Recently, in workshop called 7 Innovations, the participants was asked to draw their dream living room on a blank piece of paper which colour magic pens. The point of the exercise is to show that you can use drawing to communicate your ideas, so that people you deal with are clear about your expectations. The instructions sounds simple enough. But it took me quite a while to gather my thoughts about how does my dream living room look like. My mind raced to my current living room, which is nothing more that an empty space with one sofa. I kept countless of interior decoration magazines and I love the wonderful interiors shown in the magazines. But I thought, to have a living room, like what I saw in the magazines, will take way too much money. I had waited and waited for that day to come when we will have this bottomless pit of money. Only then will I worry about how my dream living room will look like.
So, when I was asked to draw our dream living room, I struggled. I tried to remember the drawing that my husband have made previously. Then, I thought to myself, but this is MY dream living room. At least in this workshop, I can draw what I want without worrying about approval from anybody else. So, I did. Painstakingly at first and enjoyably in the end. I finally got a picture together, which we are supposed to share with a partner. My partner was quite astonished with my drawing.
"Wow! Is this your living room?" he asked. "Well, I suppose it's my DREAM living room," I answered while complimenting him for his own drawing.
It struck me that all this while...I have been complaining to my husband that we do not have a complete living room, we don't have rugs, sofa sets etc, but I have not even put my mind on what I really wanted. And I mean with precision. What is the measurement of the living room? What kind of seats do I want and what size? What kind of material and what colour should the sofa be? How do I arrange them in the living room? What are the colours for the wall and what about the curtains and rugs? Some people will just buy any kind of furniture which they find attractive and/or which are on sale and try to fit it in whatever space they have. Whenever they see a rug or curtains or cushions on sale they just grab them. What is important is how those pieces fit into the grander plan of the living room. I had once bought a Bali daybed which is very beautiful and made from quality material. Once they delivered the furniture home, we saw that it was just too big for our living room. We had no choice but to return it and get a smaller one. In essence, getting the picture right is important for us to getting what we want. How can I make my dream living room a reality, if I can't even show people or myself for that matter, how it will look like when it is done? What a thought!
Living rooms aside, how many of us have a "picture" of our lives when "it is done"? What is the dream life that we want to live? Do we want to travel the world to help ppoor and needy children? Is our ideal life moving to the countryside and live in a big house with a farm from which we rear our own meat and poultry and vegetables? Do we want to be the billionaire CEO of an IT company? Why is it that we worked so hard 60 to 80 hours a week? What do we want to accomplish? We often come hoem tired, not knowing what's all that hard work for, accept for the fact that it help to pay the bills. Has it taken us anywhere nearer to our dream lives? Do we even know what our dream live is?
See, each and everyone of us is born with the subconscious mind, whose duties, among others is to bring us what we want AND what we don't want with absolute precision. The problem lies with the fact that many of us spend most of our time discussing and complaining about the things that we don't want. We can describe with absolute detail and with emotion what we don't like: we know the colours, the sound, the smell. So, the universe delivers to us precisely what we don't want. Those who have accomplished their dreams must have been really precise about the picture that they have painted about their lives. Success is not automatic, or by chance. These individuals know precisely what they want and they go for it. The universe correspond to that precise goal and deliver it to the rightful owner.
So, the living room exercise is like a knock on my head. How can I get my living room done, when I don't know how it's supposed to look like when it is done? The more tougher question is what is the picture of my life. For most of us, if we were to draw a picture of the life we crave for, it will be absolutely different than what we have now. But what is it? It is proven that if we look at a picture everyday, the picture will come true for us in our lives. So, we better find and refine that picture and put it in front of our eyes every day.
Just a month ago, my husband showed a picture of a bedroom which he would like to propose for our children's room. I like it, the children like it. In that short period, the room has fast becoming a reality: the tiles has been installed and walls has been painted with the exact blue shade that we love from the picture. When we know exactly what we want, the universe will point us towards making it a reality. I think I better get serious about drawing the picture of my life. What about you?
