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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.
How to avoid brain drain
Lice, strikes and no more mozzarella in any of the stores when you plan on making New Year's Day lasagna.
Is it the title of a new Coen brothers movie based on the Odyssey?
A feminist podcast starring Tina Fey?
Or some of the energy-depleting experiences that decorated my winter break?
What's your guess?
If you think I'm using my random holiday turmoils as an excuse to complain, you've got another thing coming.
They're actually awesome examples of how brain-drain works— meaning when your mind says "pas possible" to creative work because it's been depleted generating solutions to totally annoying problems.
I always though that the long ramp-up to making a decision (be it ordering from a bible-size NYC Greek diner menu to deciding whether to pivot professionally) was what drained us the most intellectually, emotionally and physically.
But Dr. Tara Swart, author of The Source, the book I'm currentIy obsessed with, says that it's the act of making the decision that's the most draining for our brains.
"It is perhaps surprising that although the rumination that leads up to a decision requires mental energy, it's the point of decision making itself that is the most energy-intense for our brains. This explains why reducing the number of unnecessary choices in our day (what to wear, eat, watch, react to on social media) is an effective way to conserve decision-making energy for bigger and more important decisions."
This is why Steve Jobs wore the same outfit each day and why so many people do their most creative work in the morning before their brains have been zapped to death on emails and deciding what to eat for lunch.
Lice, strikes and no more mozzarella in any of the stores when you plan on making New Year's Day lasagna.
Is it the title of a new Coen brothers movie based on the Odyssey?
A feminist podcast starring Tina Fey?
Or some of the energy-depleting experiences that decorated my winter break?
What's your guess?
If you think I'm using my random holiday turmoils as an excuse to complain, you've got another thing coming.
They're actually awesome examples of how brain-drain works— meaning when your mind says "pas possible" to creative work because it's been depleted generating solutions to totally annoying problems.
I always though that the long ramp-up to making a decision (be it ordering from a bible-size NYC Greek diner menu to deciding whether to pivot professionally) was what drained us the most intellectually, emotionally and physically.
But Dr. Tara Swart, author of The Source, the book I'm currentIy obsessed with, says that it's the act of making the decision that's the most draining for our brains.
"It is perhaps surprising that although the rumination that leads up to a decision requires mental energy, it's the point of decision making itself that is the most energy-intense for our brains. This explains why reducing the number of unnecessary choices in our day (what to wear, eat, watch, react to on social media) is an effective way to conserve decision-making energy for bigger and more important decisions."
This is why Steve Jobs wore the same outfit each day and why so many people do their most creative work in the morning before their brains have been zapped to death on emails and deciding what to eat for lunch.
It's also why supermarkets strategically place the candy by the cash register: your brain's made hundreds of small choices by the time it gets to the counter that it's much more likely to crack for candy then.
So, here are some suggestions for you:
Reduce the number of small decisions you need to make daily. (e.g. mono wardrobe, batch cooking, delegating)
Audit your most important decision making moments and your energy when you're making them.
Create a fail-safe, energy-generating morning routine that you do without having to think about it.
Come up with a contingency plan before heading to the supermarket when you're vacationing in a small mountain village and plan on making lasagna for 12 people: what will you make if they're sold out of mozzarella or don't have the right size lasagna pan?
Sending you much love and brain-saving energy.
Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash