If you try to imagine this and draw a blank, then please think again. The more you imagine and flesh out the future you want, the more likely it is that you will draw that dream towards you.

If you are doubtful that this might be, in any way, useful advice, then change your mind, at least for the purposes of this exercise. Treat this as an experiment in actively creating your life.

Spend half-hour drawing or writing your imagined ideal future. Your unconscious mind works with moods and atmospheres, not concrete facts, so, as you do this, fill yourself with the feelings you want to be having at this time next year.

Once you are satisfied that you have captured your dream on paper, put it away and forget about it.

Your unconscious mind will do what it does all the time and does best – create for you the experiences that you expect. It does this because it treats imagination and reality very similarly.

Don’t believe me. Test this out for yourself

The workshop ‘My Future’ works with this principle and helps you develop a personal template for your unconscious mind to work upon. The next ‘My Future’ is on April 10th. See http://www.futureseeing.com/workshop-my-future.htm for details.

Wishing you a happy Easter – this year and, especially,  next.

Consider the words you use when you talk about your situation. Your phrases hold clues to the direction you want to go. List them and see what point you’re making. Now talk about what you could be doing and what you’d like to do. Your language gives you clues for you to follow.

Use your words as pointers.  From them, build your internal compass and you can gain a confident sense of personal direction.

Having a miserable day? All right, you possibly are. But before you chuck the whole day into your wheelie bin of rotten memories, to fester with the rest, take a moment to check that it is all bad. I bet you’ll remember some things that have happened that were not awful. Were some even OK?

Add up as many moments that you can think of that weren’t miserable. There might even have been a few quite good bits if you look hard enough.

And now describe your day. It’s usually not so bad after all.

Work on your timing and delivery and those bad experiences might even make good stories to tell your mates.

We are all imagining things all the time, so don’t believe anyone who says they have no imagination. Tell them ‘You must have one to have imagined that!’  Our imagination shapes our reaction to everything around us and everything that happens to us. Most of the time we don’t notice it.

It’s like the muscles that beat our heart – working away automatically. But once you realise that your imagination is active whether you aware of it or not, your life starts to change. You can start to use your imagination to make life more fun.

Every morning, a small group of elderly Japanese ladies meet to cheer each other up. How they do it is so simple, it’s hard to believe. Together they say ‘I am happy, I am happy’ over and over. Then they say ‘ I am laughing, I am laughing, I am laughing’ till they start to laugh, often a bit forced at first.

And then the laughing starts to build and build, till their tummies start to wobble, their heads roll back and the tears drip down their happy cheeks. They say the good feelings last all day.

Criticism hurts, but that hurt doesn’t have to last for long. First step is to realise that everyone criticises from their own perspective. What people see in other people, they always have in themselves. If you don’t believe that, check it out. Next time someone tells you that you are thoughtless, lazy, unprepared, annoying etc. consider how thoughtless, lazy, unprepared, or annoying. the critic themselves might be. They may not have these traits in the same way you do, but there will be some aspect of their criticism of you that they will have in themselves.

Remember, it truly does ‘take one to know one’.

If you are feeling a bit low, look at the sky. It’s hard to feel miserable when your eyes are looking up. Try it.

There’s a scientific reason for this – to do with how we process our thoughts. So, when you decide to get out of the house and take a walk, don’t keep looking at your shoes as you wander along. If you do, you might get home and feel as miserable as when you set out. Get your ‘Chin up’ and you’ll cheer up. It’s almost impossible not to – just see.

Think about what’s good in your life already.  Your friends? Your dog? Your kids? Your favourite T shirt? The list could get quite long if you think hard enough. And if you still feel the need for change, start with the little things you can do. As they say, ‘inch by inch life’s a cinch, yard by yard it’s really hard’.

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.