So, when I started my vision board, one of the first things I put on there was a little teeny, tiny picture I had cut out of some dresses. I wanted new dresses. I love wearing dresses.I was tired of all my old ones and I wanted somes new ones. So, I had this little picture that I found online and I printed it off and I just stuck it on my vision board somewhere. I thought, “That’s not, you know, one of the important ones. Whatever. Like, I’ll work on some serious ones too.” So, I had some more serious goals up there also, and those were…okay. But this one…was fun! Every time I looked at my vision board and I saw those little dresses there, I was just so happy. I just felt happy. I was like, “They’re so cute, and that will be so fun to have some new dresses.” 

The cool thing about vision boards is you don’t have to plan. You don’t have to have it all structured and written down and know how it’s going to happen. You don’t have to write it out or anything. There’s not as much pressure, so you can be more playful with it and just find pictures of things you want and just throw them up there and think about them. And the idea is that you attract what you think of. 

Every time I looked at those dresses, I just thought they’d be fun and it just felt good. So, a month or two down the road, I’m shopping with my mom and I see all the dresses on sale. It was springtime. It was time for Easter dresses and there were so many dresses and they were all on sale, and I decided that I don’t really have the money to buy any for myself. I haven’t budgeted or anything for this so I’m thinking “Oh, I’m just shopping with my mom. I’ll just have fun and I’ll try some on.” And it was super fun! And then I found so many that fit perfectly. They were so pretty and I decided I would try some on and then put them back, because I just hadn’t made any plans to shop for myself that day, or buy anything. I was just having fun with it. 

But then, suddenly my mom pulls out four dresses and she says ‘I’m going to buy these for you.” And I said “What?” I thought, “I’m almost 40 years old. Your mom doesn’t buy you stuff, like dresses, when you’re almost 40 years old.” That’s just not, I don’t know, I don’t think that’s a typical thing to do. I thought, “It’s not Christmas. It’s not my birthday. If I really wanted them I could have bought them myself.” It just felt weird to have her buy them, but she said, “No, really. I want to buy you these dresses, so just let me buy them.” And I said “Okay. Okay, sure. I’ll let you buy them.” 

My brain tends to work kind of sporadically, so, when I got home, and the next day looked at my vision board, I was shocked. I had forgotten that I had this picture of dresses on there, because usually I just threw it in the corner, and I focused on the serious goals, because, you know, you’re supposed to be serious when you’re an adult, right?. So, I saw those dresses, and I thought, “Oh, I got my vision!” I got the item from my vision board. 

I didn’t have to plan for it. I didn’t have to tuck away money. I didn’t have to really focus on it, and it just happened. I think it’s because I had that picture on my vision board. It was something that I deep down wanted, but you know, as a mom you don’t go shopping for yourself all the time. So, my mom was just inspired, and she thought, “I can buy these dresses for Maria, and she’d love that.” And I did. And I got that thing off my vision board and it was so fun.

So, take whatever you know about vision boards, take all the rules and just kind of tuck them in the back of your mind. If you’ve learned about vision boards before, and you have lots of rules and lots of information, and you might feel a little overwhelmed by them, seriously, you can make it more simple. You can simplify. You just find pictures of things you like online, put them up on your wall and look at them, and feel positive emotions. When you feel those positive emotions, you’re going to bring those positive emotions into your life and quite possibly, literally those things you have pictures of, you’re going to bring them into your life. So, they don’t have to be serious. They don’t have to be structured. Some of them are. Some of them can and should be. Some of them can be really big goals that will take months or years to do. But some of them can also just be fun, and I don’t know if that’s stressed enough. So, try it. Try it. Find a picture or something just fun, that you can put on your vision board. I think you’ll be glad you did. 

I’m going to start with a story. I mentor my niece, and she had set a goal to do pull ups. When she started out she could do 3 pull ups. And in a matter of 4 months, she could then do 10 pull ups. You guys–10 pull ups! She increased her amount of pull ups so quickly and did so amazing. I was super, super impressed. Now let me tell you about another girl who tried to do pull downs at the pull-down machine at the rec center. It’s me. I think I started at 45 pounds, which isn’t even close to my weight. Not even close to doing a pull up, right? It’s a pull down. I wanted to do pull ups too, but since I couldn’t do any, I sat at this machine and pulled the bar down to try to mimic a pull up. Well, after a matter of 2 years, I increased the weight by 15 pounds. I could then do a pull up at, let’s see, 60 pounds. After 2 years. That’s pretty good. I increased. I got better. 

Now, normally you would think that my natural reaction to helping her with this goal, I would be a little jealous, and think, “What’s the deal? In 4 months she could increase so much and make so much progress,” and just feel defeated. I’d feel defeated. Like, how can she increase so much more and be so much more capable than I am in 4 months and I only increase a tiny bit in 2 years? Now, the normal reaction would be to be jealous, or to wonder “What’s wrong with me?” It wouldn’t be a positive reaction, right?. 

However, because I knew that I was doing the 3 tips that I’m going to tell you about, I was confident and comfortable in knowing that I was doing what I was willing to do. I was spending the time I was willing to spend, and I was incrementally getting better. And I was okay with that. I could be okay because I knew I was working on it, and I know this one key thing: direction is more important than location. If we were on a ladder of competition she would be way up above, and I’d be way down low. If we were competing. But we’re not. We’re on the same ladder. We have the same goal. And you know what’s important? It doesn’t matter where we are on the ladder. But, it matters that we’re moving forward and making progress individually. 

We’re competing against ourselves, not others. That’s what’s important. I could see that I was making progress and I was happy about that, and I could see that she was making progress and I was happy about that, too. Because I know that direction is more important than location.  I  was going in the right direction because I knew these three tips. So, what are the tips? I know you’re just dying to know.

The first tip is see where you want to go. What do you want? What’s your goal? You have to see where you want to go. I knew that I wanted to eventually someday do a pull up, and my niece knew that she wanted to improve her pull ups. We could see our goal. Tip number two is move your ideas to paper. When you have an idea of a goal, and you want to do it, put it on a piece of paper. Write it down. An extra step to that is to tell someone about it. Get it out of your head, that’s tip number two. Tip number three is that as you are writing it down, you are thinking. Think about ways you can reach the goal. What’s something that you can do to reach your goal today? And then the next day? What’s something I can do to get better and reach my goal each day? 

So the tips are: see, move, act. See where you want to go, move that information onto paper, and then act. Act on reaching your goal. You’re going to be so happy when you make progress and when you see your goal and you have it written down and you’re acting on it. It really doesn’t matter how far behind you feel from other people, or how far ahead you think other people are. You’re not going to feel behind. You’re not going to get discouraged, because you’re going to see progress. Because you’re seeing your goal. You’re moving in that direction and you’re acting.

Isn’t it amazing that I could celebrate along with someone even when they were so far ahead of me? It was amazing. It felt so good to not have any jealousy, not feel down on myself, not wonder what’s wrong with me because I wasn’t where she was and I wasn’t making progress as quickly as she was. It was okay by me because I had seen what I wanted. I wrote it down on paper–moved it out of my head and put it on paper. And I was acting on it. I felt confident that I was moving in the right direction because direction is more important than location.