Visualization to create your best self

Do you sometimes feel like your daily life is busy and that you have to deal with complex situations while juggling with a flood of information that saturates your mental hard drive? If this is the case, perhaps you have difficulty finding clarity within yourself, discovering who you are becoming when going through life’s tribulations, and making decisions that are aligned with your core being. To help you come back to yourself, Manon Lavoie invites you on an introspective journey that consists of exploring the cycle of your inner seasons.

This visualization exercise, proposed by the creativity and positive psychology coach and founder of M comme Muses, is carried out in 2 phases:

1. First, imagine yourself about to walk down a path that seems familiar, taking the time to fully savour the landscape that awaits you.

2. Next, walk down each of the paths below and ask yourself this question: “What season do I feel like I’m in right now and how can I be consistent with it?”

You can now begin your journey.

The path opens in front of you and you discover the spring season is there. Your inner spring where the air is soft and light. You feel the inspiration and joy flowing around you and making your heart beat. You smell the earth and probably want to do some cleaning around you and inside of you.

A beautiful garden appears in front of you. You feel like going there to work the soil with your hands. Right next to it, you discover a pile of manure and refuse. You understand that these foul-smelling materials can turn into great compost if you mix them together, give them oxygen and time. In this indoor garden, the raw material that will become compost is your share of shade. By welcoming it, giving it your attention without judgment, working it with your hands through creation, you will give it the oxygen it needs to transform itself. You can then add it to the earth, to your share of light, to form a rich and fertile whole. Take advantage of this inner garden to sow new intentions, new desires and new wishes.

You open up to the vast field of possibilities. Who are you when you feel in the inner spring season? What do you really want to sow?

You continue along your way and the landscape slowly changes as you walk. The air is getting warmer, the sun is shining in all its splendour and nature is at its peak. You discover that the energy within you is also changing and reflects what you see outside. Your inner fire is growing and your energy is increasing. Your pace is accelerating. Uplifted by the passion for what you have sown in your garden in the spring. You are in a stage of action and growth. You take advantage of this energy boost to accomplish everything you can.

In the distance, an image takes shape. It is the future version of yourself waiting for you. You resume your journey, heading in its direction, your heart warm, with a feeling of accomplishment. Who are you when you feel in the inner summer season? What becomes possible when you allow your inner fire to shine through?

You feel energized by all this summer movement. You realize that the road you have travelled leaves traces in you, marks of experience and wisdom that settle upon your shoulders. Your fire, your personal power is still quite alive, but a little calmer. It is time to reap the fruit of what you sowed in the spring and made grow in the summer. This harvest season allows you to validate whether what you have sown is still meaningful and aligned with your being. This awareness is a call to refocus on you, to become solid and anchored like a mountain. You realize that you have everything in you to accomplish what you want when the fruit of your experiences settles in you to radiate. Who are you when you feel in the inner fall season? Have you taken the time to do your own harvesting? Have you celebrated them fully?

From the top of your beautiful mountain, you take the path that leads you to the winter season.

You feel the desire to celebrate and honour what you have accomplished and harvested so far. You are now in a season that invites you to introspection, rest, and letting go. Introspection allows you to integrate everything you have experienced during your journey through the previous seasons. Rest helps you to recharge your batteries. You are then ready to boost your energy when it is time to return to the spring path. Letting go transforms the vacuum into a space where everything becomes possible. It is also in this letting go that you let life come to you. It is an important step of co-creation with the life that flows in you and around you. By letting your experiences settle in you, you make them yours. You become more and more aware of who you are by taking the time to fully experience this season of rest and tranquility.

Sometimes this season seems to drag on and never want to leave. We wish so much that the energy of spring would return! We must therefore turn to the wisdom that this season wants to transmit. It invites us to let die what is no longer needed to create space for renewal and rebirth. By surrendering with confidence, life pulsates and spring prepares for its appearance.

Who are you when you feel that you are in the inner winter season? When it is a dead calm in your life and/or in you? What if the vacuum you perceive and feel is turned into space?

With this cyclical journey, the author of the book Créer le meilleur de soi and Cultiver une vie inspire, suggests a way to embrace your life path, your uniqueness and to “say yes” to your whole being. By integrating visual creation into this type of introspective exercise, on the occasion of her retreats, Manon Lavoie invites you to give yourself a powerful gift.

Next April and October, she will offer the retreat “Return to my sacred circle of life” at Le Monastère des Augustines. This retreat invites you to connect to yourself through creation. In the form of a creative journey of initiation, you will be invited to create your own sacred circle of life in order to reveal your nature, your desires and your entire being. You will realize a meaningful visual and introspective project that will help you to live your life to the fullest in coherence with the person you really are.