Daily Mail

Can making a collage really help dreams come true?

- by Claudia Connell FOR more informatio­n, visit: melaniebun­dock.com

The last time I spent a couple of hours cutting out pictures and gluing them on to card was more than 40 years ago at primary school.

Yet here I am among a group of women merrily hacking at magazines and getting messy with a Pritt Stick. No, I’m not reliving the innocence of childhood. I am, in fact, creating a ‘vision board’.

The finished product will be my ‘board of dreams’, encapsulat­ing my most dearly held desires.

Some are achievable if only I’d get off my backside and do something about them. Others are more challengin­g. But the plan is that if I create a board, stare hard enough at it and picture myself fulfilling these goals, then — eventually — it will happen.

Vision boards (sometimes called mood boards) are a growing trend. They’re also a motivation­al tool that many successful people swear by.

Victoria Beckham credits a key part of the success of her fashion line to this technique. The designer Kelly hoppen is also a big fan and Oprah Winfrey said that every one of her ventures started with a board.

Life coach Melanie Bundock, who is running my workshop in St Albans, hertfordsh­ire, is certainly convinced by the power of vision boards. her clients range from housewives to business executives and she’s held workshops in people’s homes (like the one I am attending) and company boardrooms.

And it soon becomes apparent just why Melanie is such an devotee — it’s thanks to her own board that she is £20,000 richer after fulfilling a long-held ambition to appear on the TV show Who Wants To Be A Millionair­e? — something she visualised before it happened.

Cynics may say Melanie was just lucky, and that it’s a coincidenc­e her vision board dream became reality, but she has absolute faith in the law of attraction as outlined in self-help book The Secret by rhonda Byrne.

First published in 2006, The Secret dictates that positive thinking — of which visualisat­ion is a huge part — can change our lives and compel the universe to deliver us our dreams.

MELANIE says: ‘We all have dreams and ambitions that we bury. We get bogged down with day-to-day living and convince ourselves that we’ve left it too late.

‘Visualisat­ion is about re-ordering your thinking and allowing yourself to dream big and imagine a life where anything is possible. Once you get your thinking right, you will start to see how anything is possible.’

Prior to the workshop, Melanie gives us an exercise to do at home. We are given a list of things to put in order of their importance: relationsh­ips, finances, work, travel and adventure, creative expression, health and body, possession­s, spiritual, home and special intention.

We are told to elaborate on the ones we choose as our top three. After giving it much thought, I put travel and adventure as my numberone goal, followed by creative expression and health and body. Spiritual comes bottom, which suggests I’m probably very out of place at this workshop.

The others are all middle- class women in their 40s. Some are looking to get back into the workplace after raising families, one wants to build on her successful business, another wants to lose the fear that serious illness left her with.

We take it in turns to introduce ourselves and speak about our top three goals. Barriers come down and tears flow.

When it’s my turn, I tell the group how I’ve travelled more in the past few years than I ever have before and that I loved it. New Zealand is the number-one place on my ‘bucket list’, but none of my travel buddies are interested. I say that I want to pluck up the courage to go alone and stay for a few months.

Next, I talk about how I want to fulfil my ambition of writing a screenplay. Last year, I got as far as writing six pages — but I haven’t looked at it in nearly six months.

Finally, I say that I want to take better control of my health and body. I don’t want to look like a Victoria’s Secret model; I just don’t want to wince when I glance in a mirror.

At the end, we acknowledg­e that none of our dreams are unobtainab­le. Melanie says the three stages of visualisat­ion are: desire, followed by belief and positive action.

Before we start on our works of art, we are all given a piece of paper and told to write down the things we most want rid of in our lives.

I write that I want to stop using my age as an excuse. At 50 it feels like ‘if I were 20 years younger’, has become my mantra. We then burn the pieces of paper and visualise these things gone from our lives.

Finally, we get to work with the scissors. And, here, I have to confess to some weirdness of my own. On the train journey down, I pick up a magazine and the first picture I see is a still from the movie Bridesmaid­s. It’s the script I wish I’d written, my blueprint for the comedy I want to write. At the workshop I grab a woman’s glossy magazine, and the page opens on a map of New Zealand. Is the universe sending me signs?

As well as gluing pictures of my top travel destinatio­n and screenplay ambitions to my board, I also include a picture of healthy food to encourage me to take better care of myself. I select a picture of a woman walking through a wilderness as a reminder for me to take exercise and face my fear of lone adventure.

With my dreams of travel, screenwrit­ing and health fulfilled I set about illustrati­ng the dreams that are less important but would still be rather nice if they happened.

I cut out a picture of a puppy because I am coming round to the idea that a dog would be good for me. I stick on a picture of a huge pound sign because who doesn’t want more money?

Last, I paste an image of a sexylookin­g mature man. I’m happily single, but I wouldn’t say no to a dalliance with a silver fox. upbeat affirmatio­ns like ‘ Limitless’ ‘ Do it’ and ‘ Get Me There’ complete the board. I am strangely proud of my creation. And it doesn’t seem silly.

Melanie says it’s no good just taking our boards home, putting them in a cupboard and waiting for our dreams to come true. We must spend time focusing on the board, closing our eyes and imagining those pictured dreams as reality.

I place mine in my kitchen. I see it dozens of times a day and, the more I look at it, the more my eye goes straight to the Bridesmaid­s picture. My vision board has made me realise the screenplay is my number- one ambition. New Zealand is a day’s flight away, but a screenplay will be far harder. When I close my eyes, I see the my script being filmed.

In the fortnight since the workshop I have completed another six pages of my screenplay. And I’ve attached an additional Post-It note to my board that reads: ‘Finish and submit by December 2017.’

Will my dream come true? Melanie thinks so. ‘everything begins with a vision,’ she says.

‘It may take years to realise it, but you have to accept that you will get there. I have been teaching these workshops for five years and I’ve seen the power of positivity and focus. There is no reason why we can’t achieve huge life goals at any age.’

That’s good enough for me. I’ll be sure to thank Melanie in my Oscar acceptance speech.

 ??  ?? Top tips: Life coach Melanie (left) and Claudia
Top tips: Life coach Melanie (left) and Claudia
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