The other day I had a client who mentioned that she is going to make a Vision Board where she is going to tear different images from magazines, paste or collage them on a poster board and place it in a prominent place where she sees it often, so that she achieves her goals.

I got interested as I already knew the power of visualization for success. So I did a bit of research. Now, I am not going to go into the Law of Attraction that is usually associated with Vision Boards or the documentary movie The Secret by Rhonda Byrne through which Vision Boards gained a renewed interest or The Oprah Show where Vision Boards were discussed. Instead I am going to focus on how visualization can ‘trick’ the brain into thinking it is reality, to achieve the successful life that you have imagined. And a Vision Board is a way of creating this ‘false’ visionary life, so the brain will embrace it as part of your real life, and in a way things start to happen to you.

What Does Scientific Research Tell Us?

Stroke victims, who actually visualize themselves moving their paralyzed limb, have more chances of being successful at eventually moving their affected limb. This happens because visualizing an action, example moving your left leg, and actually carrying out the action of moving your left leg, stimulates the same part of the brain. So with stroke victims who now have a lack of blood and hence a lack of nutrients and oxygen going to the dead brain tissue, the surrounding tissue tends to die too. If on the other hand, this brain tissue is being stimulated by visualizing the action, the blood will still flow to the same area, leading to a more chance of recovery.

More examples of the power of visualization is in sports, where athletes are told to visualize themselves performing their sequence or their jump or their shot, and most often their real performance is similar to how they imagined it. In weight loss, people are told to place a picture of their ideal weight person, in places where they are constantly seeing it – on the fridge , the bathroom mirror, bedside table, car, … Same goes with anything in life – personal or career achievements.

What Does This Mean?

So now, because of the shared area of brain activation when we imagine an action and when we actually perform the action, we can also tentatively conclude that in a way our brain cannot differentiate between our goals (let’s have them as mental images) and real events. We have often heard that a picture is worth a thousand words – the same goes for the brain – an image will captivate the brain’s interest more than writing down your goals in simple words. That’s where the Vision Board comes in.

In addition, we can also see the brain as consisting of the conscious and the subconscious mind, where the conscious mind is what we have control over and the subconscious mind as an infinite storehouse of all our emotions and past experiences. Hence if you create a Vision Board with lots of images – these will become embedded into your subconscious, together with the emotions that the images bring to you. Now, because the images on the Vision Board have in a way become an intimate part of you, since the brain has ‘filed’ those images of the Vision Board in the same ‘filing cabinet’ as your past real life experiences, then you will start finding out that the images keep coming up in real life as real events.

Cognitive neurologists tell us that the brain sees numerous images of the world at once, and our eyes are constantly darting around in a ‘visual interrogation’ process to capture information and create ‘ah-ha moments’ of understanding and familiarization. A simple example is when you are looking to buy a car and you are looking at a particular model, and all of a sudden you start realizing how many of those cars there are on the street. That’s your subconscious at work.

So by having a Vision Board, where you place all your goals and you are constantly visualizing it, it ‘tricks’ the brain into thinking that those images are part of your life. That is why then it feels like suddenly all the opportunities are coming your way – it is because your brain has accepted your goals as part of you, and now it will take simple raw signals and will begin to identify and give meaning to things. Hence you find that you begin to attract new ideas, new discoveries, new thoughts and new events, which if you are determined enough will get you closer to your dream goals.

Click here to read How to Make an Effective Vision Board

P.S. Do you agree or disagree with this article? Post a comment below!

To Your Success

Related posts:

1. How to Make an Effective Vision Board