Changing the Negative to Positive with Visual Aids

Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Love in the Third Degree.

I’m a visual kind of girl. Always have been. I need to be able to see what things look like, to take what’s in my mind’s eye and see it in front of me. It’s part of moving my desire from mental to physical.

Attract Him Back

I also collect Tarot cards, Angel cards, and various cards that are considered divinatory tools. The artwork is lovely, but I also know the meaning and mythology behind each card and that’s what I use to help change my frame of mind about difficult, negative situations. However, you can still take advantage of these tools for their artwork even if you don’t know the traditional meanings, based on how the artwork speaks to you at an intuitive level.

For example, the 9 of Swords is sometimes drawn as a distraught person in bed with 9 swords over the person. It’s interpreted as despair and worst nightmares, but I have a very positive-minded friend who tells me it’s “needless worry” and a sign that “things are better than they appear at this moment.”

Her attitude is important to me since I was raised in a very negative household where there was tons of needless worry. I keep reminding myself that most of my worry is needless and that things really are better than I think—based on historical data and lifelong patterns!—and that helps to shift my focus to the more positive.

But for the purposes of visualization, I take this nightmare card, the card of my fears, and place it on my home altar. (I highly recommend a home altar regardless of your religion, so that you have a place to pause, to make sacred, to consider and give thanks or just send out your wishes to the Universe.)

On top of this negative card, I place a second card that represents something much more positive, usually the outcome I desire. With Tarot cards, the outcome likely won’t be a specific person or dollar amount or job title but rather an artistic representation of the end result I want.

So…the positive card I place over the negative one might be the Ace of Cups for a new relationship or new emotional beginnings. Or it could be a 10 of Pentacles for a wealthy and prosperous future. Or maybe it’s a pretty card from a new deck where the artwork has a special meaning for me that doesn’t necessarily match the traditional meaning of the card.

I may place several cards on my altar, each a step or mental shift to a new direction and outcome. Really, it’s whatever has meaning for me and triggers the mental shift for me.

Then when I look at the cards every time I pass my altar, I note that the needless worry and despair is being replaced by more joyful things. Or I note a progression of cards from sadness to strength to new adventures to love to partnership to celebration and I know I’m working my way through those steps to manifest a place of celebration.

The cards are small enough and yet meaningful enough—mini vision boards!—that I might leave one card that represents a terrific outcome on a table, in a mini-easel (like for a decorative plate), on a small wall shelf, or even in a frame on the wall.

Right now? I have a tiny frame attached to my computer monitor and in it is a beautiful card that represents a prosperous and happy woman enjoying her surroundings. No matter what I’m working on at my desk, she is always, always, in my sight.


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