By Mary Nondé
Introduction
By night, I am the mother of one who loves to travel the world, dance West Coast Swing, visit galleries and old buildings, walk in nature, and curl up with a good book.
By day I am a Creative Intuitive Coach, Feng Shui Consultant and author of Awaken Your Intuitive Vision – unlocking possibilities you never knew existed.
When my daughter was seven I went back to University (first time to do Anthropology) and studied for an MA in Somatic Arts Psychotherapy, which is the intellectual foundation for my book.
Towards the end of my studies I designed the creative process I’m still using today – the Intuitive Vision Board. During the past 10 years I’ve taken over 1200 people through my workshop.
Story behind my book
Three years into offering my creative process I was tested big-time when a tornado whipped through my life and flattened the lot. Everything of material consequence I lost almost all at once – partner, home, career, belongings, savings, pensions, and credit. The living creatures thankfully it left alone, namely my daughter, my dog and I and together we had to start all over again.
It was devastating. It broke my heart. My nerves were in tatters. I was 56 years old and not a spring chicken. Yet there was a gift in this too.
Because it was only when disaster struck did I release how intelligent the creative, intuitive method I’d devised was. By making a new Intuitive Vision Board three months into the crises provided me with the lifeline to locate and steer my way through the challenges I faced.
If it could rescue me from the depths of despair, no doubt at all it could help others who’d reached a difficult crossroads decide what to do next. Forearmed with this knowledge, I was inspired all the more to run my workshops and write this book about it.
About the book
Awaken Your Intuitive Vision looks and feels lovely with original hand-drawings throughout. This was important to me as well it being an accessible and entertaining read.
It describes how the Intuitive Vision Board enables you to reach deep within for guidance and clarity as to how to follow your heart’s lead in creating your one wild and wonderful life.
I entwine tales from my clients with those of my own throughout to demonstrate how renewed direction and purpose can be found in the most astonishing ways. It includes the psychology and philosophy behind the process. And the book describes how to create an Intuitive Vision Board from scratch – particularly how to get into a right-brain (creative) frame of mind to make it. It also provides guidance as to how to read the rich signs, symbols and metaphors it contains, the significance of which will emerge over time.
What inspires/inspired my creativity?
I am naturally a creative, intuitive person. Over the years I’ve come to recognise and respond to the gentle inspirations that arrive when I least expect them – and to get them down on paper. I truly believe these prompts are available to more of us more often than we think. We over-ride them because we think they come at an inconvenient time or they don’t make sense to our logical mind.
Inspiration comes to me when I’m off duty; when I’m in a right-brain frame of mind not when I’m sat at my computer. For instance, this can occur when I’m doing my ‘morning pages’ (freestyle, random writing with no agenda), when I’m out in nature, or travelling on a train watching the world whiz by.
For example, I was walking the dog when I received the formula for the Intuitive Vision Board, albeit sketchy but in a single download. When I got home I knew to write it down before I lost the thread. This has now become my signature process.
When I’m in front of the computer screen the writing task is different. It’s creative but in a different way; to mulch and merge the inspirations I’ve gathered together into a new whole. Then I’m in a left-brain frame of mind.
The inspiration for the book is another example. I’d never had an intention to write a book. That’s not to say I hadn’t written in the past because in my early career I was a copywriter. Then I woke up one morning with a notion in my head to write a book about my work. A day later, by chance, I was introduced to a book mentor by a friend who didn’t know I had this notion. How’s that for synchronicity! Within a month I was sat with Karen Williams from Librotas Books in a hip hotel in London drawing up a plan together. It made logical sense to me but it was as dry as an aged lime and I couldn’t progress it into writing.
The juice for this was to come one month later when, on a long drive home, another friend sat next to me in the passenger seat said: “What has your Intuitive Vision Board ever done for you, Mary?” It reminded me of the Monty Python line: “What did the Romans ever do for you?” except I didn’t find it funny at the time and it hit a nerve. I was furious but wisely said nothing.
The next morning when I came to write my ‘morning pages’, eight pages of long-hand poured out of me. I wrote in detail about the crises I’d be through and how the intuitive vision board had directed and supported me to come through it. I gained clarity as I wrote. Not only was it very exciting to see my backstory emerging, it also gave juice that my lime had been missing. Writing it gave me the confidence to speak with authority about the process I’d created. It also encouraged me to seek out stories from my clients to include in the book and I was amazed to discover how many lives had been transformed as a consequence.
Because my work is about visions and being visionary, there’s a whole section in Awaken Your Intuitive Vision on how to set up the right conditions to receive inspiration. I show how these were present in the break-throughs of some of the greatest artists and inventors. The Intuitive Vision Board replicates these conditions so that inspiration can more readily come to you and be captured in the form of a collage of images. This is not the same as a concept board that a designer might create to gather together ideas they’ve thought up already to meet a pre-determined brief. The Intuitive Vision Board, records a dialogue between the right-brain and the unconscious and super-conscious intelligence. The inspirations that emerge onto the board may take weeks or months to come to full cognition, as it does for a vision to become concrete in the world of form.
I make a new Intuitive Vision Board every year. On the board that ran alongside my writing, contained many good ideas for the design, content and focus for the book. I didn’t create it with this intention in mind, it just happened intuitively and provided wonderful guidance.
I would conclude that inspiration can come from facing hardship in life. It was only by re-visiting the pain and dealing with the challenges I faced single-handedly that I was able to transmute this difficult energy into something positive that was not only healing and life-changing for myself but could inform and redeem others.
By writing Awaken Your Intuitive Vision not only helped me heal a broken heart, it also restored my zest for life and uncovered my life purpose.
My plans for the future
To date I have mostly worked with individuals to awaken their intuitive vision. I run public workshops regularly and offer them on a one-to-one basis.
I have also begun to work with teams and organisations to create collective visions with some fascinating results. This is virgin territory which I am keen to explore further. Perhaps the second book I write will be about their journeys.
In the meantime, I’ve clearly let my writing genie out of the jar because not a day goes by where I am not writing something, in some form or other. It’s a necessity for me now – and I love it.