Usually at the beginning of each year, I do a vision board for the coming year. It takes in every aspect of my life: spiritual and personal growth, health and well-being, financial abundance, business and career, social life and friends, primary relationship, and creativity. (Yes, I give creativity a whole section by itself.)
This year I decided to try something different. So I pulled Tony Buzan’s Mind Mapping book off my bookshelf. I discovered the book several years ago and have done many mind maps since then, some on large bristol board and some small enough for a postage stamp. Well, maybe not quite that small, but pretty small.
It’s very pleasing to me to observe the idea of mindmapping showing up over and over in mainstream business. I’m seeing it everywhere. I even got an email the other day where a mindmap was one of the bonuses for buying a particular business program.
This is a perfect illustration of how we are moving away from focusing on business and life with only goal-oriented left-brain thinking and moving towards a more co-creative, non-linear, whole brain approach.
I cheer and applaud and sometimes even chuckle each time I see evidence of that shift.
When I first brought the book off the shelf, I was going to do a mind map instead of a vision board. However as I worked on it, lo and behold, it started to morph into something that was not a mind map or a vision board but something that merged the two forms.
Is it a vision map? A mind board?
Whatever the name it seemed to bring about a flow of ideas and my hand could hardly keep up with my thoughts.
I started by drawing this form on my piece of white bristol board.
The seven sections became the categories of spiritual and personal growth, health and well-being, financial abundance, business and career, social life and friend, primary relationship, and creativity.
Starting from the centre of the board I worked out toward the edge writing words and ideas, and adding a few pictures and other items I cut from magazines and newspapers. Yesterday I completed two of the seven sections.
What is so wonderful about this kind of activity is that it has multiple layers. Here are just a few that I thought of.
- It will give me a direction for the upcoming year.
- It sparked a lot of ideas.
- It helped me see where a lot of things intersect and connect.
- It will be a piece of art worthy of hanging on a wall in my office.
- It’s FUN! I look forward to completing it.
- It brought about a new form.
And you know what? I bet I will start seeing vision maps in other places now. Synthesizing two or more ideas into a new form is one of the most powerful ways we create and bring about innovation. The best part of all is that many individuals could combine mindmapping and vision boards, and each would be unique according to each individual’s perspective and purpose.
That’s worth cheering about too!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree, it’s amazing how many of my interests are interconnected.
I have a dreamboard that I no longer look at, even though it’s smack dab in the middle of my office wall. The problem, I’ve found, is staying connected with something that I’ve envisioned in the past.
So, thanks for a great post. You’ve given me some new ideas for creating a fresh and inspiring dreamboard.
Abby, let me know what you come up with in your new “form”.