Focus On This Podcast

208. Creating a Vision Board: Finding Your Focus

Audio

Overview

Marissa Hyatt, expert vision boarder, stops by the show to talk about her history with and love of vision boards. Blake also shares how he uses digital methods to create a vision for his future. Along the way, they talk about the *why* of vision boards and how they can help provide the clarity you need to plan your path to the future you want.

In this episode, you will learn:

  • The purpose and benefits of creating a vision board.
  • Different ways to create a vision board, including digital and physical options.
  • The importance of visualizing and calibrating your future goals.
  • How to start creating a vision board by focusing on areas where you are thriving.

Watch Verb’s camera fail on YouTube: https://youtu.be/IhvPnFOZ0wE

Make sure that YOU are in the Full Focus Planner Community with all of the other cool people who are achieving the goals they’ve set for themselves: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ffpthinktank

For more, visit www.focusonthispodcast.com

Episode Transcript

Verbs Boyer:

Welcome to another episode of Focus On This. This is the most productive podcast on the internet, so you can banish distractions, get the right stuff done, and finally start loving Mondays. I’m verbs here with co-hosts Blake, Marissa, and Nick. Happy Monday to all of you.

Blake Stratton:

Happy Monday unto you.

Marissa Hyatt:

What’s happening, guys?

Nick Jaworski:

Happy Monday. I’ve brought you all together, and I’m going to be honest, we don’t have a lot of time. We got to get going. So I’m jumping right into this topic, it’s that kind of Monday, everybody. It’s a No-Waste Monday, a thing that we all say all the time.

Blake Stratton:

NWM, baby.

Nick Jaworski:

That’s No-Waste Monday. So this actually is a question…

Verbs Boyer:

Put on a shirt. Let’s go.

Nick Jaworski:

Let’s, not talk about it anymore. No-Waste Monday. This is a question from the Full Focus planner community. If you’re not there, you got to get there. But this is a question from Kathy, and I thought it’d be interesting to bring Marissa here to bring us all together, because I know this is a topic that she loves to talk about. The question is, “What does everyone use for a vision board? I’d love to see one in our Full Focus planner.” And let’s just start openly. Blake, Lajan, have you ever vision boarded?

Blake Stratton:

Oh, absolutely. I love vision boarding.

Nick Jaworski:

Oh, great. This is amazing.

Blake Stratton:

I have a digi-board, a digi-visi-board. So I use an app called Notion, and all of my stuff is there, basically. All my reference materials, notes, and most of the stuff I use for running my business is in there. And I have a document that is a big old doc, but within that is a little vision section, and I have a bunch of images and stuff in there, yeah.

Nick Jaworski:

Well, we’ll get specifics in a little bit. Marissa, I know you’re a vision boarder.

Marissa Hyatt:

Love it. All about it in every way, shape and form. Digital, physical, recording, all of it. Yeah.

Nick Jaworski:

All right, so we got two. Uh-oh, Verbs’s computer is too high now, internal temp.

Marissa Hyatt:

Too hot.

Nick Jaworski:

Too hot. So if you’re watching this episode, it’s just like a black box for Verbs. But verbs, have you ever been a visioner, vision board type person?

Verbs Boyer:

You know what, I have not been a vision board person, but what I do find myself doing is, I just like making stuff anyway, visually. So if I know within a year I want to head in a certain direction, well then, I’ll hop in Illustrator or sketch something out to actually put a visible idea of where I want to go or what I want to create during that year.

Nick Jaworski:

That’s very cool. That’s legit.

Marissa Hyatt:

That’s like, on another level. Way to make us look bad.

Verbs Boyer:

Is it?

Nick Jaworski:

“Yeah, I’m jumping into Illustrator, making this beautiful thing.”

Verbs Boyer:

Well, yeah, that wasn’t a flex. I meant, that just helped. It’s a tool to help create.

Nick Jaworski:

Well, let’s start just real quick. Marissa, why don’t you give us a sense, and people can jump in here, of why you might want a vision board, and why you vision board? And maybe when you started?

Marissa Hyatt:

Oh, wow. Gosh, when I started. Well, I mean, how far do we want to go back?

Nick Jaworski:

I don’t know.

Marissa Hyatt:

We don’t have a lot of time.

Nick Jaworski:

If it’s a good story, as far back as possible.

Marissa Hyatt:

I mean…

Verbs Boyer:

When you were 11.

Marissa Hyatt:

I mean, really, when I was a kid. I mean, truly. I would clip out little things from a magazine and put it on a poster board or whatever in my room of what I wanted and all that kind of stuff. It’s evolved over time into a much more inspiring activity. I mean, I think the whole point of a vision board is to visualize what the future is that you want to create. So often our goals feel like these far away things or it’s hard to go, “Where do I even want to go in my life? What is the kind of thing that I want to be creating?”

And a vision board, or visualization exercise, there’s different kinds of visualization exercises that you can do, but they’re so helpful in making that dream feel like a reality. So you can do this for sure through a traditional vision board, which would be getting a poster board or a corkboard, cutting out clips from a magazine of images that inspire you that you want to work towards, whether that’s a house or vacation or what a relationship looks like, family, health, all different parts of your life.

You can do kind of a digital version, which is what it seems like Blake is talking about, the digital version of that. My digital version would be a Pinterest board. That’s a great free tool to use. And then you could do this in a meditation exercise, where you really close your eyes and imagine all aspects of your life at a certain point in your life. So that could be five years from now, 10 years, 20, 30, however far out in the future you want to get. And you really go through, I would recommend, all nine life domains, and asking yourself, what do you want to create in each of those areas?

And through that process, that reality, that future becomes reality to you. And so you’re able to act on that. You’re able to embody who that future you is. And so, I love vision boards. My top strength on the StrengthsFinder’s test is futuristic. So this is my favorite thing, is envisioning what the future can look like.

Nick Jaworski:

Now I have to ask, and this is sort of to everybody, Marissa and Lajan/Blake here… When I think vision board, and Verbs, you chime, you tell me if this is your feeling as well. I think growing up, when I would hear vision board, I would also hear it associated with the concept of just manifesting. And to me, especially when I was younger, that felt very wooey. It felt a little not real.

So I do want to… But I get a sense, and I feel like I know what the answer’s going to be, but does anyone want to say that’s partially true, or does anyone want to say that’s not what we’re doing? Someone, Blake, what do you say to that?

Blake Stratton:

I learned something from my wife, which is that packaging is part of the gift, and sometimes we can confuse what the wrapping paper is for what the thing is inside, and it’s great. I need to remember that so I don’t just hand her a thing or wrap it in newspaper like I used to do as a kid. For some reason it’s like…

Verbs Boyer:

From Amazon.

Blake Stratton:

So there is packaging on everything. So every teacher, even us at Full Focus, we package things about identity or things about learning, and forms of productivity or goals or things like that. So there’s absolutely packaging when it comes to vision boards, that, to borrow a term you use, wooey, which, I think that’s great for certain people, certain audiences. For others, I think it could be not helpful.

But there’s principles that are true regardless of your school of thought, is what I’ve found. For instance, we know that the majority of our function as people, our thoughts, our feelings, even our actions, are driven by our subconscious. We are not consciously thinking or feeling, and therefore doing, the majority. When I say majority, I don’t mean 51%, more like 90-some percent. And if that’s the case, wouldn’t it be wise to influence our subconscious as much as we can?

So I have two little kids. So I’ve learned a lot about subconscious programming, if you will, just because before age six, age seven, our kids are so impressionable. I mean, my daughter watches two episodes of Bluey and now she speaks with an Australian accent, it’s bananas. So I’m, very, very… Their brain development is such that they’re highly impressionable. And so many of the paradigms, we’ve used the term limiting beliefs… These things come when we’re really young, because that’s when we’re… It’s like, our subconscious is very impressionable.

So for me, I’ve taken great interest in trying to understand, yes, I can force myself or be conscious to try to do a thing or exercise a discipline or something like that. But man, I’m all for making things easier. I’m all for what’s the 20% focus that can drive 80% of the results. And so vision boards, to me, are a way, one of the ways, to begin to influence me subconsciously.

So for example, Nick, if you were to simply focus on, I don’t know, the color green. You’re wearing green today. And you were just thinking about green, even if you were trying not to think about green, but green was dominant in your mind, you’re going to start noticing green cars, green trees, right? There’s that natural thing. So what you focus on, your attention’s going to be drawn towards. And so that is, Marissa, you and I could probably go down a two-hour rabbit trail deeper into this stuff, which I think would be fun.

Marissa Hyatt:

100%.

Blake Stratton:

But as an intro for this medium on this platform, I think that is a helpful understanding of like, “Hey, this is part of your…” We often talk about, we rarely will drift to a destination that we would choose for ourself. And so this is a way of setting our sails. Setting our sails of our subconscious mind, in a sense. Because we’re putting things in front of, “Oh yeah, I want to be thinking not about all the crap that I don’t like in my life. I want to be filling my mind with the things that I do want.”

And the more that I do that, and this is why I still do this practice, and Marissa, you can elaborate. The more that I do that, the more I find that it is more natural, it requires less effort, to begin to find ways, even ways that I wouldn’t have thought before, to reach some of these destinations. And so that’s what the experience is when you begin to put your subconscious to work on this. That’s my intro take.

Marissa Hyatt:

I feel like it’s less about manifesting and it’s more about calibrating. You’re calibrating your life towards something. You’re resetting and saying, “Where am I going?” If you don’t have a clear idea of what that future looks like, sure, you can have all kinds of great plans and goals and all these great things, but if you can’t visualize a different reality than the one that you’re sitting in, you’re not going to be able to take the actions that are required to get there.

And in Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about how, when we create a new identity for ourselves, we start to act out of that identity. And I think that this is part of that. So for instance, let’s just say that you wanted to create a really healthy future for yourself where you’re vibrant, you’re full of life, you have tons of energy, you’re playing well into your 70s and 80s with your grandkids and great-grandkids.

If you can’t visualize that because you’re in such poor health now, and you think “I am not a healthy person,” there’s no way you’re ever going to get to that future. But if you’re able to visualize, whether that’s through cutouts from a magazine or images you found on the internet or a statement that you’ve written out and recorded and now you listen to every day, you’re going to be able to go, “Oh yeah, I am a healthy person. I already am that person 10, 15, 30 years into the future. That’s already me.”

So yeah, you can call it manifesting, you can call it calibrating, you can call it visualizing, whatever you want to call it. Whatever makes you feel comfortable and feels in alignment with you. But to me, the principle, like you’re saying, Blake, it’s the same thing. It’s being able to see where you’re heading and then creating that reality for yourself today.

Verbs Boyer:

So as we’re having this conversation, it reminds me of the definition, if I can get extra vitally just for a moment, but the whole definition of just, when people say “I have faith in this, I have faith in that.” But the definition of faith is the substance of what you hope for, the evidence of the thing that you can’t see. So being able to just, like what Marissa was saying, get into that space to where you’re actually looking past where you’re currently at to what is possible ahead in the future, and you see yourself there, I think that’s one of the steps, at least for me, that helps.

Because I’m not depending on what I can currently, my current situation, I’m looking toward what’s possible beyond that and what could happen, which helps me get into seeing the specifics and the details of that as well.

Nick Jaworski:

For everybody, when you guys are talking about this… Look, I’m not saying that I’m opposed to it, I just want to be clear. I was just sharing my middle school, high school, when we were all talking about manifesting and Oprah and all that other stuff. But as you talk about it…

Verbs Boyer:

Wait, pause. Nick.

Nick Jaworski:

Yes.

Verbs Boyer:

Were you watching Oprah in middle school?

Nick Jaworski:

Yes. Everybody was watching Oprah.

Marissa Hyatt:

I definitely was.

Nick Jaworski:

Everybody was watching Oprah, and Paul Simon wrote her theme song for her 10th, I don’t remember. We were all watching Oprah. Four o’clock after school.

Verbs Boyer:

Weird.

Marissa Hyatt:

Totally.

Verbs Boyer:

Really? No Ricki Lake?

Nick Jaworski:

No Ricki Lake.

Blake Stratton:

Oh my gosh.

Verbs Boyer:

Sorry. I’m getting off-topic. Go ahead. Carry on with the show.

Nick Jaworski:

I want to talk about how you might get started on this, but I want somebody to help me, and perhaps a listener, talk about… When Verbs was just talking, it really was sort of tickling a bit of my body and going, “I bet that for some people, including myself, this practice of creating a vision board would be terrifying.” I really, actually think, if you haven’t done it and you’re saying “Who do you want to be? Make a visual thing, cutouts, Notion, whatever.” How might you encourage someone to go, “This is worth trying”?

Blake Stratton:

So I think about the principle of, let’s call it the tissue box principle. Okay?

Nick Jaworski:

Okay.

Blake Stratton:

So something that’s really intimidating is to think, “What are my grandest desires and the ultimate identity that I want to achieve?” Something that’s more achievable is “What would I like to have for dinner tomorrow night?” So somewhere in the middle there, maybe we can shoot.

Marissa Hyatt:

Just to be clear, you’re not making a board of what you want to have for dinner tomorrow night. I mean, that’d be great, but that’s not what we’re talking about.

Blake Stratton:

You could start there. What I’m saying is, there are some people, and I have clients that struggle with developing vision, and there’s real reasons for why it’s hard to know what you want. But one of the ways, besides going through some of the deeper stuff to fix that stuff, this tissue box principle, what you can do is just identify one thing that you want, and when you pull a tissue out of the tissue box, another tissue begins to come up.

So maybe it’s just like, “Hey, I want to get a new iPhone. My iPhone’s three years old and the new one looks really awesome.” Literally put a picture of an iPhone on your vision board. When you give yourself permission to just want what you want because you want it, it’s like working a muscle. So you take that one tissue out and you’re like, “Oh you know what? And if I have the new iPhone, you know what would be really great is to have a new computer too. That would be really cool. Well, actually, with my new computer I’d love to actually start working on some of my own music. So maybe I’ll put me a picture of being at a venue doing my music. Oh, that would be really fun.”

And the more that you do that, the more you start slowly giving yourself permission. As you pull one desire out of the tissue box, so to speak, what I’ve found is, more begin to reveal themselves. And that tends to be a less intimidating way to try to begin to cast vision for 20 years down the road or something like that.

Verbs Boyer:

What are you guys working with when you do a vision board? Is it for the year? Is it three years out? Is it five years out? How do you guys deal with the scope of time when you’re creating those boards for yourself?

Marissa Hyatt:

I think it really depends. To me, it’s either usually a year out or 10 years out. For whatever reason, in the middle feels a little harder for me to visualize. I just did this recently. I went through a home renovation last year, so I created a whole vision board for that project and went on Pinterest and found inspiration photos, like bathrooms that I loved and kitchens and cabinet hardware and lighting. I mean, all the things, and just stuck it on a board. It was a Pinterest board, but put it on a board.

And when I look at my house today, I mean, it is straight out of that vision board. It’s crazy how much that impacted and influenced the decisions that I ended up making. And that was great, because that was a short-term project. I made that probably two months before I actually started the project, and then the project was about six months. So that was an easy time period for me to think, and that was a specific case.

If you’re talking about your life, to me, like a year out, where can I see myself in a year? That feels doable. I love traveling, so I’m like, “Is there a trip I want to take in the next year?” Which, I’m actually going to France this spring. So if I was doing this, I might have some places in France that were inspiring to me, maybe some hikes that I want to do while I’m there, restaurants that I want to go to.

So thinking of it in those terms, to me, helps in either a specific case or in a short period of time or a longer period. I can see 10 years out easier than, to me, for whatever reason, I can see three years. I don’t know why that is, but I don’t know about you guys. But that’s true for me.

Nick Jaworski:

To wrap this up… Now, Verbs, and I’m not… First of all, Verbs and I are wearing the same exact shirt. I just feel like we need to…

Verbs Boyer:

You got the note?

Nick Jaworski:

Yeah, we need to call that out. And then Marissa’s also wearing this green.

Marissa Hyatt:

That green, yep.

Nick Jaworski:

So Blake.

Marissa Hyatt:

Blake.

Nick Jaworski:

It’s not easy being green.

Blake Stratton:

I’m not in the club.

Nick Jaworski:

That’s number one. Number two, so especially for Blake and Marissa, since you are active vision boarders, what one or two things from each of you would you suggest? Whether it’s what you use, how you get started, what are some tips you might do or some encouragement for listeners to get started visioning their own future?

Marissa Hyatt:

I would say the best place to start, to me, like I said, are the nine life domains. So if you are a Full Focus planner user, you know these well. We have work, money, health, love, family, so on and so forth. There’s nine different domains of your life. I would recommend you go to take the LifeScore assessment that will help you familiarize yourself with those domains. It’ll kind of help you visualize, because there’s a lot of prompts within that assessment where we’re talking about, I don’t know, is this how it feels for you in this domain of your life?

So we might be talking about health or money or your spiritual life, or whatever it might be. So that’ll kind of help get your wheels turning, and then when you get your results, it’ll share with you also those areas that you might be struggling more in. And I would actually say start with the areas where you’re thriving the most.

I know this is counterintuitive, but you’re going to easily be able to visualize those because you’re already excelling in those areas. So start there. So for instance, if that for you is, you’re really crushing it in your health? Okay, awesome. You’re working out, you feel like you have tons of energy, you’re eating healthy, all your markers are great, awesome. Imagine yourself and get some images of what that might look like, or journal out what that feels like.

And then go to something that is more difficult. Let’s say you’re not doing great in the area of money and you’ve got a lot of debt. Okay, well imagine what it might feel like to be out of debt. So that could look like you’re buying a new iPhone, that could look like you’re debt-free, cutting your credit card up. That could look like buying a house. Obviously so many different things.

So I would recommend, start where you feel like you’re doing the best, and then go to where you feel like you might be struggling, and that’ll help get your wheels turning and get you visualizing that future. I think the LifeScore is a great tool just in general, but I think specifically for this, and then for those areas that you are specifically struggling, make sure to include those in your vision board.

So for me, I don’t have, right now, in this phase of my life, I don’t have an actual board with images on them. But I do have what I call my vision statement, which is a whole thing that I just wrote out about each of my life domains, of what I visualize for myself in the future, and kind of the reality that I am shooting for. So it’s more like a journal entry that I’ve written out, and then I take that and I record it on my phone through voice memos and I play it every single morning. And it’s like the easiest, best way for me to visualize without actual pictures, but it’s getting those wheels turning for me. So you can kind of start small, but definitely start with a win, and then go to the areas where you’re struggling.

Blake Stratton:

When it comes to vision board, monitor how you feel. So if you feel stressed out, stop doing that. If you feel like something is making you feel bad, take it off your vision board, right? A big outcome of this practice is to, you both said this in various ways, but I’m trying to feel like the person that I’m hoping I become. And so if I feel terrible about myself, that’s actually not where I’m driving towards. So have fun with it and play with it however you want and do what feels good.

Marissa Hyatt:

And I would say, if you feel comfortable, share this in our Full Focus planner community. I would love to see your vision boards. Maybe I’ll go in there and share a portion. I don’t think I want to share my whole recording, but I can share a portion of that, and we can kind of get the conversation going. But I think the key is remembering, this is for you. This is not anybody else’s vision for you or what you think you should be looking for or trying to shoot for. This is just your vision.

And if you don’t want to share it with the people in your life because you’re worried what they’re going to think, great, keep it close to yourself. But if you are looking for a supportive community, come in our Full Focus planner community and share that. We’d love to encourage you, and you can get other ideas and inspiration from other community members.

Verbs Boyer:

And I think, too, just hearing everybody talk, the variety of ways of what a vision board can be. It can be audio, it can be text, it could be actual images. It doesn’t have to be the artsy-craftsy magazine clippings on the board, on the corkboard with yarn and all that. It could be whatever works best for you so you can engage with it when you need to, to keep your eyes focused.

Thank you for joining us on today’s episode of Focus On This. It’s the most productive podcast on the internet. This is the most productive podcast on the internet, so please share it with your friends. And if you have not done so already, make sure you join us in the Facebook community, on the Full Focus planner community right there on FB.

We’ll be back next Monday with another great episode. So until then…

Blake Stratton:

Stay focused.

Marissa Hyatt:

Stay focused.

Verbs Boyer:

Stay focused.

Nick Jaworski:
Perfect alignment.

Marissa Hyatt:

Awesome.