Urban Thought Collective

Usually around my birthday I go into hibernation in order to reflect on where I was the year before and where I want to be by the next earth day celebration. Last week, I felt like my brain was clogged up with all of these thoughts that were clouding my awareness. You know how you’re driving on a strange road and your sense of direction is obstructed from the loud music, your thoughts of being lost or the conversation you’re having on the phone. And you’re so used to driving like that it doesn’t occur to you to just turn it all off. It was just like that, only instead of driving, I was navigating my life.

Exactly one week before my birthday, my sista friend, Kim, who is such a powerful spirit, called me. Kim and I always seem to call each other when one thinks about the other. It NEVER fails. On that morning while I was lying in bed with my laptop watching an archived video of Oprah’s Soul Series, featuring Ainslie MacLeod, the author of “The Instruction: Living the Life Your Soul Intended,” when Kim passed through my mind. She called two minutes later.

After getting the initial pleasantries out of the way, she asked me what was going on. Whenever she asks me that, I know she’s looking for the real deal. And as much as I’d like to share it with my UTC family in great detail, I can’t. You never know who is reading. But, I will say that she reminded me of our conversation at the beginning of the year, and how I created a vision board of what I wanted to manifest in my life. Do you know what a vision board is?

A vision board is a collage of newspaper and magazine clippings along with photos and any other things that illustrate what you want in your life. My friend Zoe cuts out her face from old photos and glues it to the clippings. It could be her face on the body of a person lying on some exotic beach. (She loves water.) I did that with my dream ride. One of the beauties of the vision board is that you don’t share it with anyone. Your vision board is sacred, so be truthful about what you want.

I did my first vision board last January and I lied to myself. You know how you have a dream, and it seems so big or so far out of reach, you just dumb it down a little? It’s like setting your sights on sloppy seconds or thirds. That’s what I did. I used to justify it by saying there wasn’t a logical way for it to happen. But, I realize now that miracles supersede logic. To me, miracles are blessings that our human minds can’t explain how it happened. My trip to South Africa was a miracle. I’ve blogged about that and I guess I’ll always go back to it because that blessing was such a profound moment in my life.

This past January I did another vision board and on it is everything I wanted. After Kim gave me a much-needed tongue lashing on how I was straying away from what I said I wanted at the beginning of the year, I went into my office to look at my vision board. Mind you I hadn’t laid eyes on it in so long I’d forgotten some of the things on there. When I looked at it my heart dropped. I saw one word on there – one HUGE dream – that I’ve had for the past few years. It was the very thing I was struggling with that morning. Kim made me realize that I was getting ready to walk away from it simply because it wasn’t manifesting the way I wanted it to. Do you even fathom what I’m telling you? What I really, really, really, want – the major dream on my vision board – has manifested itself in my life and I almost walked away. Crazy, right?

So here I am humbling myself (because my ego was part of the problem) and preparing to run through the open door. One of the things I’m doing is revamping the vision board since I have more clarity of what I want than I did in January. I’ll let you know what happens WHEN (not if) I get on the other side. I’m sure I’ll be bouncing off the walls ready to tell everybody and their mama about it.

I do want to encourage everybody to do a vision board. You know why? Once time lapses and you begin to settle for sloppy seconds, like I did, then you can go back to see your truth. And I hope it encourages you to keep moving forward no matter what. I am.

So here I am picking myself up off the floor (again) and getting back in the game. MAN, I’ll be glad when I get through this one. It’s definitely putting my faith to the test. I’m gonna have to pull out one of my favorite songs by Jay Z. I sing the chorus to fear:

Can’t touch the untouchable, break the unbreakable
Shake the unshakeable (it’s Hovi baby)
Can’t see the unseeable, reach the unreachable
Do the impossible (it’s Hovi baby)

Can’t move the unmoveable, stop the unstoppable…

The time is now.

To UTC readers: In all that we seek to be or do or have, we humbly realize that in the Presence is our power to think, our very thought of aspiration, our will to commence, our strength to keep on, our power to achieve, and the glory of all our accomplishments. This is the Truth and it is now done. ~ A prayer from “Discover the Power Within You”

Envisioning you with much love, light and fulfillment. See you next week.

Yaminah Ahmad is editor-in-chief of The Atlanta Voice and contributing editor to Collective Voices, a newspaper published by the non-profit, SisterSong: Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective. More information on the group can be found at www.sistersong.net. Ahmad can be reached at missyaminah@gmail.com.