Every year I create a Vision Board for the year ahead. It’s something I love doing.
The image above shows my vision collage for 2019 and I feel good every single time I look at it. Last year was a fantastic year for me as several of my big dreams came true: I did a speaker/trainer tour across five cities in Russia for 3 weeks (amazing), grew my coaching business (joy!) and enjoyed being a participant in not one but two relaxing creative painting retreats (bliss).
The biggest dream which was accomplished right at the end of last year was buying, with my husband Peter, a house with a beautiful little garden and my own office space in London. For many years I had shared with friends, colleagues and clients, my vision of a house with a garden (with roses!) but it always felt out of reach. Sometimes I felt guilty and inadequate, thinking, ‘How come, if I’m the Dream Project Coach I just can’t seem to manifest this core goal?’. I also felt really stupid for not sorting out this important goal a lot earlier in life. However at the start of last year I firmly decided ‘Enough!’ This dream was going to happen once and for all. It took a lot to make it happen both mentally and practically.
There were so many times when it seemed this was an impossible, and maybe even foolish dream. For a start we were both freelancers in our fifties. Plus every time we visited a property there was an obstacle, like too many other bidders or something not quite right with the house. But from the moment we set foot in this property for the first time, even though it needed a lot of TLC, (and had a completely bare kitchen apart from a sink held up by 3 bits of wood) I just knew it was meant to be ours.
Once we moved in, I stood in the garden and suddenly noticed a pink rose on the ground. I looked around wondering where it had come from since it’s obviously a pretty cold time of year here in the UK. I turned around to see a bare twiggy kind of bush but strangely it had two pink roses on it. I had no idea roses could bloom in winter and I had no idea there was even a rose bush in the garden. Perhaps my sub-conscious did.
What was also interesting was that having spoken at a conference a while back, the organiser had sent me a miniature cherry tree in thanks. I’ve never received such a gift before for that type of work and very few people knew we had bought at that stage. Although I believe in taking action, I also find these little co-incidences fascinating, moving and delightful. They always seem to happen in relation to Vision Boards both in my life and my clients, which is why I often use the word ‘miracles’ in my work because that is how it occurs to us.
6 Tips for your Big Dream
I am so grateful to have been this fortunate and to have been reminded that those big dreams really are possible. The process of accomplishing this particular big dream of owning a house reinforced everything I believe and have experienced about going for your dream. Apart from creating that all-important Vision Board here’s what else you can do:
- Make a firm decision – your powerful and wise subconscious mind can’t help you if you faff about and don’t make a clear choice
- Do what it takes – getting to the point of owning a home took a lot of self-growth and action, including learning new ways of earning and managing money
- Trust your intuition – sometimes you just know and you need to trust that you know
- Get support – hubby and I worked as a team: when one of us was down, the other would say, ‘come on, we can do this’ (yes, we also argued a lot, but we got through it!)
- Keep an eye out for self-sabotage – looking back I realise I had a lot of irrational fear and limiting beliefs around owning a home. This meant I sometimes avoided taking key actions and slowed everything down without even realizing I was doing so,
- Hold on to your Big Dream – one of my all-time favourite sayings is, ‘Just because you can’t see a way, doesn’t mean there is no way’
If you have a Big Dream – keep going!
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