus in on a goal is to visualize yourself reaching that goal. You probably knew that already, right? But you know what’s really sweet? If you can capture that visualization, make it all nice and pretty, frame it up, and stick that visualization on your wall. How can you do that though? Well, you could hire someone to paint/draw it. Or, if you’re an artist yourself, you can paint/draw it up.

A Short Story

Some time (5+ years) ago, I went to visit a few friends in Houston and as I was walking around their place, I noticed that they had lots and lots of books – like, everywhere. That was cool. I also noticed they had lots of pictures of their friends scattered about the house, and lots of neat ’stuff’ scattered around. The ’stuff’ mostly looked like incomplete science projects, artsy things, and crafts. That was cool. Walking around in there, I got the feeling that I was touring the house of geniuses – the house was cluttered and messy with all kinds of knowledge and interesting things. But out of all the interesting stuff in their house, there was one item that stood out and made a unique impression on my mind. It was a poster.

The interesting thing about the poster, other than the image on it, was the location. This poster was mounted on the ceiling right above their bed. It was a poster with an image of the cockpit of the space shuttle – the picture was taken so that you could feel like you were the person driving the shuttle. I can’t recall exactly what she said, but the friend responsible for the poster told me that one of her dreams was to be/do [something space related]. That was years ago, but I remember thinking how great of an idea it was that she put her goal right there on her wall above her bed so she could see it right before she fell asleep and right after she would wake up in the morning. I can imagine her lying in bed looking up at that poster on her ceiling and visualizing herself driving the shuttle. What a cool way to keep your head in the clouds.

The poster on the ceiling is an awesome idea, and things seemed to work out for my friend –she works for NASA now- but what if you can’t find a poster that reflects your goal/vision/dream? What if there’s no poster out there that has a picture of you running through the finish line after a long marathon? What if there’s no picture of you building that hot rod? What if there’s no picture of you smoking cigars on the back porch with Obama? Well, the obvious thing to do is to make one or have one made.

If all of that sounds great to you but you’re hung up on finding an artist to make the artwork, you could simply head over to craigslist and post an ad with what you want. Or, if you live near a place with street artists, you could roll on down to their neck of the woods and pay them to do your future portrait. If you already know an artist or have a friend who does portraits, you could pay them to do it.

Visualizing Gone Awesome

Let’s say your goal is to be a competitive whitewater racer. Now, imagine staring at a picture of you achieving your goal. The picture is sitting at a strategic location in your home/apartment/office. You see this picture everyday and sometimes you sit there and just stare at it, daydreaming and basking in the warm feelings you get while thinking about it. You wake up in the morning and start out your day with focus and drive after looking at your face and your body burning through the rapids.

Compelling.