More “being”, less doing.
I typed vision boards in my Google search bar, wondering what the buzz was about.
References to Oprah, Ellen DeGeneres, Jack Canfield and Jim Carrey populated the search results. Blogs, interviews and YouTube videos boasted how Vision Boards helped them set crazy goals and get to where they are today.
Then came the article from Psychology Today. It told me to scrap vision boards because research shows they don’t work.
So what was the truth?
Vision Board #1: Shared Manifesting #Fail
The first time I made a vision board was with my husband. Embracing a new business venture, we were told to dream up the big things we wanted, find pictures and put them on the board.
The facilitator said to put words or quotes that we find motivating or desiring, and used words like “manifest your dreams” and “attract the things you want”.
It kind of sounded like a hokey magic wand formula, but we needed a financial breakthrough. So, for fun, secretly hoping it would work, we Googled pictures of a shimmering mansion with a grand pool, a snazzy car my husband said we should own one day, a dog, a pile of cash and the level of our direct marketing status we wanted.
The vision board sat on our shelf for a month — a bright yellow cluttered collage that looked gaudy against our apartment decor.
It drove me batty.
It felt more like a Santa list from a glorified Wish Book than something that made my heart smile. I certainly wasn’t sure where God fit into the picture.
I chucked it a year later when we moved. Nothing had “manifested” like we were told was supposed to happen. In fact, neither of us even wanted a dog anymore.
Vision Board #2: Visualize Your Success…Sort Of
A few years later, we attended an entrepreneur mindset conference that was waking up our dreams and confidence. On Day 2, we arrived at the conference room after a lunch break to see all the chairs cleared in stacks at the side of the room. Rows of brightly coloured poster boards and clusters of magazines stacks, glue sticks and scissors lined the room instead. My husband and I sat on the carpet of the energy-charged hotel room as people filed in.
Our anticipation grew as upbeat music pumped through the speakers.
Again, we were prompted to visualize arriving at the goals we wanted, the things that would make us happy and what symbolized success to us.
For an hour we flipped through magazines, tearing out pages that drew our attention. We cut out pictures, words and quotes, and pasted them in an arrangement on the board.
When we took this picture after the conference, our hopes and energy were sky high.
Ready for Change
Because of the tools and breakthroughs we experienced in the conference, we were clear on what we wanted and what we were going to do about it.
It felt like we truly believed in our dreams and business ideas for the first time!
We were ready to risk failure trying rather than stay comfortable.
That year, 2016, we both made our first huge investments into our dreams that brought us farther than we ever would have done figuring things out on our own.
I started writing Dare to Decide, with the intent to publish, and started getting serious about creating an online presence for my coaching services. Some of the actual pictures on our board were far from reality, some were getting closer, but they still represented outcomes we were working towards.
Still, things about the language, process and direction around the Vision Board still felt off to me.
That unsettledness – and how cluttered my poster looked – still bothered me enough that I tossed the board months later.
It wasn’t until a couple years later that I understood why.
More than One Kind of Success
As I developed my Dare to Decide purpose coaching framework, I read dozens of articles about how others created their vision boards and researched the psychology of goal setting, visualization and dream realization.
My vision boards hadn’t worked because they weren’t aligned with my values, my heart’s focus. They were too big and broad, neglecting the things that truly mattered to me. They were focused on HAVING and ACHIEVING, which felt stressful and taxing. I needed transformative journey of BEING first.
This revelation inspired me to give it another try, using principles that were meaningful to me (and what I started realizing with meaningful to my clients as well).
Vision Board #3: A Heart-Centered Vision Board
With my husband and daughter banished from the living room, gathered the usual supplies: poster board, magazines, scissors, glue stick, scrapbooking paper. I knew this would be a different experience as soon as my inspirational music filled the room. Calm anticipation brewed, rather than obnoxious, stressful beats.
As I flipped through a magazine, a full page scene of a woman on a sofa reading a book to the backdrop of a mountain range beyond her bay window. Definitely friviolous, not productive. “I so need to sit and read books again… And there’s a book that just got published. That’s going to be me soon.”
I cut out both pictures and set them aside.
Instead of skepticism, I felt EXCITEMENT.
Magazines later, another picture made me pause. A pregnant woman in a black dress stood, her hand on the shoulder of a girl my daughter’s age. The little girl held her ear to the rounded belly. Something melted inside me.
“God, I’d really like another baby. Dare I put this on my board? What if others see it? What if it doesn’t come true?”
A gentle whisper followed, Go ahead, put it on and trust Me with it.
Tears warmed my cheeks. I was crying over a picture? This vision board was wrecking my drivenness.
Instead of guarded, I felt VULNERABLE.
More magazines later, and my stack of magazine clippings had grown, not with pictures that represented lofty goals and achievements, but with scenes that made my heart twinge.
“Our family needs to get out of the house more on mini adventures. Like that hiking picture.”
“Ooooh, I really want to do more workshops this year. Not just serious ones. I want it to be creative, fun and intimate. Like the people seem in this picture.”
Instead of detachment, I felt DELIGHT
An hour or two later, I gazed at the finished poster, and could help smiling. I instantly felt what I wanted to feel while looking at it: peace; delight, quiet trust and confidence.
I had been thoroughly moved by this experience.
This vision board experience had felt like a dance with God. It felt like a fun, interactive prayer as I admitted my own desires, began to visualize things He’d been speaking into my heart, and stepped towards another season of my calling.
Rather than a portrait of things to achieve this board represented a vision of who I am, behind my busyness, goals and responsibilities. It also gave me a visual reminder of the woman I wanted to become, in order to make the impact I felt called to make.
Living the Vision of Who You’re Becoming
A year later, I still had that vision board. Where other vision boards were gritty reminders of failures and feeling “less than”, this one became my “happy place”. And that’s not because pictures on the board became my reality.
I never did get pregnant with the second child I had prayed for. Even harder working through my own disappointment was watching my daughter question why her prayers for a sister weren’t being answers.
My first workshop that year had two people register; I stumbled my way through it, and the participants had to leave without finishing the content. Not a success by any standard—except that I had done it.
I did find ways to enjoy reading again, and attempt family hikes, thanks to the reminders on my vision board, but not any amount worth bragging about.
So why did this vision board feel so much more genuine and life-giving, in both the wins and the disappointments?
The reason is what has shaped and refined my annual vision boards and Vision Board Retreats ever since that one I create in 2018. And it begins with the experience of creating it.
It’s where I quieted all the “shoulds” and “coulds” tugging into directions and possibilities.
It’s where I met God with the deep desires of my heart.
It’s where I admitted and also surrendered those desires as I placed them on the board.
It’s where my invitation to God to change what I can’t on my own merit met God’s invitation for to trust Him with those desires and my transformation.
Every day, my vision board reminds me of
my quieted heart
desires seen
surrendered outcomes
an invitation to trust.
Each year, this inspiring collage of pictures, words and curated colours shows me opportunities to be truly myself in all my adequacies, values, dear relationships, presence and beliefs. And along the way, of course, some pretty nifty growth and accomplishments happen, too.
You might enjoy:
- Vision Board Retreats with Emily
- Start a Vision Board Prayer Journal
- Subscribe my Substack! My brand new space to write stories and reflections on word of the year growth. Come say hi!
