Creative Tools – Kim Koning

This week has been a week of reflection. It is the first week of the New year of the New decade. This is a time when most people look behind them at the past and resolve to make things better and newer in the New Year. I am one of those millions of people who have been going through New Year reflections. I have had a few A-Ha moments that I would like to share with you in this post.

A few months ago I wrote a post called: Joy is a Choice. It was an A-Ha moment that I had during one of my early morning Soul Photographs (Morning Pages). Joy is not a state of being and it is not a given. But Joy is a Choice. There is not much in life that we can choose to avoid or choose to manifest, most of life happens by happenstance or circumstance and how we react to those times.

But Joy is more than an emotion.

Happiness is an emotion.

Joy is an attitude.

The French have the best phrase for this:

Joie de Vivre

The Italian phrase that corresponds to this is:

La Bella Vita

This year my 2011 Word of the year is Possibility. I have also decided to focus more on the creative me and less time on the practical me. I have decided that life should not be a case of “Live to work” but rather a case of “Work to live”. I am going to make this a year of Joie de Vivre and Life is going to be La Bella Vita.

How?

I am going to be branching out more creatively speaking and better my current creative crafts (whether that be in writing, photography) and opening myself out to the Possibility of other creative pathways. I am signing up for classes at a local Arts Centre from February. The classes that I have my eye on now are Painting (with a specialization of Surrealism) and Glass-Blowing.

I am also going to take part in something called Project 365. This is a project run by an extraordinary group of women who call themselves The Shutter Sisters. This is a project where you take a picture a day and then post it to the Website’s Flickr page called Shutter Sisters 365. The idea behind the project is exactly the same idea to what I had when I wrote Joy is a Choice. It is to capture a moment that inspires Joy in you through the lens of a camera. The ladies on Shutter Sisters put it in a sentence that really resonates with me this year:

“This was all about moment, right? Staying in the moment has a way of dissipating negativities even though we catch them in freeze frame with our cameras. When you sit with sadness or anger you are in control of ushering it out. When you sit with joy and love you are empowered and radiate it back to others. Photography has this magic to it as well. No one else has your eyes. No one sees the world exactly as you do. That is a beautiful thing!”

– Meredith Winn (04/01/11)

So I have signed up to be a part of this Vision. I have always loved photography even before I studied it both in School and afterwards. I remember my first two photographs that really made me fall in love with viewing the world through the eye of a camera lens. I was about 11 years old and I was on holiday at the beach staying with my great-aunt. One day we went down to the pier. It was a stormy grey day and because of the impending storm, the beach and pier was empty. I took a couple of photographs on a simple 35mm point and shoot (this was in the days before digital) of the ocean being sheltered by a stormy sky. When I got home from my holiday I was excited to have my 35mm roll of film developed. The photos that I had taken that day on the beach were exquisite. They showed the impending power of the storm and gave a real emotion to the shots. I realised then that photography is a powerful tool in life. From that moment I was in love with shooting the world. Nature scenes are my favourite in particular beach shots and sky / storm shots are still my favourite. So this year I am going to post a picture a day that inspires me. I will post it on the Flickr site but will also be posting it via my new Tumblr account.

This year is going to be a year where I saturate my soul in creative pursuits. I am truly Joyful when I am doing something creative. That is my joy: Creativity,Passion, Travel and Change. It is going to be a year of POSSIBILITY and a year where I make the Choice to be Joyful and to have JOY.

What are you going to do that inspires you this year?

What new creative pathways will you pursue this year?

Share your creative aspirations here in the comments so that we can support and encourage each other.

Make this your year when the Creative You takes priority over the Practical You. Do what you love to do and what gives you joy.

I leave you with this quote which is on my 2011 vision board:

today is your day

to dance lightly with life,

sing wild songs of adventure,

soar your spirit,

unfurl your joy.

-Jonathan Lockwood Huie –

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:

A picture is worth a thousand words.

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.

Vision Boards: A Quick Story

How to Make a Vision Board

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:

Oprah’s O Dream Board

Vision Board Site

Catalogue of Dreams

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.

Get Creative! Win $100 Gift Card, Elmer’s #CanYouTopThis (scrapsofmygeeklife.com)
Own Your Beauty, Month Three: On Creativity with Ali Edwards (blogher.com)
The software that gets whatever you want. (using-spiritual-energy.blogspot.com)
Plot Your Course of Action with a Vision Board (ybpguide.com)
Vision Boards – Why You Should Create One (savvyblogging.net)
Own Your Beauty, Month 3: Tips for Your Vision Boards (blogher.com)

Tag: Creative Tools

2011 Goal~Project365/2011 The creative me is taking priority over practical me

2011 Monday Mental Muscle #1: Visual Prompts & Vision Boards

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