af Lise Meijer | feb 16, 2013 | From my life, Uncategorized, Visionmap
I am a fan. Of creating visionmaps. Or making drawings of our visions. Of writing thank you notes for things yet to happen. Or speaking our innermost unbelievable dreams out to a trusted friend or admitting it in a journal. I´ll get to why I am a fan…
For those of you who always wondered what those visionmaps are all about, or maybe just love to sneak peak, here´s how I create a visionmap, step by step:
1. Choose a theme for your visionmap
Find something you´d love to have more of in your life. I use journaling time for the choosing and finding out. You can choose to make a map of anything you want: A visionmap for attracting a loving partner, for a fulfilling worklife, a specific dream, for more sense of quiet in your life, more energy, or, like I do every year, a visionmap for what you wish for the coming year. Basically you can make a visionmap about anything you want to strengthen in your life.
2. Spend 45 minutes browsing (not reading!) through magazines, cutting out images for your map.
You cut out any image that rings with your vision. Be greedy, just cut, so you have lots of images to choose from later!
The important thing here is to go for images that for some reason appeal to you. If you for example want a lifestyle with more healthy food, and are making a map for that, you don´t need a ton of pictures with green salads or herbal tea. Find some (and if you don´t have any, browse the net and print one or two out), then go on collecting pictures that associates with the feeling you get from eating healthy food. Perhaps pictures of children playing, a sunset, birds flying. Friends laughing. Choose pictures that give you a happy uplifted feeling, that will support your vision! Get the picture?
3. Spend the next 45 min´s laying out and gluing your cut out pictures to your piece of cartboard.
Have fun with it, and if you wish, leave some space for wtiring small messages or confirmations on the map. If you like, Add some details like a coloured frame or small drawings, glitter, or other decor. Totally optional. I also recommend adding a bright picture of yourself somewhere.
This year I went a bit bananas and actually photoshopped a painting by me onto a magazine front-page and printed it out. It looks totally real. I am actually curling my toes right now with embarrasment!!! But still, it makes me believe that of course those magazines (or similar ones) would feature my art this coming year, thereby making it more known to people. Something very valuable if you want to sell art. You dont´t have to go this far at all, it takes some time of course, but it does put a big smile on my face every time I walk past it!
(Finished Visionmap)
4. Hang your map!
You can hang it wherever you choose. In your bedroom, the living room, or on the inside of a closet so you see it everytime you get dressed. I personally love to have my map hanging close to where I work in my studio. But do make sure to hang it in an honorable place where you see it often, every day if possible.
(“Just knock”, print available here)
Why I am a fan?
I love this process for several reasons. It´s easy and playful and anyone can do it, with or without great creative skills. It combines logic with intuition. But mostly: it strengthens our belief in our dreams, thereby attracting those things in our lives. I have seen and felt how it works, over and over, in my life and in other people´s lives. I have taught it in workshops and seen the glow on people´s cheeks as the process works it´s wonders. It´s so simple, you just have to do it.
It´s not like a quick-fix wishing list. It´s a tool that assist you in the sometimes impossible task of finding and acting on your innermost whispers of what it is you are meant to be doing, eating, working with, dancing with, living with, in this life.
Of course it´s not the map itself that has magic pixie-powers to make your dreams come true. It´s you! By first creating (spending prescious time, energy, focus) and then watching your visionmap daily over a period, you tune yourself in a powerful way to those visions. Creating a visionmap is a powerful help to keep believing that things far beyond your current situation are actually possible. Yes, they truly are, for each single one of us, and for you too!
Down to basics:
What you need:
*Stack of magazines
* scissors, pens and glue (I prefere a stick)
* Piece of cartboard or thick paper
* 2 hours for yourself (or 2 x 1 hour, or whatever you can manage), good music and your favourite drink
Hope you´ll have a go, and if you do, I wish you a wonderfully playful process. I mean, it doesn´t hurt to try and you may just be surprised at the outcome!
af Lise Meijer | nov 26, 2012 | Cards, Lise Meijer Web Shop, Soul speed
I made a collection of 6 cards for the shop, “Hearts and wings.” I made a real good price for them too. These cards are soulwarming – use them as christmas-cards, winter-cards, or heart-warming cards for any time of the year. Head over to my etsy shop to buy your set HERE.
They make a wonderful gift too, and you can also get them as signed posters, like this one. I will be happy to ship to you anywhere in the world.
“Light your light Starmaker”
“Answering the stars”
“Old friends”
“Give time”
And yes, l will, give time. Because all that is important in this world takes time. The “small time” of small but important steps that only seem to count when you add them up all together. And the “BIG TIME when you are given the opportunity to shine with what you collected and learned in one big go, and are able to, because of all those small steps you took in just that direction over the years.
Perhaps giving each other time could be the most precious present this year!
af Lise Meijer | nov 14, 2012 | From my life, Lise Meijer Web Shop
“Dancing with life”, print available here.
Today I found this little writing I made a while back. It reminded me why I am here and what is really important. I could use that today, still settling in and adjusting everything after moving into our new house (pics coming soon). I actually wrote it as en “about” piece and never used it. Maybe I will! Wanted to share it with you:
Let me sing a song about life and I will flourish. Let me paint with luminous colors and I will be light. Let me dance alone or with others and my soul will begin to sing. Let me write, and my life story will unfold as the pen moves over the paper.
Let me learn from the stones that make me stumble, and I will grow deep roots of understanding. Let me see and experience all that is beautiful and good and true and authentic, and let me help create, and I have fulfilled my purpose.
But don´t ask me to dwell long on explanations or evidence. For we have been allowed to tread on this beautiful earth, and I will use my time here to be actively parttaking and live as good and beautifully as I can. I am so proud and grateful to have been given the chance to be here, as a human being on this green and blue earth.
Thank you.
af Lise Meijer | okt 9, 2012 | From my life, My music, My painting journey, Uncategorized
If you have not yet watched this video by this gifted woman, here is your chance, your artist-heart will love it and possibly feel healed by it:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpunQZ4cUyI&w=420&h=315]
Sometimes I wonder: will I ever reach the point where I can actually earn money from painting, singing, writing, dancing and teaching about creativity? And then I realise that this is exactly what I already do!
And in a way have done my whole life. Gradually moving from being a teacher toward expressing my own art and style, plus learning how to share it with the world. And lately also creating and selling products and thinking out of the box like never before.
All the time it has been art that made my heart sing. Colors and melodies, words and dance. Never just one thing, I always wanted them all to be there, the paintings, the songs, the dance, the words. When I was a kid at 7, faithfully drawing one fairy drawing after another, it seemed too good to be true to live from creating a world of goodness.
(resent look of my morning pages journal, created with cut-outs from magazines)
And it took me years and years to acknowledge that what I created was fine just the way it was. That I did not have to create heavvy or intellectual art for it to have a place and value, that it was ok express art that holds the goodness of things in this world. Strange that I would ever doubt that! I guess we are all under the influence of a sometimes mad world, not knowing what is natural and true. And more than that, that goodness was, and is, most needed.
(New painting, “Sharing a moment”, right now part of the autumn exhibition)
Now my belief has changed: I no longer think about what the world needs first, I think about what turns up in me as a natural and inspired urge. And I follow that, knowing that it is probably there for a reason, and that by witholding it I may hold back a needed piece of apuzzle in the world. And then, but only then I ask: who may benefit from this? And I am open to the answers that turn up, often surprising even me.
af Lise Meijer | sep 19, 2012 | From my life, My painting journey, Soul speed
I recently posted a photo of my morning-pages-journal on FB, and a creative soul wrote “morning pages rock!” in the comments. Another wrote “Morning pages are fabulous! And I thought: yes and yes and YES!!!
(The latest morning-pages-journal got a cover-make-over, which makes it even more tempting for me!)
The author and creativity coach Julia Cameron has managed to create such a popular and almost embarrassingly simple tradition amongst creatives over the world. The fact that I can write the words “morning pages” and someone from another country know exactly what I am talking about made me so happy. A truly good thing that heals the creative soul has spread around the globe for good….YES!
(Me, my beloved morning-pages- journal and coffee!)
Why are morning pages so special?
They work like a shower for the soul and mind, cleaning the systems before a creative working day. They leave you more at ease with what is, and therefore more open to what else is there that want to play that day. Like inspiration, visions and passion. And that is a BIG thing for a creative person, that makes the difference from misery to magic!
And what are they, how do you do them?
1. Get a journal, preferably biggish.
2. Set aside about 20 min´s in the morning for writing.
I prefere the time just before starting my working day, with coffee by my side. Some do them in bed when they awake. They work best if you do them every morning, but some is also good and will surely make a differece.
3. Now write 3 pages, longhand.
Start anywhere, ex: “I am tired today, must try to go earlier to bed tonight. I hate to have to wake the children in the morning. Maybe it´s time to look at our family´s timings again…..I am keen to paint but actually wished I had more time, worried it will affect me…..Amazing how that scene from the movie still sits in my system…..bla-bla-bla….” sweet nothings will get you going. It´s not important WHAT you write. What matters is that you WRITE, and without judgement, 3 pages at a reasonable pace. Don´t be surprised if some of your best ideas show up some days on the pages. And don´t worry when they don´t. Just DO them.
(Often it is during the morning-pages I get ideas for images or words to my paintings like in the one above)
That´s it. And maybe remember that it is ok to make notes for your do-do-list, but be careful, only notes. To do-lists are not Morning pages. The pages are you listening to the sound of you, right there in the moment.
(From a café-visit in the company of another of Julia´s books, “The sound of paper”)
Try it out, or even better, get Julia´s book “The artists way“. It totally rocks too!!! So does her other books, but I recommend starting with this one.
If you already write morning pages, please share how it is in the comments below, I would love to hear!!
