Intention Mapping came to me at a time when life was happening TO me. I was mothering a 2 & 4 year old through debilitating postpartum complications and health crisis. As supportive as my spouse remained,
my marriage was disintegrating since what little I had was channelled into mothering. For the first of many times, my friend AmyG invited me to an event that changed my life. Her friend Motoko hosted Intention Mapping parties in her home every New Year’s Day (and still does). With blank poster board in front of me, I took a hard look at my life—through different eyes, as the bottom left image reminds—and realized that “if I don’t save myself, who will?” Though much of those early parenting years remain a blur, I believe in retrospect that first New Year’s Intention Map (NYIM) marked a turning point when I desperately needed one. I found a practitioner who worked in energy healing and Somatic Experiencing trauma recovery, who referred me to a Doctor of Chinese Medicine who knew how to reverse over 18 months the symptoms western medicine couldn’t. (But I had the resources to pursue this.) I got serious about gut healing, brothing, Paleo AIP, and exercise. And I reinvested in my marriage, even scheduling weekly sex, which I confess to you now as the last thing I was up for but as something which likely saved our relationship. I put that first map on my fridge door, where I’d see it every day, to remind me what I was digging out of and where I needed to go.
Though I can appreciate this NYIM (or vision boarding) process being mercilessly made fun of, I can also testify to the transformative difference it’s made in my life, so much so that it remains a yearly practice now fourteen years later, and one I’ve hosted for others going on twelve years. Its method is grounded in neuroscience, like researcher Joe Dispenza reminds, about the power of our mind to reshape our life: “If you want a new outcome, you will have to break the habit of being yourself, and reinvent a new self." Or as quantum physics reminds, about the power of intention to alter our reality.
But the satisfaction I experience with intention mapping may be because I practice it differently than some.
I cultivate a year-long interactive relationship with my map. I've heard folks joke at mapping events that they stuck their map in a closet and forgot about it, or never got around to finishing it. But my map now lives on my bedside table (standing upright all by itself thanks to recycled cardboard instead of poster board), where I gaze on its—even unintentionally—every morning and night.
I love mapping in metaphor, meaning much of my map carries other meaning, especially since some say that most of the mind's function is not conscious but subconscious, and how the subconscious loves metaphor. It makes National Geographic my favorite magazine to map with. Metaphors that recur year to year on my map include peonies for learning how to take more pleasure which can be challenging for my temperament, baby elephant for my daughter's chosen totem, and monarch butterfly for my son in appreciation of the one that mysteriously appeared the November day he died. A white cat has appeared on my map yearly ever since a medium at the local library free night channeled the image of kitten vs. cat and the challenge of which I was going to be. Each year the feline image that comes to me as I leaf through magazines grows larger, the last few a white tiger, and this last year's an image that my friend Katie Anne found on my behalf while I hosted the event. I remember the year I was guided to include a plate of eggs on my map, guessing each one must signify what would be a new development that year, then realizing in retrospect it was simply the year I faced that eggs were behind my flatulence.
eggs from my 2014 NYIM On my map I put more achievable things like qualities of being, relationships to cultivate, and small projects like getting out dancing, special time with my daughter and husband, and "stillness, kindness."
I don't put less-achievable grand ambitions, "shoulds" of new year's resolutions, or trappings of material success such as mansions, weight loss, or world peace. This year "cultivating yin" featured on my map, an ongoing challenge for this Westerner enculturated for striving. You may imagine my triumph when my acupuncturist announced this summer a new diagnosis of "yang deficiency" and my believing (erroneously) that I'd finally willfully swung my pendulum to more yin.
While some love cramming as many words and images as possible onto an entire sheet of poster board to honor the many possibilities, I prefer a more focussed map: I want to easily remember my priorities. For example, my 2023 NYIM helped me keep my focus on fully, transparently grieving my son's death that year (center) in connection with family (center bottom) and nature's teachers (center top & border), on maintaining communication with him (left), and on caring for myself (right).
I enjoy journaling about how events, synchronicities or realizations relate to my map.
I add phrases and images to the map as the year unfolds, as my understanding of current "marching orders" deepen. I may even source phrases or images from the internet or stage photos rather than search magazines for them. For example, a coyote teacher appeared last winter in my mountainside backyard, wounded and cornered by my neighbor's barking hounds, but maintaining her circumspection and grace in contrast to my frantic, even comical attempts to divert the dogs. I added her photo to the upper right of this year's map.
Perhaps most significantly, I use my map to remind me what this year is for: it gives me the destination toward which I intentionally navigate. This means in essence that every week, every day, or even any moment I can remember my map as a reminder of how I can mindfully CHOOSE to prioritize my attention, rather than simply let life again happen TO me.
Yet of all these whys and hows, the bottom line may be that I do NYIM for fun, for pleasure, because it feels good. I love the singularity of focus in making art, let alone art about taking care of myself. It's a pursuit I don't gift myself enough. I love setting the scene with chocolate-covered strawberries, candles, music, and other sensuous surroundings, maybe sipping champagne or--since my aging body just can't metabolize libations anymore--a steaming cup of favorite tea. I love leafing through magazines and waiting for the "zing" of joy, as Marie Kondo made popular, or at least of intuition, knowing this image or word needs to go on my map but not sure why. I love the subversiveness of reappropriating for personal transformation material intended to sell us what we don't need. And I love the irony of getting together to go within.
NYIM is a passion I would love to share with you. If you're too far or homebound to join me in person, please join me in community on Zoom for support in creating your map. Too, if you'd like accountability in allowing your map to manifest, and even in helping get yourself out of its way, it would be my honor to schedule Support Sessions or Personal Coaching Sessions in collaboration. Too, if enough of us express interest, I'm open to scheduling quarterly NYIM check-ins, to create regular community and wrap-around support with our maps. I wonder what images and phrases you may be intuitively drawn toward for a New Year's Intention Map, as you leaf through magazines and get reminded of your heart's desire.
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