More of This, please

Don’t know what you want? Having trouble staying focused on your dreams?

Here is the simplest and most effective visioning tool I’ve ever worked with. I invented it myself, capitalizing on my (compulsive) need to make lists on every available piece of paper.

The More of This List

1) Allocate a spot where you can capture (write down) EVERY SINGLE THING that makes you think: Wow or Yum or Oooh or Gee, I would really like to have more of this in my life. The back page of my journal works really well for this.

2) Keep adding to it, often – all year.

3) Keep checking it, often – all year. Notice the way things that seemed important often fade; notice which things continue to shine out at you – the things that ‘feel’ important. These are the golden nuggets.

The More of This list:

• keeps your vision fresh – and in front of your face.
• is a living, organic record of the inside of your head – and your heart.
• is impossible to do wrong.
• is free.

It works because it works you – from the outside in

The More of This List:

• is a workshop that takes place in the creative space between the world of ideas and the world of forms.
• is a mind sieve, capturing the daydreamy first thoughts, caprices and BIG ideas that might otherwise slip away when the phone rings or the boss stops by the cubicle for a chat.

Though the More of This List feels free-form, it’s a powerful tool – it’s vision on steroids; no, it’s vision on organic whey protein powder.

I use it to super-charge my vision board process, my writing projects – and my family life.

You can use it for poems, garden plans and home design.

You can use it for vacation planning and lofty dreams (the loftier the better). Some of the things on your list will just show up – remarkably, even miraculously. Others will take work. All of it has the potential to become.

Use it as a prayer, a conversation between you and the Divine – a way of clarifying your dreams into visions, and asking for the support of the Universe to draw them into form.

The More of This List turns this:

The back pocket of my notebook today

Into this (My current More of This list:)

• Boiled wool slippers – probably with polka dots
• Photography – for which I’d need a camera and/or an Iphone with Instagram App
• Flowers – pale pink peonies, pink roses, periwinkle blue hydrangea with their heavy snowball blossoms  in my garden…

• … and on pretty mismatched plates, scarves, wallpaper and perhaps, a purse..
• … and a colorful fabric to (finally) reupholster the chair that my mother gave me ten years ago

• White plates, white fabrics, white linens, white rooms
• White space, light, paint and mirrors framed with carved wooden frames.
• Plant based/Natural Dyes – Brazilwood, Cochineal
• Silk – kimonos, drapes, and velvet in …
• … this color that I’m craving but can only describe as the color of the sky through the clouds, that blue that is just a whisper from green; aquamarine with light shining through it; so sheer, so subtle it is almost white but is not white at all…
• … to re-upholster the beat up but gorgeous old sofa that I found at the thrift store
• Beautiful films with rich, evocative stories. (Another Year, Kings Speech, anything from Merchant Ivory, or the director of Atonement)
• Travel – This place on Fiji looks nice; this beautiful bed and breakfast in Italy looks nice, too – even though, technically, Italy is not an island.
• Paris – I see myself writing in a cafe there. This is different from writing in a cafe here.
• And Hawaii, to meet a colleague that I work with every day but have only talked with in person once.
• And lots and lots of conferences… i LOVE conferences
• More information about  Peace Day TV which aligns with my own vision for a postive media and which I discovered in an email from Evolver, another group I’m intrigued by.
• Artisan Jewelry from  Diane Kuligowski, the brilliant jewelry designer I found on Scoutie Girl’s blog.
• Studying with Tara Gentile of Scoutie Girl - my new favorite blog
• Unraveling with Suzannah Conway - which brings me back to that Iphone, that camera
• Blog redesign that lets my actual quirk and snark out of the box: See Cleavage and Redhead Writing
• Poetry.
• Watercolors.
• Oceans.
• Light – on my skin and in the rooms that I occupy.
• Outline my next books: ONE and Your Sacred Story
• Comfortable bra from Blue Canoe (lost the other one)
• Orthodontist for Invisalign
• Website: Splash page, Ejunkie, forum/discussion page?
• Daube de Boeuf (This one’s from Martha Stewart) but this one’s from Julia
• Le Creuset Dutch Oven
• 92nd St Y – classes, lectures with Mom/Matt/Suzy W.
• Sarah Lawrence MFA in Creative Writing Program; Wisdom U. Ph.D. program

Which feeds this: My Vision Board

Which leads, ultimately, to, you know: Total bliss, supreme joy and world domination – and/or a well-balanced life that’s moving in that direction.