I follow an online poetry site called One Stop Poetry that never fails to inspire me. They have some amazing poetry but more than this they do great creative prompts each week.
So for today’s Monday Mental Muscle and the first Monday Mental Muscle of 2011, I am going to borrow from this site.
So the first exercise for the week is to follow the picture prompt from this week’s One Shoot Sunday. Look at the picture at the bottom of this link in this prompt and write a poem, flash fiction or a piece of prose from this picture prompt.
Visual prompts are something I use quite often creatively speaking. I am a very visual person and am often inspired by things I see and observe. I guess that is why I love photography so much. When I look through the viewfinder on my camera, I see things that I may miss when looked at just with the eye. The viewfinder tends to focus on one specific scene and everything else seems to fade away.
Visual prompts are also a fantastic writing tool when recalling the adage:
People are very visual creatures. We often have to see something to believe or understand it. So this week, think about what visual prompts you use in your writing or other creative prompts.
The second exercise of the week for Monday Mental Muscles is in line with visual prompting and visual inspiration.
Vision Boards
- What is a vision board?
- Why do you need one in 2011?
- How do you make a vision board?
Vision boards are something that I have been using the last couple of years. I believe a vision board is essential to any and all areas of your life. Vision boards are not a new idea. If you spend enough time in the blogosphere, there will be numerous methods of Vision Boards. If you google “Vision Board”, you will get 4, 400, 000 results in 0.20 seconds. I have read many of these online links to Vision Boards but one of the best explanations of Vision Boards that I have read is written by Christine Kane. These are three links that tell you why Christine uses Vision Boards and how to create and use one for yourself.
The Complete Guide to Vision Boards
So your exercise for the week/month is to create a new vision board. You can either do this manually with paper and scissors or if you prefer you can have one online. The following are links to sites where you can host/create your own online digital vision board:
I have used all three sites myself with ease and success. I use both a digital vision board that I save as my desktop wallpaper and a manual vision board that I keep above my desk in my study. The digital one is great if you spend a lot of time on your computer or your laptop. It is especially useful to save your digital vision board as your desktop wallpaper because it will be a constant visual prompt.
Why use a Vision Board?
Many people, including all the above links expound on why you should use a vision board. The reason why I use a vision board is because as I mentioned before I am a very visual person. For me a Vision Board or a Dream Board is a place where I put visual prompts to inspire and encourage me to reach out for different goals in my life.
Every year, I do a new vision board for the month ahead that is a 12-month vision board. On top of this I also do monthly vision boards for short-term goals. I also focus on different areas in my life as well as my writing and do vision boards for those. The way I understand the intention of creating a vision board is to have a visual tool of focus that you can look at each day and imprint in your thoughts. in other words, you open up your mind’s eye, so to speak. For me it is like the ultimate figurative viewfinder on my goals, aspirations and dreams for both the present and the future. I use it to visually carry out my goals and aspirations.
I am not a list person. I try to make lists and then invariably end up misplacing those said lists which defeats the purpose of list making. So if you are not a list-making person, try the idea of a Vision Board. The visual part of our brain is incredibly powerful. It is said that most of what we see, we do not immediately take in consciously but it enters our sub-conscious and is stored there. So letting the images of a vision board enter your mind’s eye on a daily basis can have the power to rewire your brain and focus your intentions towards the visual images, prompts and inspirations that you allow to saturate your internal mind’s eye.
So these are your tasks for this week. Make this week a week of vision and let it saturate your focus. Put a viewfinder frame around your goals and aspirations and then take/make a picture. That is why and how I use Vision Boards.
Sharpen your visual skills and focus your viewfinder.
Happy Exercising!
Feel free to share with others, by commenting, the way visual prompts and vision boards work for you.
© All rights reserved Kim Koning.
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Kim Koning 