Visioning® for the Empty Nest

Visioning® by a Couple Facing the Empty Nest Syndrome

Claudia Jean Hill is a graduate of both my Creative Journal Expressive Arts Certification Program and a recently certified Visioning® Coach. Claudia practices what she preaches at home and in her work. She contributed an earlier blog about Visioning® with her family. This latest story is about Visioning® with her husband Vern as they face their empty nest after raising their large family.

Here's Claudia's report on what happened:


Vern and I celebrated our 36th anniversary this past week, and I asked him if we could do a joint collage about what we wanted for our marriage in this next phase of life. He said, yes!

We put on some relaxing music we both liked while we scribbled our non-dominant hand warm-ups with some rich, creamy pastels. We each wrote our heart's desire with ND hand. Then we each collected a pile of images from magazines.

We each selected 5 of our personal favorites, including a "heart piece". We shared our focus phrases. Then we each selected 5 more pictures from the other person's pile, to fit in as possible.

We each put our "heart piece" at the center of the paper and put them in a compatible relationship to one another. I thought we might take turns adding a piece, but we got into a nice "flow" of selecting a picture and proposing a place. We didn't talk a lot, but we weren't stone silent. It was, "how about here?" or "yes, I like that." It ended up feeling like a dance. It was a lot of fun, and we were both very pleased.

"New Paths, a Colorful Dawn, Together in Love." I've hung it in our bedroom.

There were no kids in this collage, except the 2 of us!

Thank you, Claudia and Vern

For more info on Visioning® Coaching and certified coaches, please visit visioningcoach.org

Lifelong Dreams Do Come True

The Koffee Klatch that Turned into an Art Gallery

One of the most exciting Visioning® experiences I have had personally just happened in the last two months. I've told my story about Visioning® my home here in an earlier blog. What I didn't say in that story is that my earliest dream upon visiting Cambria the first time in the mid 80s was to have a gallery here. I'd recently started painting and doing collages again after 20 years as an art therapist.

I fell in love at first sight with the quaint old village of Cambria nestled among pine forests and rolling hills by the sea. But just as important was the fact that this breathtakingly beautiful coastline south of the craggy Big Sur coast is populated by creative people: musicians, composers, writers, artists, actors, etc. Cambria is known for its galleries, little theaters and live music in various venues in town. When I finally moved here, I joined a co-op gallery for awhile. For many reasons, it didn't last. Some dreams have a time-table of their own. I've learned to surrender to the right time and the right place.

As the co-op gallery was ending, my career as an author and workshop leader was really taking off, with international travel, book projects and workshops. I stayed in the flow of that career and put the gallery idea way on the back burner. That was the mid 90s.

Fast forward to April 2009. One of our local galleries was closing at the end of the month. It was located next to my favorite coffee house, Lily's, which has become an unofficial community center. It is a hang out for many locals and an attraction for tourists as well. I went there for coffee one Sunday afternoon in late April looking forward to visiting with friends under the umbrellas on the outdoor deck. Walking through the soon-to-be-vacated gallery which connected to Lily's, I began chatting with a friend, Charles. "Wouldn't this make a great co-op gallery?" he declared. I agreed.

"Well, you're an artist," he continued. "Is that something you'd be interested indoing?" Three other artists I knew immediately popped into my mind. "Yes," I replied. So I joined him and some others in the coffee shop. One of the artists I had in mind, Tim Mayer (cards, calligraphics and whimsical gifts) happened to be sitting there having coffee. I asked him if he was interested. He said, Yes, immediately. Then my neighbor Tess arrived. A retired mediator, she works in a nearby shop part time and has a background in art history. She offered to help in any way she could to support the gallery. Tess called another neighbor, Lydia, who also wanted to help us get started. Another retiree, she'd volunteered in museums and had bookkeeping experience.

Mary Anderson, a retired school teacher who is one of our best-known portrait artists, had been on my mind as we hatched the gallery idea. Within a half hour, she walked into the coffee house. I could see that this project was definitely supposed to happen. The fourth artist, photographer and retired jewelry designer, Sheila Hollingshead, was at home. I called her and shared the plan. She agreed to join us and exhibit her photographs of flowers, landscapes and seascapes. On May 8 - after two meetings and within less than 3 weeks from the day we got the idea - we opened for business. Our gallery is called The Painted Lily. We are on Main Street in Cambria, CA.

It took 21 years, but my gallery in Cambria finally manifested! This one was destined to be. The three of us who are seniors invested our Obama rebate from social security into the gallery start-up fund. Yes, we are investing in Main Street, Mr. Presdient!

I am selling my art work - collages and paintings - and my life-long collection of rare vintage and antique kimono from Japan, as well as jewelry collected on my travels. And of course, the books and CDs I authored are also for sale. Welcome to another dream come true. Come visit us.

For more on the Visioning® process go to: visioningcoach.org and luciac.com

Windows on the Future: Samantha's Visioning® Story

I Love to Vision!

I made my first Visioning® Board at an all-day workshop with Lucia in Cambria, California about 8 years ago. Wow, my life has changed so much since then. It's so beautiful, the process of creating your life with intention, love and art. My life has truly been a series of miraculously aligned events, opportunities, mentors, and friends. I know its from honoring my desires and boldly asking for what I truly want.

The tools I have learned from Lucia I share with my own clients now in my Spiritual Health Coaching work. From non-dominant hand journaling to cutting out the things you love and creating artistic visual aids to keep us connected to our goals.

These photos are of my latest board. I call it a Vision Window.

Its quite large, from a huge cardboard box that ended up in an arch. I love it so much. It lives in my bedroom where I can see it from the bed everyday.
I talk to it, do yoga with it and look at it with love and gratitude.

Thanks, Lucia!
Samantha Huston

*my blogs:
http://www.quantumbiofeedbackstories.blogspot.com/
http://sharethegozo.blogspot.com/

Thank you, Samantha. It's been a joy to watch you over the years as you created the life and career of your dreams.

Visioning® in the Community

Putting it All Together: Team building for Community Organizations

In recent months, I've had the opportunity to speak to many organizations in my community (San Luis Obispo County, California) about the wonders of Visioning®. Among these groups have been: Cambria Unity Church, Morro Bay Chamber of Commerce and Rotary, Central Coast Women's Network anniversary conference (business women supporting each other's success), and Templeton Women in Business luncheon.

Each group responded creatively with ideas for applying Visioning® in their organizations. As a result I've been invited to conduct workshops for groups such as the Natural History Museum in Morro Bay (Board of Directors and staff) and Templeton Community Services (Parks and Recreation summer camp staff). You can see from the diversity of groups listed above that Visioning® can literally go anywhere.

Dr. Marsha Nelson, my business partner and field supervisor of our Visioning® Coach Certification Training has done Visioning® in schools in south Texas (Mc Allen area). In the same area, our certified Visioning® Coach, Elva Villarreal, is doing Visioning® with teen moms in classes for the Pharr/San Juan/Alamo School district. This region, on the border of Mexico, has many high risk youth and is one of the poorest urban areas in the U.S. Visioning® has been received by these young people with great enthusiasm. They are seeing a future they never imagined before. They are dreaming it and doing it!

See the whole process in action at: visioningcoach.org

Visioning@ Your Bucket List

Re-Creating Yourself Later in Life

Beverly Staley is a therapist and graduate of the Creative Journal Expressive Arts Training Program in which we certify professionals to teach and counsel using my methods, including Visioning®. Here is a report from Beverly about a recent Visioning® workshop she conducted for life planning. Beverly writes:

"I did a small Visioning workshop with five of my networking group, two of whom were high achieving, very accomplished men in their fifties. They had very different reasons for attending the workshop.

One man had just been laid off from a very lucrative position. His collage showed the path he had been on (very small area of the collage) and a potential path for him. With the inner critic journaling he realized how much fear he had because his critic kept telling him he was too old (53) to do these things. But, in the sharing afterwards, he got support from three of us who spoke about how we started careers in our 50’s. The sharing turned out to be very helpful to him.

The second man continues to be extremely successful and told me he wanted his focus phrase to be ‘my bucket list.’ I loved that idea and so in the sharing he talked about how he had lived and taught all over the world, Africa, Europe, South America, etc. and now wanted to return to some of his favorite places and take his wife of 20-some years. I could tell he was excited to share his collage with her (he already knows that she is very interested in traveling to some of these places).

Something else that came out of sharing that was surprising was an elegant woman in her 60’s with a vision of working with gang members. When asked about that by one of the participants, she said she was a former gang member and wanted to get across the message that they could be like her. We were all very surprised.

For this little group, a lot came out in the sharing which is always my favorite part."

Beverly Staley, M.F.T., C.J.E.A. (California)
bevstaley@cox.net

For more about Creative Journal Expressive Arts certification go to my website: www.luciac.com

Visioning® in Business

Learning from the Masters

My original career was in art and design (Mattel, Hallmark were my clients). In my second and third careers as art therapist and author, I worked for Disney as a corporate consultant. While doing management training and talent development with theme park designers at Disney Imagineering for ten years, I stood back and observed the design process in a way I never did while actually designing products. It was the opportunity of a lifetime: watching the Imagineers work their magic. We introduced Visioning® collage work for personal and team goal-setting, a technique I was already using with my private art therapy clients. The Imagineers ate it up with a spoon. Working with one of my co-authors, the late Peggy Van Pelt, we saw the staff's creativity and skills in innovation increase many times over. It was a privilege and honor to be around this amazing brain trust of world-class talent. Some of the Imagineers I knew actually worked directly with Walt and what stories they told!.

One of the most enjoyable experiences I had was sitting in on "blue sky" design sessions when Imagineers were brainstorming new theme park ideas. I felt very much at home because they did the same thing we do in Visioning®: putting images and words onto the walls without editing or critiquing the ideas. "The sky's the limit", was their attitude in these sessions. That's why they called it Blue Sky. In Visioning® that's the "grab what grabs you" phase of collecting images and words from magazines. Without worrying about practicality, feasibility, or affordability, we open our minds to think outside the box. The famous "box" we are trying to get outside of, the one we are trapped in, is really our old ways of doing of defining ourselves and of doing business.

If there ever was a time when we needed to get outside the old business box it is right now. There's not a moment to waste, collectively or individually. And change starts with each one of us. Innovation is no longer a luxury, something to think about or take a seminar in. These days, innovation spells the difference between surviving or capsizing.

In my book Visioning, I often quote the Imagineers and Disney himself. In fact, I live by his golden words: If you can dream it, you can do it! Walt should know. He innovated so many "impossible dreams," such as Snow White, the first feature length animated film (released in 1937). That was towards end of the Great Depression of the 30s. Things had been improving slowly yet steadily during the New Deal when Roosevelt put millions back to work on government funded projects (just as President Obama is doing). However, in 1937 the economy took a sudden downturn again. People got scared. Was the country headed for another total collapse?

From a rational, left-brain point of view, that would not have seemed a good time to introduce a new film genre. There were those who thought no one would sit through a long "cartoon" and that Walt was crazy. Well, "they" were wrong, and the rest is history. Snow White was a blockbuster, became a classic and paved the way for a whole new kind of film which became Walt Disney's gift to the world.

Another leap forward into a new form of entertainment was the first Disneyland, and all the theme parks that spun out of it. Walt's "focus phrase" (as we call it in Visioning®) was "to create a place where the whole family could have fun together." Financiers thought Walt was "madder than a hatter" when he approached them about investing in his new scheme. But he listened to his heart and forged ahead. With Herbie Ryman (art director of Fantasia) creating full color renderings of Main Street and other attractions in Walt's mind, they made their Vision boards. Then, in another stroke of genius, Walt borrowed the idea of "commercial sponsorship" used in television. Walt got Carnation, Dow Chemical and other companies to put up the money for sections of Disneyland. They used these stores and attractions as advertising for their firms. Now that is creativity in business.

I take tips from the masters of innovation. They all say the same thing. Listen to your heart! (Step 1 of Visioning®). Think outside the box (Step 2 of Visioning®) and the way will be clear, the clouds will move aside and the sun of your own inner and outer resources will shine through. And there will be wonderful surprises.

Change is what is needed now. And it starts with you. Visioning® your way to a new job, career or business is within your reach. All it takes is scissors and glue, some magazines and paper. Go for it!

For more on the process, go to: VisioningCoach.org.
Or read Visioning: Ten Steps to Designing the Life of Your Dreams. You will want to check out the chapters that have to do with finding work, abundance and a career path that is right for you.