Lessons Learned from Malfunctioning Vision Boards
What to Avoid and What to Remember When Making Your “Dreaming While Being Me” Vision Board
I despised my first couple vision boards!
Yep, despise is a pretty strong word.
But “tolerated” doesn’t fit, because after a few months, I ended up tossing each one in the trash.
When I finally made a vision board I fell in love with, it made me smile. My heart felt full. Some inner pressure or expectation relaxed inside. And I thought, “this is me. This is my prayer.”
I made it drawing from these lessons I learned from my first two malfunctioning vision boards. These lessons focused more on “doing” and achieving related boards rather than the “being and becoming” boards I now create, but most principles still apply.
1. Don’t Post What Others Want for You.
Be true to who you are and what delights you.
“Just be you”– it seems simple enough. But I’ve heard so many stories from women who’ve spent so much of their time setting aside their own needs to take care of family, invest in others, pay the bills or make progress in her book, blog or business.
And then she peeters out.
#burnout.
She does all the diligent things, step after step, until her body, mind or emotions says ENOUGH.
Been there!
Each person’s story and journey is different. Sacrifice and bringing hope or help to others are important pieces of living a fulfilling life. But each time we put aside ourselves to take care of someone or something else, at the expense of who we truly are, we cut off expression or livelihood of our core being.
So, how do you serve and live your calling without sacrificing your identity?
I was asking myself that in my 20’s, when I had already experienced burnout twice, and my identity and value were grounded in all the affirmation I had received growing up as a “good helper”, “mature and responsible for her age”, and “reliable work ethic”. It feels selfish to take care of our own needs and wants. Yet when I felt drained, with nothing left to give, I found that, when I took the care to relax and read a book that delighted me, or said no to an invitation to stay home, or wrote in my novel, I ignited the very energy, heart and humanness people responded to.
If your vision board is full of tentative, nice-to-have desires, that’s not going to cut it.
If you put on things your vision board because someone else wants them for you, or that’s their interpretation of success, you’ve just created someone else’s dream board. And that’s not going to get you far. The first year my husband and I created a vision board, we did it together, but we included separate desires rather than shared desires.
That’s why a red Farrari is no longer on my vision board – it can stay on my husband’s.
What would bring joy and delight to your heart? And what would that look like on your dream board?
2. Don’t Build Your Ego.
Include pictures that align with your values.
My first two vision boards had a lot of pictures related to stuff or status, because those were many of the prompts that were given when I made them.
I realized later that how much it irked me.
Fancy houses, dreamy vacations and responsibility-free life seemed more about ego than purpose. I’m not a stuff or status kind of girl. I like peace, practicality and simplicity.
Having the freedom to spend time exploring with my family, investing into others, reading a book without a million things on my mind or writing without interruptions motivates me more than anything else. The things I put on my board clashed with what was most important to me, or they were too far off for me to imagine it could be my reality.
When you set your ego aside, where would your contentment lie?
3. Don’t Fake it Till You Make It.
Give yourself permission to believe in the desires and dreams you believe God has placed on your heart. Then watch what God wants to do with you and for you.
We like to think we’re in full control of what we want, can have in life. The commission to believe we’re made for greatness and that we can do anything we set our minds to sounds alluring. But what happens when both both your conscious mind and unconscious mind are at war?
Just like an iceberg, its usually what’s unrealized below the surface that leads to your demise.
If you put a dream too grand that your subconscious doesn’t believe it’s possible, or that you feel you don’t deserve a certain dream, you’ll find yourself stuck or resenting those pictures on your vision board.
Now, there are tools and paths to tuning into and reprogramming your subconscious, but without that, you’ll quickly find yourself sabotaging the grand dreams on your board.
What dream is out of reach enough to tantalize you, big enough to excite you, and desirable enough that you could believe “This is reality for others; it could be reality for me.”?
4. Don’t Make the Sky the Limit
Get specific in what you are asking for and envision while staying open to the outcome.
There’s a place for dreaming big.
However, part of the power vision boards letting your mind know what to focus on. It’s a visual message to the reticular activating system (RAS) part of your brain that’s like setting a target for a missile. Once the course is set, that’s all it “sees” and it will dodge barriers and bust through obstacles to get to its destination and intended purpose.
If all the “doing” dreams you have in your vision board are sky high, vague and so out of reach, your RAS gets confused as to what you’re actually going to accomplish.
The more focused your intentions are within a specific time frame or content, the better your RAS can filter out everything that’s not relevant or helpful along the way. Like when you’re house hunting and you see For Sale signs everywhere instead of the unmanicured lawns a landscaper might see.
It’s also the way creativity thrives.
We wish we had endless freedom and resources to be creative, but the more we have, the more our intentions meander and take their sweet time.
Give it a deadline with limited resources, staying open to the process steps along the way, and creativity can flourish in a way that might surprise you (with a bit of nail biting and choice words along the way).
5. Don’t Make It All About You
It’s wise to know exactly what parts of your vision are yours to own. But often you can’t accomplish a big vision on your own. Invite others into your story.
Sometimes we’re trying fit a faith-led, God-sized dream in a DIY lifestyle. Your purpose and dreams thrive best when they’re bigger than you and not all about you.
You’ve been invited to participate in a divine story — one that, at its core, saves lives, bears hope and inspires people to know they are loved, valued and understood.
Creating your ideal life is more possible than you think – but will it be meaningful when you achieve it?
Are you meant to achieve it alone?
Maybe there are people who are meant to be part of your story. What would their picture look like on your board?
6. Don’t Assume It’s Helpful to Only Focus on One Area of Your Life
Sometimes the fruit of focusing on one area of your live overflows into or strengths other areas of your life. Wisdom is knowing when to focus on each area. Create a holistic life that’s sustainable.
Consider eight areas of your life that are essential to feeling fulfilled, connected and successful. These areas vary for different people but generally they are: spiritual, family/spouse, personal, wellness, avocational/community/social, recreation, finances, vocation/career.
I don’t think a balanced life is realistic in every season or even every day. Some dreams, launches, sickness, life-change demand more time and energy for a season. But when that season is over, we can lean into another renew its vitality.
When one area is neglected to focus on one of the other areas over the long term – months, years or decades – it depletes your energy and happiness, more importantly, your true sense of fulfillment. Unfortunately, many people don’t realize this until they’re on their deathbed.
Signals that you’re neglecting your purpose in one or more of these areas can be loneliness, boredom, lack of energy, resentment, depression, jealousy, and feeling insignificant or inadequate, but you have the opportunity to create your holistic life.
What pictures on your board would represent well-rounded vitality in what you give and receive in relationships, projects, learning, living environment or wellness?
7. Don’t Neglect Your Baggage
Discover how you can experience now what you want to feel through achieving dreams and actualizing desires.
Did you know that almost everything you do is driven by either a desirable feeling you want to have or an undesirable feeling you want to avoid?
If you don’t heighten your awareness of what those feelings are truly about, you’ll only keep chasing the things you think will make you happy. You’ll keep avoiding hard work, pain and discomfort that actually helps you thrive.
Without renewing your mind and replacing your limiting beliefs, you’ll keep finding yourself stuck or drifting in life – and repeat the same cycles of shame, inadequacy and defeat.
What do you want to feel (and not feel) most in this season of your life? What picture represents that?
8. Don’t Forget to Create an Action Plan
Form a rhythm or practice that fortifies who you’re becoming. Define your next best steps. Articulate the mile markers towards your big dreams-turned-goals.
“Attract and manifest the life/things you want!” I heard this messaging around every vision board pep talk I encountered but found it misleading.
I thought it meant, “Try hard; talk about it, and will it into being, and it will all come together.”
Um, that didn’t work very well.
Once we know our next steps, whether it was the only step we know or part of a series of steps, we’re responsible for taking them.
It shows us, God, the world and our vision that we can be trusted with both the dream and the next step.
We’re going to need to show we can fight for it and show up for it even when we don’t feel like it. Our vision requires us to believe in it even when we temporarily doubt it, taking steps in the fog when clarity hasn’t arrived yet.
Along the journey, we separate our identity from the outcome, realizing we become better versions of ourselves, growing and learning with each action.
The actions are the ground we till, the seeds we sow, the nurturing that helps it grow. Then the reaping we celebrate.
And maybe… just maybe… like I did, you’ll look back on your vision board to realize the vision was just as much about who you’re becoming than what you wanted to accomplish.