Charles R. Thompson, Upstate SC Artist

One of the things I’ve recently come back to is the good ol’ blue board. When I was younger and had limited resources (not that this has changed much) I picked up this from a friend of mine with whom I played music. We were both very goal oriented and always looking for ways to push ourselves further in our efforts. The blue board is just what it sounds like… a big piece of blue posterboard. The idea is to pin or tape up all the things you want, goals, hopes, dreams, etc. then systematically condition yourself towards those things. Why blue? No idea… that’s just want I was told to do.

Every day you look at the board before you do anything else. You take the time to stare each piece of this big puzzle down and question each item. How do they line up? What’s the most important? Do I need this? How am I going to manage that? Is this the right thing or can it be replaced with something else? You move pieces around.. put the things that are important in an area that feels important, take the things that eventually feel stupid and unnecessary off and toss em. You do this every day. Put the stuff you don’t need and keep it in a stack. Feel free to add things back.. new stuff. Whatever. Just keep moving with it.

Done? Ok.. forget about the board and everything on it. Go live life. Your brain will handle the rest. What you are doing (and it took me a few years to get it) is taking the mish-mosh of signals your brain needs to sustain focus on all this ’stuff’ and externalizing it. You are telling your mind that you recognize all this stuff, but we’ll put it over here for safekeeping until it’s critical. It’s like storing it off on some external memory card. By not letting this bang around in your head you are allowing some time for all the stuff to slow bake and at the same time curbing the impulses to just go out and needlessly snag all these things you desire. It’s sort of a short circuit for your survival instinct. You no longer sit at work going “If X doesn’t mesh with Y I won’t afford Z then what will I do?” After enough time, all your mind knows is that you are working toward some goals so maybe you better spend less, or not buy that unnecessary thing you just picked up, or just focus on the task at hand. All of a sudden you feel like you don’t need certain things, but can’t really say why…it’s just a ‘hunch’

Eventually you reach a point where you realize (after alot of critical thinking every morning) that one of these things is right… and the timing is perfect for it. Ok.. go get it. Now take it off the board and put it in a different stack. Lather, rinse repeat. Long ago when I worked as a waiter I started this little habit and managed to build a small recording studio at an age when most people just blow through all their money with reckless peril.

So this all seems rather materialistic but there is another layer. After years of doing this I got to a point where the items on the board were things I could not buy, or fully quantify. I began to find that there was a shift from external needs to internal and my life started to gain focus and clarity. Most of the physical things were in fact, items I needed to acheive internal goals. This year marks the first time I’ve put the board up in about 4 years and within the first 30 days I’m happy to say I’ve dropped quite a few items in the ‘accomplished’ bucket and am excited for what else the year will bring.

So go make a blue board and start an adventure.