My first vision board: can Pinterest’s visualisation fad do me any good?
2.7.2023
Translation: Katherine Martin
For years, I’ve wanted to learn to play the mandolin. Today, it’s going on my vision board. So have I become a pro at the mandolin yet? Read on to find out how my attempt at visualising my goals went and whether it was worth the effort.
What’s that they say about living your dreams? You’re bound to have goals, visions and aspirations that seem far beyond your grasp. Perhaps it’s taking a trip, mastering a special skill or bagging your dream job. No matter what it is, if you can picture it, you can probably make it a reality. In a world where Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is able to catapult himself into space in a penis-shaped rocket, you too can reach for the stars – and get that long sought-after promotion.
A first step towards this is creating a vision board, a goal-visualisation method that allows you to get creative – and maybe even a little over-ambitious. It’s difficult to say how this trend got off the ground. After all, every teenager plasters their bedroom with collages of the hottest stars and starlets in the hope of manifesting a rendezvous with them.
However, vision boards may have been given a boost in the early 2000s thanks to the self-help book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. In the book, Byrne describes the Law of Attraction, which stipulates that like attracts like – if you want something positive, you’ve got to think positively.
Revered US talk show host and actress Oprah Winfrey has taken the Law of Attraction to heart too. She attributes her multimillion dollar success to manifesting via vision boards, even visualising Barack Obama’s election victory in 2008. There’s even a Buddhist maxim: «What you think, you become,» which is arguably where the vision board had its genesis.
I’m jumping on the bandwagon late. But today, just as it was in Buddha’s time, it’s worth daring to dream. If you want to achieve your goals, doing so is actually a basic requirement.
What is a vision board?
A vision board is a form of manifestation and mental training. It’s a collage of pictures, sayings and things to inspire you to achieve your goals. Vision boards make goals tangible, imaginable and in the end, achievable.
You can use them in both your personal and professional life. However, bear in mind that a vision board isn’t a 5-step plan for getting a promotion. Nor is it a departmental organisational chart intended for divvying up tasks efficiently. Vision boards are also referred to as «dream boards» precisely because they’re supposed to play host to your dreams. They’re supposed to inspire you to learn new skills, whether it be a foreign language or the splits, to achieve your career goals, or to be happier and more confident.
You don’t have to do things the old-fashioned way either as there’s now a wide selection of digital vision boards available online. Basically, there are no rules – it’s imagination that counts.
Manifestation and visualisation: how does a vision board work?
It’s a known fact that your brain changes, adapts to various stimuli and continuously forms new synapses (a process also referred to as neuroplasticity) throughout your life. Scientific studies and other research also support the theory
that when we visualise goals, it activates the same areas of our brains as external triggers. In other words, the same areas that are activated when we actually achieve a goal, only at a lower intensity. This was made clear in a study published in the journal Neuropsychologica, which saw participants build muscle mass using the power of their thoughts instead of strength training.
If you can dream it, you can do it. Literally. A vision board essentially plays a catalyst role – when all your seemingly ludicrous wishes, goals and ideas are put to paper, they suddenly lose their ridiculousness.
Do a little dreaming with me: my first vision board
Getting the ball rolling on my first visualisation project, I head for the motherlode of all vision boards – inspiration platform Pinterest. I come across a lot of ideas that I could completely copy over to my own vision board, but that’s way too impersonal for me. I decide instead to go down the chaotic, freestyle route, and have a goal in mind for my first vision board:
I want to learn to play the mandolin. I want to learn the intricacies of this little string instrument inside out, master tremolos and tricky melodic progressions and perfect chopping on the off beat. This is tough, requiring not only time, effort and perseverance, but also a little imagination and the ability to dream.
I grab some old magazines, scissors, glue, and a pin board from my office and lay everything out on the living room floor. The «pinboard» is, in fact, an A2 grid I’ve loaded over the years with paper-clipped documents, bills, and to-do lists. I get rid of all this non-artistic rubbish and start afresh.
Glitter paper and a tonne of ambition
The only thing I’m using Pinterest for right now is finding attractive pictures of mandolins. I discover a few aesthetic close-ups of the instrument and pictures of people playing it. I stick some photos of myself on top of their heads. After all, I want to manifest myself playing the mandolin, not other people doing so. I also find a finger chart for the most important chords as well as an illustration of correct posture for playing the mandolin.
Moving on to the magazines, I cut out illustrations, headlines and text passages that seem fitting, and glue them together in the style of a collage to create a stream of poetic sayings. I then stick down the chord chart and mandolin images at random around the edge of the pink paper. Done.
In the middle of my board, it now says in large block capitals, «We can, because we love. There’s a lot to be said for that.» A quote I find very fitting. At the end of the day, my mission to learn the mandolin will take dedication and confidence that I’ll achieve what I’m passionate about.
Below the quote, there’s a figure being showered by applause for their musical efforts. One of their speech bubbles reads, «Powerful will, powerful music.» I personally think the phrase is so brilliant that I’ve declared it as my new mantra – not just for the mandolin, but for any life situation. At the top and bottom, cut-out photos of my head sit on other people’s bodies, perfectly mastering the mandolin chords. So, have I dared to dream? Yes, and much more than that – I’ve dared to be bold.
The verdict: am I a pro on the mandolin yet?
Unfortunately, manifesting goals takes time and ultimately doesn’t get me out of actually practising the mandolin. The unsurprising conclusion of this experiment is that I’m unfortunately not a pro on the mandolin yet.
However, the process of designing a vision board was an important first step in engaging with various possible realities – and stopping dismissing my desires as foolish fantasy.
No matter how intensely you or I can picture our goals, to achieve them, we’ve got to get off our butts and do something. However, now that I believe I can do it, taking action is going to be a whole lot easier.
Header image: Shutterstock
Olivia Leimpeters-Leth
Autorin von customize mediahouse
oliver.fischer@digitecgalaxus.chI'm a sucker for flowery turns of phrase and allegorical language. Clever metaphors are my Kryptonite – even if, sometimes, it's better to just get to the point. Everything I write is edited by my cat, which I reckon is more «pet humanisation» than metaphor. When I'm not at my desk, I enjoy going hiking, taking part in fireside jamming sessions, dragging my exhausted body out to do some sport and hitting the occasional party.
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