If you want to do really good work it helps to understand how you tick.

• What do you love to do?
• What attracts you?
• What repels you?
• What motivates you?
• What do you like to think about?

If you want a snapshot of this that comes right from your gut, try making a soul collage.

You’ll need a few supplies:

• Magazines, catalogs, and/or old calendars that have cool pictures. If you don’t have any of these, ask your friends. Or ask your library if they have old magazines. Someone has a pile of these that they’d love to get rid of!
• Scissors
• A glue stick
• A small piece of cardboard, about 5″x7″
• Pen and paper for follow-up questions

Set a timer for 25 minutes and work your way through the stack of magazines, catalogs and calendars tearing out any pictures that catch your eye. This can be something that attracts you or repels you. Don’t stop to think about it. Just pull. And pull only pictures. You’re not looking for words in this exercise.

Take a breath at the end of the 25 minutes and reset the timer for 20 minutes.

This time, choose, trim and glue your favorite pictures onto the 5″x7″ piece of cardboard. Getting your favorites onto a card this size isn’t easy. You have to edit and prioritize till you get to something that looks cool to you. Trim off any overhanging pieces to square up the edges of the card.

If you have time and a lot of pictures, make more cards, but each one only gets 20 minutes for assembly.

When your cards are done, take another breath and jot down thoughts about what you’ve created.

• What were you looking for and what did you find?
• Did you pull similar images? Colors? Shapes?
• What does the story on the card tell you about you?
• What do the pictures or colors symbolize to you?
• Is there a story in the pictures you chose not to add to the card?
• Ask the universe what it’s trying to tell you and listen for that answer.

If you want to probe deeper, write a story for each card using each letter of the alphabet, in order. To show you what I mean, here are three cards I made at a soul collage class along with their ABC stories. The last card I made ended up being my favorite – even though it’s made up of just two pictures.

Arise. Be courageous. Don’t ever fear getting high. I just keep letting myself nod off. Please quickly rise steep towers. Undervalued wishes x’ed yonder = zip.

All beings can dominate – even flowers grow high in jars. Keep letting me (k)now. Open places quip real satisfaction. True universal values will x your z (z=unknown value).

As below, care deeply. Ever free grace houses incredible jinx. Kindred love makes no open places. Quiet rarely satisfies the Universe. Values will x your z (z=unnown value).

There are a couple of cool things that happen with this exercise. First, the pile of magazines, catalogs and calendars is random as are the pages you look at. Like life, things just come to you! There isn’t much control.

Second, you didn’t frame the story on the card – it just came to you. It’s a message from somewhere in the Universe.

Third, the random writing is so weird. We’re all walking around with stories in our heads. It’s fun to pry them out from time to time to take a look at them!

Sending you the quiet love of a blizzardy evening here on the coast of Maine. Here’s what we already had on the ground!