Imagine the Life You'd Love to Live, Then Live It: 52 Inspired Habits and Playful Prompts
by Peg Conley, Maggie O Shannon
Peg Conley has been an artist all her life but, like many of us, took a long detour into the working world where she was a "corporate sales queen" in Seattle with a lot of success and a happy, busy family. Art became the thing she did on vacations, weekends and when she could carve time out of her busy life. Something gnawed at her, a nagging feeling that life might hold something else for her in the midst of it all. Then came the big "aha" moment—Peg heard a still small voice inside: "Imagine the life you want to live, then live it. It's that simple!" Her family encouraged Peg to pursue her passion.
Despite a great deal of fear, Peg Conley did the thing she thought she could not do and dropped her big job, big house and big life and moved to San Francisco to start a business based on her artisan stationery. From a handful of handpainted cards, calendars and posters, her company Words & Watercolors was born and has been inspiring people, winning awards and raking in the sales ever since. Peg's intention with her work is to inspire and her art and writing all speak to life's great truths and those aha moments for which we all need reminders.
What do you “imagine” your Ideal Life to be? It may take some time for it to unveil itself. You will need to have an idea of what it is you are looking to create. Spend some time in contemplation. For some that means a quiet meditation where images might come to you. For others, you might write about something you’ve always had a longing to create, or a dream that seemed far away and not attainable yet it doesn’t go away. The dream nudges at you, asking you to pay attention. Where words work for some people, pictures work for others. You may want to create a vision board. Gather your old magazines and begin ripping out the pictures that appeal to you, or draw your own images. Your Ideal Life will come alive via the images that resonate with you. Don’t hesitate to pick up a pen, pencil or crayons even and fill the blank pages with doodles of any kind. Do you still think of becoming a nurse? Don’t be disheartened, go online and research classes you can take at your local college to start the process. As someone once said, if you don’t start now, 5 years from now you still will be where you are but if you begin with baby steps, in 5 years you could be in a completely different place!
So ask yourself the question: “What does the life I long to live look like?”
Imagine it! Draw it, write it, collage it and just plain dream it.
Believe you can have it and then go about creating it as you take daily steps towards becoming an enhanced version of yourself! All successful people are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.
