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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.
Define your timeframe
It was 1999 and I was sitting opposite my therapist, Yael, worrying about what to do with the lease on my 4th-floor walk-up apartment above a Pet Store in Brooklyn.
Even though it smelled like fish food and wet dog every time I walked through the building, my apartment was conveniently located and affordable enough for New York.
Should I extend the lease, and risk staying put for another year, or break it and go who knows where?
Beggars can't be choosers, I thought, but every ounce of my body wanted OUT OF THERE— not just the apartment but NYC all together.
I had until the end of the month to figure it all out.
Then my therapist Yael dropped one of her golden reality bombs into the room: “Zeva, contracts can be broken and calendars can be adapted. There’s only one situation that has a non-negotiable timeframe—pregnancy!”
BAM! Message received loud and clear.
I walked out of that session with a new lease on life (pun intended).
For the life of me I can’t remember if I extended the lease or not, but once that deadline became a non-issue, my mind lead me to a whole new sea of options (which eventually got me on a plane to Paris).
Why am I bringing this up?
It was 1999 and I was sitting opposite my therapist, Yael, worrying about what to do with the lease on my 4th-floor walk-up apartment above a Pet Store in Brooklyn.
Even though it smelled like fish food and wet dog every time I walked through the building, my apartment was conveniently located and affordable enough for New York.
Should I extend the lease, and risk staying put for another year, or break it and go who knows where?
Beggars can't be choosers, I thought, but every ounce of my body wanted OUT OF THERE— not just the apartment but NYC all together.
I had until the end of the month to figure it all out.
Then my therapist Yael dropped one of her golden reality bombs into the room: “Zeva, contracts can be broken and calendars can be adapted. There’s only one situation that has a non-negotiable timeframe—pregnancy!”
BAM! Message received loud and clear.
I walked out of that session with a new lease on life (pun intended).
For the life of me I can’t remember if I extended the lease or not, but once that deadline became a non-issue, my mind lead me to a whole new sea of options (which eventually got me on a plane to Paris).
Why am I bringing this up?
Because as the end of the year approaches, we all try to rush to the finish line, jump over hurdles and past milestones to “make it” to the end of the year with all of our goals checked off in a row.
As if deep personal growth can be squeezed out like the last blobs of toothpaste hiding at the bottom of the tube.
That’s just not how growth works. You can't force it. You can’t cram it it. You can’t expect that by the stroke of midnight on December 31st everything will suddenly be exactly as you want it to be.
Calendars help us track seasons and collaborate with the rest of the world in an organized fashion. But they are not indicators of where we have to be in our lives.
You don’t have to start a new job on Jan 1st.
You don’t have to quit your job before you go on vacation.
You don’t have to share your vague business ideas with your cousins over your holiday dinner.
You don’t have to know with 100% certainty what your next career move is going to be when, over smoked salmon canapés, uncle Jean asks you what you've been doing with all of your free time since you left your last job.
Think of Yael and my stinky old apartment when you feel the weight of the clock (and your loved ones, bless their well-meaning hearts).
Every timetable is flexible, except one, so release the stress of competing with time, and yourself, and move at your own rhythm.
You've got this!
Photo by Malvestida Magazine on Unsplash