“The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire, not things we fear.” ~ Brian Tracy
Looking for a way to recalibrate your life with more focus, intention and fun? The Mandala Vision Board is a great activity to do on your own, with your family, or friends. The mandala has four quadrants representing key relationships in your life:
>>> Relationship to self
>>> Relationship to others
>>> The relationship between you and your environment
>>> And finally, your relationship with the world
What I really love about this structured approach in contrast to a regular ol’ vision board, is that you can powerfully envision not just what you want for you, but it emphasizes traditional wisdom by also focusing on the environment, your relationships and the world at-large.
What Is A Mandala?
A mandala is a figure from both Buddhism and Hinduism that visually represents the universe. The sanskrit translation for mandala means circle. It is used to create sacred space for practitioners as well as a focal point to concentrate and can also be used to induce meditative states.
The How To:
You’ll want to gather your art supplies, magazines if you have them and get ready for a really fun project. All you really need is a pen and paper, but if you want to get fancy like I do, here are the supplies you’ll need:
Supplies for the Fancy Pants Among Us:
>>> A pen
>>> Gluestick
>>> Scissors
>>> A piece of paper, cardboard or foamboard (I prefer mine to be a little big bigger than a Macbook Pro- how’s that for a visual)
>>> Magazines you can cut up
>>> Depending on your favorite form or artistic expression, paints, crayons, and glitter are all encouraged.
Get the party started:
- Take your cardboard, piece of paper, or foam core and draw a large circle.
- Draw four quadrants of the circle.
- The visual above represents each section of the four quadrants. Pick out pictures and words that represent your relationships in each of these four dimensions. And then paint, write, or paste them into their respective categories.
- At the end, you may end up with something like this, but just do what your artistic heart tells you. There’s no wrong or right way to do it.
- When you’re all done, place your vision board in a prominent place. I like to place mine where I get ready in the morning as a way to focus and energize my day.
And voila! You’ll have a sacred compass to guide you and remind you of where your values intersect in the most important areas of your life.
“Each person’s life is like a mandala- a vast, limitless circle. We stand in the center of our own circle, and everything we see, hear and think forms the mandala of our life.
We enter a room, and the room is our mandala. We get on the subway, and the subway car is our mandala, down to the teenager checking messages on her iPhone and the homeless man slumped in the corner. We go for a hike in the mountains, and everything as far as we can see is our mandala: the clouds, the trees, the snow on the peeks, even the rattlesnake coiled in the corner. We’re lying in a hospital bed, and the hospital is our mandala.
We don’t set it up, we don’t get to choose what or who shows up in it. It is, as Chogyam Trungpa said, ‘the mandala that is never arranged but is always complete.’ And we embrace it just as it is.
Everything that shows up in your mandala is a vehicle for your awakening. From this point of view, awakening is right at your fingertips continually. There’s not a drop of rain or a pile of dog poop that appears in your life that isn’t the manifestation of enlightened energy, that isn’t a doorway to sacred world. But it’s up to you whether your life is a mandala of neurosis or a mandala of sanity.”
~ Pema Chodron, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change
Relephant Read:
Ten Steps for Creating a Personal Mandala.
Author: Kristi Kremers
Editor: Catherine Monkman
Photos: Author’s Own, Heather/Flickr
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