Last spring, I was a better version of myself. I read a book about being a badass, and then I felt like I was a badass because of said badass book.
Because of all of this badassery, I was going to make a vision board.
Don’t know what a vision board is? You are not alone.
There are vision board tutorials all over Pinterest just itching to get their hands on you.
I for one had no idea what it was until a couple of years ago, when I was at a blogging event in Chicago sponsored by Coca-Cola and was in a workshop where we were asked to create vision boards. Who knew Coca-Cola could be so spiritual? Insert sarcasm.
In that workshop, I met Jeanette, one of my first in-real-life blogging friends. She gave me her glue stick and the rest was history.
We were instructed to create vision boards depicting what we desired in our life at the time.
A CHEESEBURGER?
THE WAISTLINE OF MY 17-YEAR-OLD SELF?
OOH! RED ROBIN TOWER OF ONIONS?
As you can see, I was a forward-thinking newcomer.
My board resembled a cross between my junior high bedroom wall and a bathroom stall in an automotive repair shop.
I returned home from the conference, shoved the vision board into a drawer, and didn’t see it again until I was cleaning out the drawer some three years later, when I was cleaning out the drawer. I then laughed at my “vision” and dumped it in the trash.
Then I read that “badass” book last year and realized I hadn’t taken the vision board’s potential seriously enough. People were talking up vision boards as if they were magical. Could it really be that simple? Just jotting down ideas, quotes, and images? Would that manifest itself into my destiny?
After taking my temperature for using the word manifest in a blog post, I decided to revisit the vision board and create a new one.
From April 2017 to October 2017, no board came anywhere close to being created, but as I was performing my morning ritual of blog reading, kismet struck: my friend Jeanette, whom I met while making my first vision board, wrote a post about creating a vision board!
Can you say full circle?
Speaking of circles, let’s go get some onion rings!
I chose to take a different path as I was reading Jeanette’s blog post.
I decided to create a virtual vision board!
1- As you can see, I chose a spiritual title: Get My Shit Together in 2018.
My vision- I need to get my shit together in 2018.
2- The hummingbird signifies my grandmother and the tattoo I intend to get this year along with my mother and Anna. It also signifies my desire that I want to be more open to angels this year.
My vision- I want to be open enough to feel my grandma’s presence from the other side, in addition to other loved ones who have crossed over.
3- In 2017, I was ashamed of my screenplay, even doubting it, which I now see is sending out bad vibes in the Universe in regards to my work.
On the other hand, I’m optimistic about posting it on my blog this year and receiving such amazing feedback. If I want it to grow and become something bigger in 2018, I need to feel more confident about it.
My vision- I want see my screenplay developed into a major motion picture, and I need to make better decisions to help it flourish.
4- I enjoy traveling, but it is a luxury that our family cannot always afford. In 2018, I want to stop feeling guilty about spending money on travel.
My vision- I want to take the trip but on the cheap. Experiences are more valuable than material possessions.
5-There are things in my life that I would like to change, places I would rather be, and I desire a life for my family that is less of a struggle on the day-to-day.
My vision- I want to listen to my soul and not suppress it because the timing isn’t right.
6- I listen to my head more than I do to my heart. I want that to change this year.
My vision- I want to listen to my heart more and see whether that makes me happier.
7- I am not a fan of change and I want to learn how to conquer that.
My vision- I want to stop being afraid of change and learn to embrace it.
8- I am madly in love with my husband, but we don’t take enough time for each other. When he was working 60 hours a week at a dealership, we always made time to do date night once a month. Most likely because we never saw each other. But now we both work from home so we rarely if ever go on dates.
My vision- I want to make time to date my husband since I miss having alone time with him.
9- “Whatever makes your soul happy. Do that” I sense a theme with my quote choices.
My vision- Do what makes you happy, even if it doesn’t necessarily make sense. Like eating deep-fried onion rings?
10- Prayer. I am not always good at it. I tend to pray in three situations: at church, at the table, and when I am in trouble.
I do, for the most part, also pray when someone asks for my prayers. But in all honesty, I pass off prayer. For example, I will ask my mom, Rebecca, and Ella to pray, because as I say to them, “I feel like God listens to your prayers more than mine.”
My vision- Pray daily.
11- I am a writer, but sometimes I don’t take always take myself seriously, and when I do that, I put bad shit into the Universe. Just because I don’t have a degree in English, or Writing, that doesn’t mean I’m not a writer. That negative nonsense has to go away forever in 2018.
My vision- Don’t doubt myself any more when it comes to writing. Also, no longer read any grammar or punctuation articles shared by fellow authors who have English degrees since I don’t need that kind of negativity in my life.
12- Get off my medications. I want to be medication-free by December (if not before then). I know it will be difficult, but there must be better alternatives to help me avoid them that aren’t in pill form.
My vision- I want to stop taking my preventative for migraines and control my pain by diet, exercise, and a better way of life.
13- I just loved that picture of my mom with the girls, so I added it as a reminder that family is important and is before anything else.
My vision- I love my little family and want to keep close always.
14- I want to get in a better financial place this year, pay off debt, blah blah, Also, I want to be able to get a massage (because that’s what it’s really about) and not feel guilty about it. To be clear, no one but myself is making me feel guilty. I just want to get to a place where it doesn’t seem like such a splurge even though it is so good for my health. And also pay off debt.
My vision- I want to be halfway to being debt free by the end of 2018. And also more massages.
15- I have always joked that I don’t take a good picture but I want more pictures of me out there in the Universe. Not just pretty, staged, photoshopped pictures but REAL ASS pictures. I need to care less and less what you think of me and more and more what I think of me. That picture up there was taken after a long-ass church sermon, a good cry about my teenager graduating, and me eating a brick of Swiss cheese.
My vision- I want to like myself more, accept who I am more, and care less about what others think about me.
16- “The biggest communication problem is that we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply.”
I want to intentionally listen to conversations and not just pretend I am to get to the me portion of the conversation.
My vision- I want to genuinely listen to people instead of just waiting to reply when in a conversation.
17- I love the beach. I love the water. I love the warmer weather. I want to live there. THERE I SAID IT.
When we went to Florida last March, I felt like I was home. We are going again next week and I have said to Mike for the past month, “I feel like we are going back home. Is that weird?” I think the ocean is calling my name. Maybe I was a mermaid or a fisherman in a former life, but I want my vision to focus on living near the ocean someday. Someday soon.
My vision- I want a life that feels like a vacation
Now the beauty of having a virtual vision board is that you can print it out and tape it to a wall, your desk, your dog. Wherever! But to print out the entire board as one unit didn’t work for my printer (or Walgreen’s Photo Editor), so I decided since I was going to print each item separately and make it like a fourth-grade research project.
I guess I’m gonna need the glue stick after all.
Stay tuned.
A Grace Full Life 
Can I just print out your vision board and make just the couple of changes needed (like there are clearly enough bad photos of me already available for all to see and also I do not have a screenplay, just the very beginnings of books and by the way I will cry 1,000 years listening to my pretty in pink soundtrack if you stop posting your screenplay scenes). Oh, I am rambling! Is my vision to do that more or less? I don’t even know!!! Xoxox
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YES. I want to print it out when we get back from “home” (aka- the beach) because I feel like just putting it out there isn’t good enough? I need to look at that damn board every day if I want to make things happen.
Oh Andrea, I don’t know what I’d do without your support and continually pushing me where the screenplay is concerned. I remember writing to you in Facebook Messenger and telling you that the Uncle Buck soundtrack was what one of my character’s lost her virginity to and you laughed. I thought, OKAY IT MIGHT BE FUNNY. Thank you for making me feel less like some 80’s reject weirdo and more like Steven Spielberg.
I plan on adding a few more (because I already wrote them out) on the blog and maybe taking the summer off. But I am going to LA in June and taking hard copies with me because I am getting my shit together in 2018. 🙂
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I love this. I say that a lot on your blog, but I really LOVE this. I suck at vision boards. Yours is awesome. You are a sensitive, wise thinker. I are a vision board and then turned it to face the wall where I never see it. Why? I’m so weird.
Since you both work from home, how difficult would it be to just pack up your family (your parents too) and make the big move?!
Do what makes your heart happy…?. Someone wise just wrote that.
Believe it or not, I struggle with prayer. A lot of times when I say I prayed, it means I talked to God in my head, my thoughts ? were directed His way over something as I cooked or did something else. Focused prayer time is not something I’ve mastered which is why I connect with my good friend who DOES pray a couple times a week. She will lead prayer over a phone conversation while I echo, “Yes Lord. What SHE said?”
I don’t need that kind of negativity in my life either… about the grammar.
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I love YOU. You are one of four regular commenter’s whom I would sincerely stop blogging if you never commented. NO PRESSURE JESSIE.
So the precipice (LOOK AT ME USING BIG WORDS) for that change is that since my oldest was from a previous marriage, I was not allowed to leave Illinois to live anywhere else for the past 14 years. Now that she is 18, we are free to live anywhere. I think that has us feeling a weird combination of heart strings being tugged and also, freedom. I don’t want to leave Anna but at the same time, I wonder if she’d follow someday? I know of a lot of people who are kind of miserable because they are “stuck”. I don’t want to feel that way.
Focused prayer is GENIUS. I love that idea so much.
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Also, you are not weird. 🙂
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I was a little surprised when you said, “I feel like God listens to your prayers more than mine.”
And, yes, the ocean is also my home.
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He does.
And you’re moving with me.
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KARIIIIIIIII! I love the digital vision board, although I am secretly disappointed that you didn;t just call me and demand I come over with all my crafty supplies and 4,000 Earth-murdering magazines.
This was so fun to read, as are all your posts. ❤
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CAN YOU PLEASE COME OVER AND HELP ME MURDER THE EARTH? I will get us onion rings.
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I’ve never made a vision board. Is it the same as a mood board? Never made one of those either. So if I was going to make one, the virtual kind sounds more appealing. That way you don’t have to really make one, right? Haha. Sounds like you have some good goals for the year lined up, but I don’t know about the tattoo one. Don’t hate me for saying it, but I think there are enough people with tattoos. Save your money & go to the beach instead.
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I have heard of a mood board, and I think it might be the same?
LOL I am not sold on getting one, it was my oldest daughter’s idea. But it will be small and not in a place where you can see it every day. I can live with that. 🙂
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OMG, this made me laugh out loud, several times. And I literally JUST bought the badass book last month. How freakin crazy is that? It’s sitting on my bedside table along with a book called “Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and into Your Life.”
I am a believer in the board. I really do think that if you put it out there and make it visual, you will reach your goals. I just started doing modern calligraphy and bullet journaling and it has completely changed my life. Something about being creative with your habits and goals, makes them become real things that can all of a sudden become attainable.
How are you going to track? I’d love to see follow up posts with your progress!
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OMG I NEED THAT BOOK. Heading to Amazon…..
I am so happy to hear positives about it and I want to hear from real people who used this and it worked for them.
So don’t laugh, yesterday morning after publishing this I started hearing noises in my house.
Unexplained noises.
And the first thing I thought of was #2 on my list- connecting with relatives who’ve passed.
But here’s the thing, I wasn’t freaked out.
Hmmmm…..
I will keep you posted for sure because if I become debt-free, living on the beach, and going on date nights every week YOU KNOW I will be blogging about that. 🙂
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I totally get so much of what you posted here. Especially onion rings. 😛 I’ve found myself in a rut of anxiety and self-doubt too often, and I need to change that. May I ask what book on bad-assery inspired you? Thanks so much for the inspiration. Keep on, keepin on!
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Oh girl, I hear you. But I think onion rings will help.
The book is You are a Badass by Jen Sincero.
I’m actually taking the book (among others) with me on vacation next week to try and finish it.
I stopped reading it right after I wrote the first post last spring, so maybe I will come home feeling like a badass again.
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I had to laugh because I did the vision board thing a little over a decade ago, I think and I stumbled across it recently cleaning out the basement. As I looked at it with the picture of my published book, check for two million dollars (I’m not greedy, just enough to be comfy in retirement), my vacation house in Hawaii (okay, maybe a little greedy) and me sitting with Oprah talking about my awesome book (Oprah literally went off the air the following year. My vision board was apparently too much for her.)
I could sit around and say “well none of that stuff happened” but the truth of the matter is, glue sticking that stuff to a large piece of paper doesn’t mean much if it ends up behind your dusty stack of weights in the basement like my dreams. I didn’t put forth the effort and work needed to make those things happen. I thought about throwing it away but I need to take a pic first…then work on a new one. I’m sure you will do much better on yours than I did on my first one! 😀
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Your goals are so specific that I am shocked they didn’t come true!
But you are spot on; just gluing it to a board means nothing but actually doing something about it is the key. Maybe because I put it out there someone will call me on it and I will try harder to make it happen?
All I know is I am now rooting for an Oprah reboot so your dream can truly happen. I will come visit you in Hawaii. 🙂
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LOL, I know, right? The article I read said to be as specific as possible and I remember a story about Jim Carrey writing a check for a million dollars before he got famous to his dad and it was buried with him or something and then it came true and then some. So that’s why mine were so specific. I will make you some loco moco in our Hawaiian abode! (Now go Google loco moco if you don’t know what it is!) 😉
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YES YES YES!! I love that Jim Carrey story!!
Oh sweet Lord, I googled it and now I must have loco moco.
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I love you and all your goals ❤️
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I love you too. 🙂
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I’m totally with you on # 10 and #15. I pray quite often but tend to get sidetracked, then forget I was praying in the first place. I need to align myself with your whole vision for #15. I’ll just put it out there now, I’m too lazy to make a vision board.
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I still haven’t made the physical board, so let’s see if the virtual one will do it. 🙂
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Your attempts to get started with this just described my entire life! Thanks for sharing with Party in Your PJs!
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I am so glad I am not alone. 🙂
Thanks for visiting!
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I have find your article very useful and reliable. I have created a vision board of my own which helps me stay focused on my dreams. Thank you for sharing this post.
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