Blog : courage

26/3/2014

Written by Lynn Kontos, workshop participant, 2014

“A few years back (2011/2012) I was involved in my first vision board creation exercise. 
I recall that I enjoyed myself and it felt therapeutic at the time, but what really hit me from that whole experience I didn’t learn until approximately 2 years later. I was cleaning house and came across the goals I wrote out prior to creating my visionboard (which to this day is still up on my wall). I had actually completely forgotten the goal writing part of the visionboard creation process, despite that my board stares me in the face every day. On the verge of scrunching up that bit of clutter I glimpsed over it and noticed some things that, throughout my entire life seemed rather unattainable and realised that, wow, I had actually achieved not only a few, but most of these goals over the last 2 years. I was flabbergasted that simply writing something down could help you bring it to life.

When my dear friend invited me to experience a visionboard workshop I was nervous and excited.
I had been rather down of late. The beginning of my summer was spent shared with an admirable individual, a relationship which was prematurely cut short.
The fact it was such a short duration provided me no comfort and I was feeling excessively lost, empty and alone – despite the fact that I was on top of the world before our paths crossed.
I carried these empty feelings with me into the workshop.

Sunday 16th Feb 2014 – Visionboarding day
I am writing this almost 3 weeks post workshop, so my memory is a tad rusty. The following is just a snippet of the activities and is mostly what I took from and how I felt throughout the day.

To begin our visionboard experience we all participated in a warm up activity.
There were a bunch of random trinkets gathered on the floor in the middle of our circular group formation, the activity was to pick one that spoke to us.
I recalled the difficulty I experienced the first time I came across this activity years ago (In a vulnerability workshop) and felt the knot of anxiousness forming in belly.

I looked over the collection and knew it as soon as I saw it. I didn’t even feel a requirement to scan the rest of the items.
I reached out to a green balloon.

My reasoning; 
1. it was green. 

[Green is the color of balance and growth. To find out more, visit: http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/personality-color-green.html]

And 

2. It was “empty”. 

I know that sounds rather depressing, but despite its emptiness, I also chose it knowing that it is a vessel that is capable of being filled/of holding something.

After collecting it I noticed something I hadn’t expected. I became overwhelmed with emotion at this point and silent tears ran down my cheeks. Which I tried to control and hide.

The next step however was to talk about why we chose our object. I knew that I would not be able to express myself without openly crying, so I accepted this fact (which I believe I can thank in part for the vulnerability workshop I have done previously) and I spoke.

In what I look back and perceive as an inarticulate explosion of sobs and words, I revealed to the group that I had no issue with which item was for me. I picked the balloon because it was green, my favourite colour and I viewed it as an empty object that has so much more potential, except, once I picked it up, I noticed that it in fact was not empty. There was something already inside the deflated and apparent “empty” balloon.
It was precisely what I needed reminding of at that point in my life.
This was how I intended to tell my story, however, if anyone from that group ever reads this, they quite possibly gathered a different impression at the time.

Despite how much I cried I actually felt completely at ease with everyone and in myself (something I wouldn’t have felt comfortable with in the past). I was frustrated that my sobs drowned out my words when all I really wanted to do was share what I had just experienced.

We proceeded throughout the day with other activities and eventually came to our goal writing and few hours of creating our vision boards.

I found this part rather difficult, not that I was short of ideas, but it was difficult for me to express my ideas through creativity and I became quite resistive and unwelcoming of my “child-like” work of art.

Due to that feeling, I found our closing group discussion were everyone was welcomed to discuss each piece so unbelievably comforting.

The group only had beautiful, heartwarming, meaningful things to say about my artwork and it reminded me of how self-effacing I tend to be, and the kindness and love you can receive from strangers.

Thanks Amanda for a wondrous experience.”

Thank you Lynn for the courage to share this, thank you for embracing your vulnerability, allowing yourself to be seen and bringing your real and raw essence to the workshops. I feel so humbled reading your comments and am so grateful to receive this. I am so happy that you have allowed me to share this to others too, as it is a gift.
Love Amanda