I Created a Vision Board and I Think it Might be Working!

Creating a bigger, better midlife and beyond...

Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

I’ve been on a women’s wellness retreat for the last few days and have come back absolutely BUZZING! I am full of positivity, energy and very tasty, wholesome food (thanks to Stan’s Pantry).

My retreat induced elation was quickly buffeted by arriving home to a bathroom that looked as if Hagrid had rolled around in mud then decided to relax in a bubble bath while cutting his toenails - without washing away the evidence. Weird because #StressedHusband isn’t very hairy and he swears he showered at the gym while I was away. It’s a mystery.

Anyway…

Buffeted elation was dissipated when I carefully retrieved the vision board that I’d made at the retreat out of my suitcase (I’m sure I heard a choir of angels sing as I unfolded it.) I wondered where to put it so that I could regularly feast my eyes upon my magical artistic endeavour. Surely it deserved to be framed and hung in a sacred space? I thought about that but then quickly decided against it and plonked it up on the radiator between the hoover and the clothes horse. Not, mind you, because it doesn’t deserve special treatment, but because I’m rubbish at framing and trying to find space in my tiny house that isn’t blighted by dog toys or broken nik naks, is nigh on impossible.

Besides, I think standing my handiwork among the minutia of my messy real life gives it a grand kind of status - where the cut outs of insane possibilities (tropical islands and £100 million being the general gist of it) are - in my mind - divinely illuminated against the unremarkable mundane.

Do Vision Boards Work?

In a Forbes article on vision boards (although she calls them Action Boards), Dr Tara Swart, Neuroscientist and author of The Source, said:

Action boards are the new vision boards because making a collage then sitting on your porch waiting for the checks to roll in is a fantasy. Instead, I believe it’s about using the science of how the brain works to make your dreams come true. If you create an action board, look at it daily and visualize it coming true, this tracks images to your sub-conscious and primes your brain to grasp opportunities that may otherwise have passed you by. Add in doing something each day, no matter how small, to move you towards your goal you’ll be transforming abundance thinking into reality.

Ahhh, so I must remember that sitting watching Housewives of Somewhere Hot and Glam and occasionally flicking my eyes over my Board (cap B) isn’t going to simply make this fabulous life happen - I am going to need to work at it. But that’s ok - I am looking forward to taking intentional steps towards this and seeing where my Board will take me… somewhere with turquoise sea, white sand and Frosé on tap is the goal.

So, what do you think of this visualisation thing? Are you a fan - or do you think it’s a little bit woo woo? I believe in it because I’ve known people who swear by its power.

Aside from Tara Swart, the lovely Tracy who ran the wellness retreat I’ve just been on, told us how after retiring as a breast cancer nurse, she set about creating a vision board and cut out and stuck on card, pictures and words that appealed to her. She didn’t know what the next chapter of her life had in store for her but she knew what she was drawn towards. On her board, were pictures of groups of happy women, a house by the sea and words of positive affirmation. Today, she is a successful Life Coach who has helped many midlife women across the world become unstuck in their lives and, last week she hosted her first women’s wellness retreat - in a house, by the sea, close to where she now lives. She said that as she looked at the little group of happy women sat around the table creating their own vision boards, she realised this was her own board come to fruition.

Oh, and if that’s not enough to convince you, after our vision board exercise, as we walked down the sandy path to the sea for an invigorating and bonding cold water swim, my phone pinged twice. Checking my emails, I saw two had just landed in my inbox offering me freelance work that looks really interesting! They won’t make me a millionaire overnight - but at least I’m a little closer to the £10 million headline that sits on my Board among the other glorious images that I’m hoping will one day come true.

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