You’d be forgiven for not seeing there’s a difference between a vision board and UnglueYou’s Collage Coaching Technique™ (CCT). Both methods use images taken from magazines to create a collage so that on the surface, at first glance they appear the same. However, there are significant differences concerning the purpose, process, and outcomes.
Vision Boards
Vision boards are so named because the focus is on visualising the future. As a coaching tool, a vision board helps you focus on what you want for your life or the year ahead. While you may be encouraged to choose images that resonatewith your desired future, predominantly, the instructions are to select images that represent your goals.
Therefore, the focus is on identifying goals first and then creating a visual resource that depicts this future. For this reason, the images, words, ideas, and emotions expressed on vision boards are chosen to be positive and future-oriented. They may be related to material, emotional, physical, and spiritual desires etc. Some facilitators or coaches advocate separating these into different areas on your vision board.
Many people believe that in creating a vision board they’ll manifest their future through the law of attraction. Others see them working because, in focusing attention on the images, actions also become focused in that area.
Sometimes guidance includes using a photo of yourself, drawing on your vision board or adding decorations to make it colourful and vibrant.
The Collage Coaching Technique™
The CCT is a psychological coaching tool. It works on the principle that how you think about yourself and respond to situations affects your ability to achieve your goals. When you come to coaching, you may, or may not be aware that you’re facing internal conflicts, barriers, or resistance to change.
Often rooted in fear, they keep you stuck in your current situation, unable to move confidently towards your goals and ambitions. Until there is a possibility to identify and address these feelings. thoughts and unhelpful behaviour patterns, they will impede meaningful and sustainable change. For this reason the CCT focuses first on accessing your unconscious mind. Because, when self-selecting images, you may, consciously or unconsciously, avoid things that are challenging.
Unlocking the Unconscious Mind
Working with the unconscious means, unlike a vision board, an image may resonate with you that you hadn’t thought to look for. Yet this image can perfectly capture what you need to express. As such, your collage is likely to include those that you find challenging or uncomfortable. For example, relating to difficult experiences, limiting beliefs and unfulfilled dreams etc.
Fortunately, these images appear on the collage alongside your motivators, strengths, and values. In doing so you have an holistic representation of yourself. Furthermore, most of the ones you choose to include will have significant symbolic, metaphorical, and emotional meaning.
Consequently, my role, and that of other coach’s includes working with you to deepen personal understanding and create meaning through exploration of these images. This leads to increased self-awareness, clarity and the confidence to define your next steps.
Significantly, in working with the unconscious first, you’re also able to express yourself authentically. Many people describe this as liberating and empowering.
Read other peoples experience of coaching with collage.
Releasing Your Potential
To enable relevant material to surface, you choose a theme for your coaching with collage session. For example, developing resilience, improving well-being, living authentically, career change and building confidence. I also apply creative constraints around timings. Otherwise there’s a risk that you’ll start to overthink as your conscious thoughts begin to question your choice of images, or ponder too long over their placement.
Once completed, like a vision board, you’re guided to place your coaching collage where you’ll see it regularly. This is important as your collage serves to inspire, remind and motivate you long after you created it. Also, the visual metaphors and symbolic images in your collage will have layers of meaning. These continue to offer new insights which deepen your self- awareness overtime. Contributing to your confidence building and learning to trust yourself.
Key Benefits of Coaching with Collage:
1. Bringing your hidden thoughts, ideas and feelings to the surface for assessment and reflection
2. Eliciting information that creates breakthroughs early on in the coaching journey
3. Connecting emotionally with goals that increases your motivation
4. Using external visualisation that enables exploration of your sense of identity through the process of creative play – manipulating and moving the images in a physical space
5. Working with the layers of meaning held in visual metaphors and symbolic images allows connections that might otherwise be missed
6. Gaining insights and new perspectives that raise your self-awareness and clarity to help improve decision making
7. Experiencing self-development and consolidating learning through coaching conversations
8. Accessing the breadth of your knowledge (unconscious, intuitive, cognitive, rational, physical, spiritual, emotional and psychological) allowing for a more holistic coaching experience
9. Bypassing the blocks caused by editing and cognitive thinking that can occur at the beginning of the coaching process
10. Learning to trust yourself and your intuition, a skill that can be tranferred to other areas of life
About the author: Andréa Watts is the founder of UnglueYou® and creator of the Collage Coaching Technique™.
This article has been kindly repurposed from Unglue You and you can read the original here.