The Power of Words in Visual Form

Image by avrdreamer via Flickr

Last week I decided to revisit my values. The last time I did a values exercise, I was at a very different place in my life. I’ve grown a lot since then and was curious to see what has changed. Here are the steps I took:

1. I really like the comprehensive list of almost 400 adjectives that Steve Pavlina put together for such a task, so I copied and pasted the words into an excel spreadsheet and printed the list out.
2. I took a highlighter and quickly went through the list, marking each word that resonated with me. These 35 words described states of being or personality traits that I admire in others and either see or want to foster in myself.
3. I went through the list a second time with a pen and circled seven of the highlighted words. These words hold more meaning to me and represent more clearly what I’m about and what is important to me.
4. Finally, I carefully thought about each of the seven circled words. The question I asked myself was, “Which of these states of being must be part of my life in order for me to feel whole?”
5. The four words I chose are my core values. They sum up who I am today and how I want to live my life. I might not always be successful at living them, but I try to, every day.

After sitting with these words for a few days, I wanted to put them up somewhere I could see them every day, so I typed each value in a Word document, and my daughter helped me choose a font for each that gave personality to each one. We printed them out on bright, colorful paper and my daughter used some craft scissors to cut them out. I taped each of those on the wall, surrounding two vision boards that I look at every day. Happiness.

What ended up making this exercise a lot more meaningful is that my daughter wanted to choose her own values. So, I gave her the master list, and she went through the process, highlighting, circling and deciding which words meant the most to her. However, after telling me how much she liked all of her words and that there were too many to choose from, an idea occurred to me.

We went to Wordle, plugged in all of her words, played with the color and layout, and printed this out:

We had so much fun doing this that I had to make a Wordle myself:

What I loved about this exercise most was looking at our lists side by side. As I looked at the words my daughter chose, I got to see her in a brand new way, a colorful jumble of joy and fun.

As I look at my words, I can see how much I’ve grown. I turn 40 this year, and there has been a significant shift in how I see the world, what I want in life, and what I hold most dear. And now it’s in visual form. Really powerful.

Try this exercise, and do it with your kids if they feel compelled to join you.

These posts may also inspire you:

1. Article Content is Likely Right Under Your Nose
2. 5 Steps to Summer Sanity: Family Vision (Part 1)
3. Client Attraction Tip – Light Your Creative Spark