In January 2019, right at the very start of my personal & spiritual development journey, I decided what the heck, lets give this whole vision board thing a go.
My heart wasn’t really into at the beginning, I was mainly doing it because I had been signed off work with depression, was bored and lonely and I felt like I should use the free time to at least try and create some sort of future for myself. I grabbed a bunch of magazines I’d had lying around the flat, some old issues of Cosmopolitan and one chunky travel magazine that I had been given at an event, and I began.
Being stuck in a rut, I had just begun contemplating moving abroad, although I honestly had no idea when, why or how. However, at that point I’d done a little bit of reading on how the Law of Attraction works, and I reminded myself that I’m not supposed to think of ‘how’ it will happen and instead just focus on my desires.
I thought about where I would live. I do love South East Asia. Maybe I could go back to Thailand? No, best to try somewhere new – Singapore? Bali?
Undecided, I flicked through the travel magazine, pulling out images that to me represented a life I would like to have living in South East Asia. I had pictures of delicious asian food, sunsets on a beach, beautiful rice fields… it started to look VERY beautiful. I then pulled pictures from Cosmopolitan magazine that represented the kind of person I wanted to be; yoga pictures, a girl smiling & happy with straight teeth (I was in my first quarter of Invisalign treatment at the time) and pictures of people with laptops in cafes as I imagined myself working in some cool places in Asia.
By the end of my Vision Board session, I had created a visual representation of a female digital nomad living in South East Asia, feeling confident AF, doing yoga and loving life.
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I cannot express how far this vision was from my then reality: at the time I was broke, living in London in a shared flat I could barely afford, struggling to pay bills and debts, feeling lonely, depressed, anxious all the time, and completely lacking confidence.
But when I looked at this vision, for the first time in a long time, I felt tingles of excitement about my future. I felt like this life I was crafting together with magazines, a pair of scissors and some crusty old blu-tack (I didn’t even have any glue) could actually be possible.
I popped my masterpiece into an old empty plastic Ikea 99p frame; I had to sit on it to get the blu-tack to really stick down and keep all my images in place. I’d cut out some inspirational quotes too and popped them in. I hung my vision board on the wall next to my bed so that it was the first thing I would see every morning and the last thing I would see at night.
That board stayed up there till June 2019. At some time in May, I’d began collecting images of Chang-Mia in Thailand, feeling pulled to go there. But I had a bit of a self-confidence relapse in the June and remember telling myself – You can’t move abroad. Don’t be ridiculous! What the hell are you going to do in Thailand??
The fact I’d been staring at my vision board morning and night and I was yet to have my glamorous jobs in Singapore land in my lap, kinda had me pissed off. I took the vision board down and replaced it with a piece of art I picked up from a beer festival. Vision board went in the bin. Bye bye.
Oh how I wish I had kept it. So that I could show you how unbelievably similar it was to the life I then magically manifested. Because clearly the Universe had received the message about the life I desired. CLEARLY my subconscious mind had already reprogrammed my beliefs, whether I was aware of them or not. Because a month later, July 2019, I had my “enough is enough” moment in my job. And I quit. I also gave notice on my London flat. I remember saying to myself ‘there has to be more to life than this’
I knew I needed a change of environment, a change of pace from the chaos of London and I knew I needed a BIG career change. I figured that I would move to Manchester or Leeds, or even just move back in with my Parents in Liverpool, but something had to change.
Then, in the August, when cat sitting for some friends who needed a last minute sitter whilst they traveled to Bali, I felt an overwhelming urge to Google images of Thailand. I felt tingles again. Can I even afford it though? What would I do? Where would I live?
When my friends returned from their trip, they showed my pictures of an area in Bali called Canggu that they had stayed, and they even said to me ‘oh its totally your kinda place’. Looking at the images, I felt magnetised to this little beach town in a way I can’t even describe. And as they handed me a present – a blue purse with the word Bali sewn into it – I knew! I knew in that moment, in my core, that I was going to Bali.
No, I didn’t have bags of money or a savings account jam-packed with cash. No, I didn’t know how I would survive out there, or if I could even work out there. No, I didn’t have any friends or family or know anyone out there. No, I didn’t have the full support of my parents who thought I was “too old” and “ruining your life” by moving to the other side of the world.
But I did have excitement in my belly for the first time and I still had that vision in my head, the one I had created on the board, of a female digital nomad, living her best life in South East. And so when a very small, but unexpected bonus was given to me before i left my office job, I used it book a one-way ticket to Bali.
I realised, whilst I thought my vision board had being doing nothing for me, it had in fact started creating thoughts and energy focused around my vision. Without my vision board, maybe I wouldn’t have had my “enough is enough” moment, maybe I would have continued settling for the life I had. Without my vision board maybe I wouldn’t have given two ducks about the holiday photos of Canggu my friends wanted to show me. Maybe I would have just nodded and said ‘that’s nice’. Without my vision board – without those aspirations and dreams – maybe I wouldn’t have worked so hard and been rewarded the bonus which paid my for my flight! But having looked at that vision every day for six months, I was now seeing possibilities and opportunities everywhere, I was seeing how I could and would have that life.
Fast forward to January 1st 2020, I’d been in Bali almost two months. I was trying yoga, living in Canggu, surrounded by empowering females, and spending most days working in cafes as a digital nomad, soon-to-be entrepreneur. I was about to experience one of the best years of my life.