Treasures from the Map

“A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

As promised here are some of the things I learned from making my "Treasure Map to Riches". I am sure there are more things here, but these are the things I noticed on first glance. I will be spending some time contemplating my map, so maybe there is another post in this in a month or two.

1. A lot of the images I chose feature water. I have a dream of moving to the west coast, but even the pictures that are not part of that dream feature water. I believe subconsciously I want to live by water, whether that be an ocean, a lake or a river.
2. The picture I chose to represent music was a french horn. I used to play french horn, but gave it up after injuries I received in a car accident caused my left arm and jaw to go numb whenever I played. I realize now how much I miss it. I may have to pick it up again and just not play for as long. Maybe just maybe, I will be able to play again if I start slow and build up the strength.
3. I also selected images that featured cycling. My bike has been hanging in our garage for 10 years and I believe I may have ridden it twice in that time. I used to love cycling. An associate at work just got back from cycling in Vietnam. I think I may have to dust off the bike in the spring (or better yet buy a new one)
4. My husband's family and our dogs are at the top and center - under "Moments that Matter". The ironic thing is that the picture of my husband's family was taken when my husband visited his family and I stayed home. I believe this is telling me I need to spend more time with his family.
5. Nowhere in the collage is there anything remotely close to what I do for a living. Hmmm, either I'm doing the wrong thing or maybe work is just not a priority. Truly my dream is to work less and enjoy life more.
6. Living in another country part time. Several of the phrases I selected indicate this.
7. African children. As those who know me are aware, my husband and I are waiting to adopt from Africa. But the words I chose indicate I have more to do in Africa than just adoption. I recently watched a story on CBC about sponsoring girls in Kenya to go to high school. The organization that is working there is known as CHES - Canadian Harambee Education Society. "Harambee" is Swahili for "pull together". It was started when a Canadian teaching abroad had to ask girls to leave her classroom, if they could not pay the school fees. It costs $450 per year for 4 years to sponsor a girl to go to high school. I've added a link on the left of my blog, if you want to know more.
8. Travel and the outdoors. This surprised me. I am a homebody. I don't travel well. My idea of a vacation is staying home and reading. Many of the images are of places that I want to visit and all of them are outdoors or nature related. This might be related to the fact I've been inside for several weeks due to the -20 C temperatures here, but more likely I believe I want to travel and experience nature. Images I selected were from Italy, France, Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Northern Canada, and Africa. The interesting words that go with this are "Music can take you places" Music has taken me places in the past - but maybe there is more in store for my future.
9. I selected the words and the images independently from one another. I then arranged the images and words to go together - and it worked out. I used all of the words that I had found and most of the images. I definitely had a vision in mind even though I am not sure I knew what It was when I started.
10. I had fun doing this. It was a fairly time consuming exercise. I think I spent 12 - 16 hours cutting out of magazines and searching for images on the net and then organizing and pasting. The time was enjoyable and it was a challenge to find words that really inspired me in the magazines that we had. I also got to stop and read a bunch of articles in the magazines - so I learned some things along the way too.

Overall, I have found this exercise useful and worth the time. People spend more time deciding what they want to wear than they do thinking about where they want to go. I highly recommend this exercise to anyone reading this.

Visualize your

Bright Star Dreams