Seeing Your Own Future

Two ‘My Future’ workshops are scheduled for this coming weekend to help people plan how to achieve the life they desire – and there’s still time to book a place.

JANUARY sees the start not just of a new year, but a new decade and, according to Pennington-based businesswoman Lisa (pronounced ‘Lissa’) Morgan, it could be the start of a new life for many of us.

Lisa specialises in helping people build creative strategies for the future.

In fact ‘My Future: Feeling inspired about life in 2010’ is the title of a series of workshops she’s running this January.

At the workshops, which she runs from her home in Green Lane Farm, she helps people to visualise their future in order to achieve their aims – be it in their professional or personal lives – or both.

She says: “I have been running Futures workshops since the 1990s, where I encouraged people to go into the future in their mind’s eye and create an image of what they’d like their future to be and work out how it could become achievable.

“The principle I work on is that imagination is a muscle and the more you use it the more it works for you.” In order to get people to develop their imaginations she uses quite creative processes: “I tend to get them to use the images in their mind’s eye.

“I ask them to draw what they see, it is a fun, relaxing day and it’s all about getting into people’s minds.”

Lisa is well qualified to give advice on thinking about a more positive future – she’s had more than her own share of successes in her chosen career.

She has been an international businesswoman working in advertising and as a research and planning director for one of the world’s largest spirits companies.

She has worked for Levi’s, Lego, McVitie’s, de Beers and many of the drinks companies, including Webster’s, Yorkshire Bitter, Johnnie Walker and Gordon’s Gin.

Her career has taken her to Poland, Jamaica, India and all over the Asian Pacific.

It was Lisa who developed the “drinking and driving wrecks lives” campaign and helped some big names move their products in new directions.

As she became more interested in visualising the future she began to document visions of the future as seen by teenagers around the world.

The work was published in Japan as Voice: in their own words teenagers predict the future.

The work has featured on the American news network CNN, Japanese national television and BBC radio. She now runs her own one-woman company, Future Seeing, and has adapted the workshops she did with the Japanese teens to suit a wider, adult market.

She says that people can use her workshops to achieve goals in their careers and their personal lives: “I have used it with companies, for example I did a workshop with the planning department for a telecommunications company in London – helping them create visions and plans for the future.

“My company is called Future Seeing and I do use my skills to help people plan strategies – sometimes on quite a commercial basis.”

While working in Japan she even ran a workshop with children as young as nine on behalf of Lego when they wanted some research on the future of play.

Lisa says: “One of the exercises I did was to ask the children to imagine they were on a subway train and that each station took them a year into the future and that they could choose which year they got off at.

“I then found out what they chose to take with them into the future and what new things they expected to see.”

But her workshops can also be a very personal journey for those who take part.

She adds: “I had a lady who’s an artist in her 70s take part in one recently – she is probably the oldest person who’s done one.”

While you might not think a septagenarian is much concerned about the long-term future, Lisa says: “This lady saw it as an opportunity to give her a creative vision for an artwork that represented the whole of her life achievements.”

With all of her workshops she aims to “give people the tools to take with them and use in their lives”.

She says: “By using the signposts in their imaginations people can – through various exercises – work out what their next step should be.”

She often asks clients to walk their future ‘timeline’ and the results can be literally life changing.

She finishes: “Research shows that the people who achieve the most and have the most fulfilling and successful lives are those who know what they want and are not shy about expressing it.

“The workshop is a day to think about yourself.

“So many of us are victims of the lives we have and I offer time you can set aside to think about yourself and your future.

“I offer a little bit of self-discovery.”

l Lisa is running two Future Seeing workshops on Saturday January 9 and Sunday January 10 in Pennington. To find out more go to www.futureseeing.com/workshop-my-future.