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How do vision boards work?
Have you ever stood in front of a painting and started to weep? Or listened to a concerto and felt shivers run down your spine?
Images (and music!) carry instant, powerful, emotional messages that bypass logic and reasoning. They move so fast that our minds can’t keep up.
“Images track instantly to your brain’s visual centres, bypassing conscious thought, which means the brain’s filtering system can’t edit them out or dismiss them,” explains neuroscientist Tara Swart in her amazing book, The Source.
At this time in the year when we’re making resolutions, setting intentions and goals, we typically spend a lot of time in our thoughts, telling ourselves what’s wrong or missing or in need of improvement with ourselves and our lives. It’s just the way that our brains work (negativity bias—ugh!).
Entering a heads-on battle with our thoughts, especially when we’re trying to decide where we want to focus our creativity and energy for the upcoming year, can be exhausting and futile.
Our brains will tell us the answer is to take on more, be more disciplined, control the outcome. But they rarely show us how we want to feel about ourselves and the world we inhabit in our journey forward.
That’s where images, and more specifically vision boards, can come into play in a really interesting way.
What’s a vision board?
Have you ever stood in front of a painting and started to weep? Or listened to a concerto and felt shivers run down your spine?
Images (and music!) carry instant, powerful, emotional messages that bypass logic and reasoning. They move so fast that our minds can’t keep up.
“Images track instantly to your brain’s visual centres, bypassing conscious thought, which means the brain’s filtering system can’t edit them out or dismiss them,” explains neuroscientist Tara Swart in her amazing book, The Source.
At this time in the year when we’re making resolutions, setting intentions and goals, we typically spend a lot of time in our thoughts, telling ourselves what’s wrong or missing or in need of improvement with ourselves and our lives. It’s just the way that our brains work (negativity bias—ugh!).
Entering a heads-on battle with our thoughts, especially when we’re trying to decide where we want to focus our creativity and energy for the upcoming year, can be exhausting and futile.
Our brains will tell us the answer is to take on more, be more disciplined, control the outcome. But they rarely show us how we want to feel about ourselves and the world we inhabit in our journey forward.
That’s where images, and more specifically vision boards, can come into play in a really interesting way.
What’s a vision board?
A vision board is like a mood board, but for your life. It’s an assemblage of cut-out images that speak to you on some deeper level by tapping into your hidden dreams, aspirations and goals.
What’s the purpose of a vision board?
Vision boards help you sidestep the whole mental goal-setting showdown by using visual metaphors that speak the language of your heart rather than the logic of your mind. Because images can circle around your policing mind, they make for amazing tools when deciding what you deeply desire at critical junctures in your life. Like when you’re shifting careers. Ending a long relationship. Moving countries. Saying goodbye to a familiar way of living (aka 2020). Or welcoming in another trip around the sun (aka 2021)!
How do vision boards work?
Your vision board is like a dressing room for your future. You try on the "future you" outfit, let your brain get comfortable with it so it green lights the vision, allotting energy and resources towards bringing it to life. This is the law of attraction at work. You’re putting a highlighter around your deeper goals so that your conscious and unconscious minds can team up to help you achieve them. The vision board acts like an intermediary between your heart and your mind—kind of like a couples' therapist for your dreams.
How can I make a vision board?
I’m so happy you asked,! I’ve got a couple of ideas for you:
You can go back to the free Guide to Great Goal Setting I have on my site and follow the instructions.
If you speak French and want to have a collaborative, energy-lifting experience, I’d be thrilled to see you on January 24th with my dear friend, author and kundalini yoga teacher, Lili Barbery-Coulon for our Atelier Kunda & Creative Flow for 2021. During the two-and-a-half hour webinar Lili will lead us in a communal mediation to help us tap into our intuitive, creative cores before creating our vision boards. To sign up click the link here.
PS. Vision boards help sidestep the whole mental showdown going on in your brain, making them amazing tools for 2021 intention-setting! If you speak French and want to have a collaborative, energy-lifting vision board experience, come join me on January 24th with my dear friend, author and kundalini yoga teacher, Lili Barbery-Coulon for our Atelier Kunda & Creative Flow for 2021 webinar. Lili will be leading us in a mediation to tap into our intuitive, creative flow before creating our vision boards. To sign up click the link here.
The hidden cost of under-valuing creativity
When I was a trend reporter the rule was "one is chance, two is coincidence and three is a trend."
And right now I have three different clients connected in a strikingly, trend-specific way.
Their common connection? As kids, they were discouraged from nurturing their creative sensibilities because their families were scared about what would happen if they decided to pursue those paths professionally.
It sounds counter-intuitive, right? You've got a kid who devours four books a week, a kid who's exceptionally gifted at music, a kid who has a passion for collecting and transforming objects, but instead of feeling excited as a parent, you feel dread.
You see when you come from a family where science, math, law, etc are the gold standards, where they're held high above anything else, it's hard as a parent to get behind the idea of developing your child's creative side.
The discouragements, for the most part, come from fear. "What if she become an artist? How will she support herself? Ahh, scary, no!"
But let's play a game of "Fast Forward A Few Decades," shall we?
Your kid has the degrees, the fancy title, the safe job, but then she starts to feel completely and totally out of whack and wonder "How did I get here?" "Who was calling the shots?" "Why did I decide to climb this ladder?"
What's the most obvious risk of being discouraged from nurturing your creative sensibilities most of your life?
The number one I've seen is the deep sadness in silencing that special spark inside of you that's the source of so much joy. That deep rift creates a hole in the heart that looks to be filled elsewhere.
Which can lead to some other consequences I've discovered when people search for value in ways unrelated to what flows naturally:
When I was a trend reporter the rule was "one is chance, two is coincidence and three is a trend."
And right now I have three different clients connected in a strikingly, trend-specific way.
Their common connection? As kids, they were discouraged from nurturing their creative sensibilities because their families were scared about what would happen if they decided to pursue those paths professionally.
It sounds counter-intuitive, right? You've got a kid who devours four books a week, a kid who's exceptionally gifted at music, a kid who has a passion for collecting and transforming objects, but instead of feeling excited as a parent, you feel dread.
You see when you come from a family where science, math, law, etc are the gold standards, where they're held high above anything else, it's hard as a parent to get behind the idea of developing your child's creative side.
The discouragements, for the most part, come from fear. "What if she become an artist? How will she support herself? Ahh, scary, no!"
But let's play a game of "Fast Forward A Few Decades," shall we?
Your kid has the degrees, the fancy title, the safe job, but then she starts to feel completely and totally out of whack and wonder "How did I get here?" "Who was calling the shots?" "Why did I decide to climb this ladder?"
What's the most obvious risk of being discouraged from nurturing your creative sensibilities most of your life?
The number one I've seen is the deep sadness in silencing that special spark inside of you that's the source of so much joy. That deep rift creates a hole in the heart that looks to be filled elsewhere.
Which can lead to some other consequences I've discovered when people search for value in ways unrelated to what flows naturally:
They lose their confidence in themselves and their ability to trust their intuition because they believe that their natural talents are worthless (literally worth-less) than other pursuits that were (and continue to be) much harder for them to excel at.
They latch on to a system of reward and recognition that's outside of themselves, detached from their inner compass and emotional foundation. That system's usually about extreme effort and external signs of value that can easily lead to over-exertion, emotional exhaustion and a feeling of complete misalignment.
They forget that they already know what they like, what they're good at, what comes naturally to them, and that there are untapped possibilities for them within those worlds.
So what happens next? How do we unravel that onion and find our way back to the creative joy?
The number one stop is identifying the thoughts in your head that are telling you you're not doing it right. That you're not disciplined enough. Responsible enough. Hard-working enough. That's a telltale sign there's something stinky going on under the surface that's creating the misalignment.
Because when you peel the onion back you're bound to find that when it comes to doing the things that flow naturally, that give you pleasure, that you're innately good at, the responsibility, discipline, and effort aren't an issue.
Do you ever feel irresponsible, undisciplined, not-good-enough?
What are you doing, or not-doing, when you say that about yourself?
When did those thoughts first appear in your mind?
And on the flip-side, what do you do naturally and without struggle without any voices telling you you're not doing it right?
Book a call and we can discuss!
Much love to you today.
Zeva