My Vision Board: Conquering my QLC

Two days ago I stumbled across a term I'd never heard before and right into a major revelation.  The term was Quarterlife Crisis (QLC) and I was smack in the middle of one.  If you drop your open purse down a flight of stairs there's this one moment when all the contents are up in the air at the same exact time and you have no idea where your belongs are going to fall.  I've been feeling a lot like that.  I had no name for it two days ago.  Now I know this feeling is actually a QLC.

I invested in this book:

20 Something Manifesto by Christine Hassler.  I never thought I'd find myself in the Self Help section of the bookstore.  In fact, I haven't taken myself down that aisle since I worked in a bookstore 5 years ago. To be completely honest I usually pass some judgment on the people in that aisle. I look at them and think how can they possibly think a book will help them at all?  Poor saps. Pathetic.  I guess this is my karma.  I sucked it up, swallowed my pride, and walked with my head held high down the aisle I despise and grabbed as many books as I could find about a QLC.  I dumped the books on a table and sat down to figure out which one I should buy.  I settled on this one.  It has stories from other 20 somethings experiencing a QLC.  It has exercises and straight-talking narration.  I like that.  I got over my Self Help phobia and now I'm working my way through my first self-help book.

So far, so good.  I've skipped a few of the stories I don't think I will relate to (like how to deal with being single--I'm married so obviously I'm not having those singles blues) and I've delved into the stories, narration, and exercises that I think may be useful to me.

I skipped ahead a bit in the book to an exercise about a vision board.  I've heard of vision boards before.  My friend Sam and my cousin Brandy have both made their own vision boards.  Both swear it's a useful exercise.  I saw it listed in the exercises table of contents and I was intrigued.

To create a vision board:  cut out words and images that appeal to you from magazines, then use these words and images to create a vision board by gluing them down.  The idea is to glue down ideas, dreams, hobbies, goals, etc. that you want to manifest in your own life.  You're supposed to put the finished product somewhere where you can see it and remind yourself of your goals daily.

I collected every magazine I could find and sat down in the floor to chop out words and pictures that appealed to me.  I then grouped these images and pictures together based around common ideas.  That's just how my mind works.  I see a clutter of information and my brain immediately sets about analyzing and separating that data into files. 

Some of my groupings were unsurprising:  a skeleton key which I glued the words 'work' and 'success' over, an ad for the movie Eat Pray Love which I overlapped with 'Be Good To Yourself' and 'Change is Good'. I love the message in Eat Pray Love (fabulous book) and success or lack thereof has been on my mind for a while.

Other things were things I was surprised to see:  an image of a cozy front porch with the words 'Home Sweet Home' and "Simplified."  That was a light bulb moment.  My life is chaotic.  My home is a cluttered expression of my current chaos.  I don't like it.  I need to simplify both my life and my home.  I have a step to take that I didn't even notice:  de-clutter my home and maybe in the process my life.  That was a big one.  That's a big deal.  My subconscious put together a problem that has really been nagging me and it was a problem that prior to this exercise I did not even recognize.

This vision board thing was a good idea after all.  I recommend you try it.