Still in a “the-beginning-of-a-new-year” mood and on the verge of yet another relocation to another country in another continent, I have come up with an idea for today’s creativity prompt.

As a very visual person I have realized the best way to reflect and plan my new year’s resolutions is by preparing a visual “life coach” or “life book”, if you so wish (more on naming the project later).

The visual life coach is actually a place for all the little components of your life – a place for self-reflection, a place to come to for inspiration, a place to jot down your aspirations, your goals and your wishes and follow up on them. Every single one of those component is an important building block, but only as a whole can you use these components to build yourself a life plan for the next year.

Your goals need the inspiration to get you going.
The aspirations need the wish list for maintenance…
Neither your goals nor your aspirations can be gathered and achieved without a bit of self-reflection.

Therefore, after I have established the way to make my resolutions stick, here is how I went about it (and am still going):

Step 1-
Gather a bunch of magazines, a second before they’re tossed into the recycling bin.

Any type of magazine will do.

I have used a compilation of style, home decor, health & fashion magazines which works perfectly well for this project.

Step 2-
Grab a pair of utility scissors, a craft knife, a journaling pen and a glue stick from your stash – these are the essentials to which you can add stamps, punches or anything else you are gravitating towards while leafing through the magazines’ pages.

Step 3-

Leaf through the magazines pages and cut out everything that speaks to you – titles, photos, color combination you find attractive, interesting composition, nice font, an image you’d like to paint/draw – anything.

Step 4-

start compiling your very own visual life coach–

• Start with listing everything you love about yourself. It is a very important exercise in positive self reflection and can change the entire way you are going about you life (for the better).
• Compose your very own list of goals and include images that relates to your goals and make them more tangible.
• Prepare a visual wish list. Some scholars believe that by visualizing your wish list you can attract its components to your life.
• Include inspiring quotes in your pages to create an inspiration well.
• Stick inspiring images among your pages and don’t forget to jot down some words on what made you gravitate towards each image –
  • Does it have a fabulous color combination?
  • Does it make you feel happy/relaxed/in-love?
  • Does it make you feel like creating something right away?

  etc.

• Experiment – sketch/create layouts. prepare color swatches. draw an outline of a composition which appeals to you.
• Reflect- some points to consider:
  • what were the highlights of your previous year?
  • What things would you like to keep on going next year and what things would you like to refrain from?
  • what were your most memorable decisions last year and how did they affect you?

Enjoy – it is all and only YOURS.

Here are some snap shots from my visual life coach for the coming year:

Participate in the naming game

I have suggested 2 names for this project:

1. Visual life coach
2. Life book

Non of them seem to resonate well with the idea behind the project. So I hereby invite you to suggest names for the project – just leave a comment below with your suggestion.

Tags: creativity, creativity prompt, life book