Spring Cleaning For A Woman’s Spirit!

If you are anything like me you are experiencing a bit of spring fever! Spring is my favorite time of year. How can we fail to embrace the Divine when we witness the outpouring of growth and life all around us? Although I would rather be outside admiring the giant purple lupin that are blooming everywhere, I realized that my Spirit could use a little spring cleaning! I decided that a vision board would be a great way to imagine a cleaner me.

I am obsessed with the color green right now, with a few touches of yellow and orange, and these colors seep into my artwork like in this recent mandala painting. Perhaps because everything around me is so verdant that I see green even when my eyes are closed! The lushness of life makes me so happy to be alive, and no I am not just being sappy. I am genuinely feeling vibrant and grateful for who I am and where I am today. That hasn’t always been true for me, so I feel extra gratitude for where life’s journey finds me today. For me, creating art makes me feel alive, connected and whole.

Kids and animals get frisky this time of year and are itching to get outside, run, jump, leap and play! What about you? Are you also craving the freedom to play and celebrate spring? Or perhaps, like me, you are feeling the need for spring cleaning – inside and out! Right now my front garden needs weeding, the dandelions are taking over and it looks awful, downright embarrassing as a matter of fact. And don’t get me started on the spring cleaning that needs to happen in the rest of the house, that can wait! As I turned into my driveway this afternoon, I realized that my internal garden could use some weeding also. The weeds can wait! Today it’s all about you and me and our relationship to our self.

Creating a New Vision

Spring is a great time to create a vision board. It’s the end of the first quarter of the year, spring is here, summer is on its way. What do you want to create in your life for the next few months?

I recently created a new vision board for my business. Part of my inner weeding helped me realize that I was not focusing on certain aspects of my business as fully as I wanted to, like blogging. I wasn’t clear about what I wanted to create! This vision board was created with the intention of focusing on business growth and success in a way that is still meaningful, playful and fits my lifestyle. I also need to do some serious weeding around my health and wellness and willingness to accept myself as I am in this moment, that vision board is in the works!

Now it’s your turn to create a new vision

Here are a couple of writing prompts to get you started with your spring cleaning. Take out your journal and answer these questions as honestly as you can.

1. What am I focusing on most in my life right now? Write down the first thing that pops into your mind without judgement!
2. Is this what you want to be focusing on? Again, answer honestly, no one will see this but you.
3. What weeds are growing in your inner garden that need to be rooted out to make room for new growth?
4. Once those weeds are cleared away, what would you like to plant in your inner garden? Joy, health, family, time, creativity, romance? The possibilities are endless.

Use your imagination to create the most glorious inner garden that you can imagine. Spend time visualizing and journaling what you want to create in your life. Remember that what you focus on grows!

Now let’s make a vision board of the garden that you are planting!

If you have never made a vision board before, here are a few instructions:

1. Collect a variety of magazines (not just Oprah and Cooking Light, try to get some variety, National Geographic is a good example.)
2. You can create a board on a small poster board or on the page(s) of your journal. Do what feels comfortable, just make sure you create it in a place you will look at later! The image at the top of this post is an example of a page that I created in my journal. Notice all the colors, the church in the background and the mother’s love: all images that for me are about nurturing and loving myself.
3. Grab some scissors and a good glue stick.
4. Make sure you have some quiet time, perhaps after the kids are in bed or hubby is watching sports on t.v. Collect your materials, maybe put on some music, light a candle, pour yourself a glass of wine or a cup of tea and get ready to create!
5. First, take a look again at what you wrote about the inner garden that you would like to nourish. Then, start thumbing through the magazine, tearing out images, words or phrases that capture the feeling of what you want to create. I would do this for 15 to 20 minutes. It’s easy to spend too much time on this part of the process, so if you have a limited amount of time, set a timer!
6. Now start trimming and arranging the images, words and phrases on your board or in your journal.
7. Embellish with markers, glitter, ephemera or anything else that feels right.
8. If you are using a poster board, hang it someplace where you will see it every day: your office, your closet, on the bathroom mirror. The more you look at the collage you create and focus on the possibilities, the more likely they are to become your reality! Mine is hanging in my craft room and while I don’t always get to play in there everyday, I walk in and out several times a day for one reason or another. I hung it beside the door so I have to see it as I switch on or off the light.
9. If you are using a journal, promise yourself you will look at it daily!

Cultivating time for creative expression is an important part of any self-care regimen. Just like putting on your anti-wrinkle cream at bedtime, tending to your innate desire to create should become habit! Activities like journaling and vision boards are a great way to connect to your creativity. Spring cleaning for your business and your personal life is timely for now, but this process is powerful to do once every quarter.