Transcript of How to Make a Vision Board that Actually Works (according to psychology)

what if I told you that collecting together a few cute pics and looking at them every day has the power to completely transform your life well today we're going through an evidence-based tried and tested Vision boarding method to make your dream life a reality and vision boarding really genuinely works and it has nothing to do with quantum physics or any of that kind of thing and everything to do with proven principles from cognitive Neuroscience in this video I'll walk you through the ultimate evidence-based guide of everything you need to know what a vision board is who exactly should have a vision board do you even need one how they work at the level of the brain and then walk you through an exact five-step process for creating your very own vision board highlighting any common questions traps pitfalls that people often fall into and finally I'll share a routine for how to actually use your vision board in an evidence-based fashion to turn your dreams into reality if you're new here my name is Izzy I'm a Cambridge graduate and a doctor and I've actually manifested so much of my life things like getting into Cambridge to studying medicine my career my YouTube channel a happy relationship the place that we live skills and experiences that I've had put simply manifesting is the practice of intentionally deciding on your vision and then aligning your attention and actions in order to bring it into reality and so Vision boarding is simply a powerful tool in our Arsenal to effectively manifest also if you're into this kind of stuff I've created a completely free 3-day guide for you on building soft productivity systems into your life to take you from Vision to action on your dreams so so it would be a really good companion for this video if you're interested in checking it out I'll leave a link to the free guide down below so why vision board who needs a vision board do you actually even need this in your life if you have no problem achieving all of your goals and turning your dream life into reality and powerfully manifesting and creating the kind of life that you want to live that's an incredible place to be and I honestly salute you because in this instance chances are a vision board won't actually add that much for you so feel free to save some time and Skip what watching the rest of this video but if you're a bit like me and are still on a personal growth Journey have things you want to do and Achieve and experience and become and you're looking for strategies to effectively Implement these into your life a vision board is an extremely powerful tool to help you actually make these dreams happen so for any Skeptics and I completely get it because I was one too here's the lowdown on how vision boards work and the Neuroscience of manifestation I've also got a quick book recommendation on this topic The Source by Dr Tara swart is amazing for covering the Neuroscience of manifestation in more detail so check that out if you're interested I'll also leave a link down below research has shown that our brain receives around 11 million bits of information from our sensors per second but it can only consciously process about 50 this means that your unconscious mind is helping you out here by filtering out or compressing all these millions of bits of information every single second to provide your conscious mind with just the information that it actually needs to focus on this is because obviously if we were to try to process that volume of information coming in from all of our senses all of our thoughts we would literally go insane and not be able to focus on anything or get anything done or function because we would just be overwhelmed so this is actually really working on our side because we need a way to cut through the noise and figure out what to pay attention to but this also means that a part of the brain called the reticular activating system also known as RIS or Raz for short which is located in the brain stem is unconsciously subconsciously filtering out information for us the way that it decides what information to elevate to the level of conscious processing versus letting some information just slide by unconsciously is down to this process called selective attention and value tagging selective attention is our brain's ability to focus on specific stimuli while filtering out irrelevant information or rather information that is deemed irrelevant by the RAS and value tagging is a process where our brain assigns importance to certain stimuli certain pieces of information based on emotional significance or relevance to our goals or things that are important to us you might have even noticed some of this phenomenon working in practice yourself in something known as the badam mhof phenomenon this is also known as the frequency bias but it's caused by the RAS selective attention and value tagging so for example for me I am now pregnant and so suddenly everything to do with pregnancy and babies and child care and parenting it feels really resonant and emotionally important and I've noticed that all of a sudden I seeing pregnant ladies and kids and babies absolutely everywhere when before I didn't really notice them as much at all and it's not actually because there are more pregnant women and babies and children around me but rather that my brain now has value tagged this category of pregnancy and babies and motherhood as more important and so therefore when there is a pregnant lady on the street or a cute baby my reticular activating system is more likely to be like oh that's something that's important to us let's make Izzy conscious of this and so then it's elevated to the level of conscious experience you might have experienced this yourself if let's say you got a new car or a new specific kind of MacBook or something to that effect and suddenly you start noticing more of this kind of car let's say like a red Volvo all over the place but actually it's not because the frequency has genuinely increased but rather that you're paying more attention to it and you're being made conscious more frequently of them because because it's been value tagged and it's passing into your selective attention more frequently if you enjoy this kind of approach to personal development you might also enjoy my weekly email that I send out it's called letters to my younger self it's my favorite thing that I do it's all the personal development tips and notes and journaling prompts that I wish that I could send to my younger self I also share daily updates on my Instagram @ izy cely so feel free to check those out and so now let's bring it back to Vision boarding and actually achieving our goals every single day life changing of opportunities are passing Us by and most of these are unfortunately filtered out by our Ras because most information is filtered out by our R but through the process of goal setting and vision boarding we can actually value tag the things that we actually care about and the things that we want to make happen in our lives as important so that then our reticular activating system is more likely to elevate opportunities and information that are relevant to this to a conscious level where we can actually take action on it and actually grasp these opportunities rather than just letting them pass Us by or not even noticing that they're they're happening our brains didn't evolve in an environment where their main goal was to make us succeed and be happy our brains just evolve to survive and a lot of the ways that our brains filter information aren't necessarily aligned with the person that we want to become they were created from the person that we were and the experiences that we have had but if we want to change our future trajectory we need to be able to shape our brain to be ready for those opportunities and to actually consciously be made aware of these opportunities so that we can grasp them and actually take action on making our dreams a reality you might be wondering well doesn't something like just setting a goal and writing it down work for this kind of thing and yes absolutely that does help but there is a certain power in making a vision board which I'm about to explain we as humans are extremely visual creatures we have literally a whole lobe of the brain the whole occipital lobe just right here at the back of the brain dedicated to visual processing and if if you just think about your experience of the world most of us and so you and me probably included are primarily visual processes of the world this means that seeing visual images of our goals such as on your vision board is a much more powerful way of emotionally activating your goals and really getting them to stick in your head and value tagging intensely what you're trying to align your actions towards achieving multiple Studies have shown that visually focusing in on our goals and having visual representations of our goals helps to generate powerful emotions that drive us to pursue those goals and actually achieve them and so there was a significant increase in goal Pursuit and motivation for people who visually represent their goals whether that's on a vision board or through tools like visualization so that's my Manifesto for who needs a vision board and how they actually work and why you need one and so if you're convinced and you want to create a powerful vision board that actually works then let's Dive In to the five-step process for creating your vision board this is the process that I personally use and I found it most effective after trying multiple different methods of creating a vision board also one thing that's really important when it comes to creating an effective vision board is getting in the right emotional state to actually be able to dream big and to be able to confidently put images onto your vision board I've recorded a fullon vision boarding Workshop as part of the life OS course which is a course that my husband Ali and I have put together to help you essentially figure out where you're going in life design your dream life and then build in a productivity system so essentially covering the full stack of going from Vision to action if you're interested you might want to check it out and again you'll get this Vision boarding Workshop as part of that course where I'll guide you through the whole process including visualizations meditations and also giving you a bunch of templates and resources for creating your vision board step one is to dream visualize your dream life in 3 years time how it feels how it looks and the person that you've ultimately become through everything that has happened this Taps into a cognitive process called episodic future thinking which essentially is when we visualize and mentally simulate future events in Vivid detail this has been proven to counteract temporal discounting which is the very human psychological tendency to prioritize immediate gratification over long-term benefits and delayed gratification which is actually one of the biggest barriers to making our dreams happen an example of this is let's say one of your goals is to get in the best shape of your life immediate gratification would encourage you to sit on the sofa watch TV and binge eat yummy snacks but if you're focusing more on long-term delayed gratification then you might put those aside and instead go for a walk and listen to an Audi book or go to the gym or do some yoga so by tapping into this process of EFT episodic future thinking we counteract this bias and we can focus more on delayed gratification and long-term benefits for example in this study they found that students who were prompted to visualize their experience if they actually achieved their study goals were significantly more likely to spontaneously study for longer which is going to make that potential future reality of achieving their study goals much more likely so one tool that I like to use in this visualizing stage is thinking about my life in categories I personally really like the Wheel of Life framework for thinking about life a bit more holistically and actually as part of my weekly review process every single week I check in and I track my Wheel of Life score so that I can see patterns and Trends over time I've personally found that tracking the past checking in on the present and then analyzing those patterns to design the future has been one of the most powerful Frameworks for my personal growth journey I created a Google sheet tracker that I use every single week for my Wheel of Life I had so many requests to share the Google sheet tracker that I use so if you're interested you can get a copy completely free via the link below or via i.com slwe this is the exact template that I personally use this is an auto updating graph here which updates whenever you add in numbers I have also created a little notes section here to add any key points of notes of anything that might have affected the score so that you can look back and then analyze any patterns so again feel free to check that out if you'd like otherwise using these kinds of categories of physical health mental health friends and family Romance career finances personal growth and purpose and contribution I find very helpful or if you really want to simplify it down think about it in terms of health in terms of relationships and then career and personal growth so now maybe take a moment to close your eyes maybe even pause the video and set a timer for a couple of minutes and visualize what stepping into your elevated life in 3 years time feels like after this visualization exercise write freely in your journal for a couple of minutes about this experience and what the key components of your dream life are I personally like to write in a physical Journal because I find that I'm a bit more expressive and connected to my emotions when I do that but write wherever works for you and write down any crazy world dreams that you have don't hold back and recognize that at this stage any thoughts of that's not realistic or like oh like that's never going to happen aren't actually needed right now as this is simply about dreaming divergently and creating a bucket list almost of Dreams step two is collect which essentially is searching for images that represent elements of your dream life I like using Pinterest for this personally because it gives great suggestions for similar images and start suggesting Things based on what you've searched so this is an example when I open up my Pinterest because of the kinds of things I've searched for in the past it suggests things automatically that I might be interested in and some of these things are things that I actually search for while creating my own vision board so for example maybe I like this kind of desk setup I I feel like ooh that's feels resonant feels like it's part of the dream life and when I click on it then I scroll down a little bit and then I see a bunch of other similar images that are a bit like this original one and so then it makes it very easy to find the exact kind of images that you want and so then maybe I'll click on this one and then I keep getting suggested new things algorithmically by Pinterest one thing to consider is including imagery that reflects the outcome and the destination of the dream but also the process and the inputs required to get there so almost the journey as it were I like doing this because it prompts me to think about the steps that are needed to be taken to get to whatever dream destination I have consider including both literal images which have a concrete reflection of the dream destination and also more abstract ones that reflect perhaps a certain feeling or an energy that you want to experience and especially look for images that evoke some kind of emotional response in you as these will be the most powerful for forming your magnetic vision for example for me this image here of this old couple dancing in what looks like their beautiful home surrounded by warmth and plant was so emotionally resonant for me and when I saw that I just felt like it like literally brought tears to my eyes when I saw this image and so even though this photo isn't necessarily what my life is exactly going to look like in a couple of years time because obviously this is an old couple many years down the line when I look at this and I see like their smiling faces I see the feeling that's in this image with like full of warmth and love and a deep connection over the course of a lifetime that is extremely emotionally evocative for me and so that's why I put this on my vision board step number three is dump copy and paste all these images that you find into a blank document so for me personally I like to use either Google Slides or canva for this but feel free to use basically any document where you can paste photos rearrange them easily and change the aspect ratio of the document so like that's the dimensions of the document basically and you can change the aspect ratio in both Google slides and canva as well a quick shortcut that I like is just typing in slides. new and then a new Google Slides document will open up and so that's a really quick way for you to just get directly to it once this is opened up you just go to Pinterest you pick a couple of pictures that you like so let me grab a couple so for example if you're on Pinterest and you really resonate with let's say this image over here you go in you copy the image you go into your Google slide you paste it there we go that's dumped in step four is refine so once you've collected and dumped a bunch of inspiring evocative images into your document go through them all again and now eliminate and select so remove any images that are either too repetitive or no longer resonant I basically refine them down to the core collection of images in this refining stage I also like to edit and personalize any images for example I've put this 1 million subscriber YouTube plaque into this dump and so then on my actual vision board to make it more magnetic and personal I edited the image to include my name my profile picture all of that stuff so over here you can see the YouTube plaque has my name on it this is like literally the exact image that I would see on my YouTube channel page with one million subscribers and I've also done the same for my hsk 6 certificate which is how you shap in cure level six which is essentially a mandarin proficiency exam and I really want to get to level six so I literally took a copy of a photo of of the hsk6 certificate and edited it to include my name and my photo over there step five is coales so now you have your set of magnetic images for your vision board it's time to coales them into their final form the first thing here is to decide on what format you want your vision board to be in I'll get into this a little bit more in the final part of this video but essentially here you want to choose your aspect ratio for your canvas and that basically means the dimensions of the canvas I'll give you a quick demo in Google slides and canva of how you can do this in Google Slides you want to click file and then go to page setup and here it has a few three like standard aspect ratios um or you can choose custom here and you can also choose whether that's in pixels or inches depending on what kind of final form you want for your vision board in canva what you want to do is go to the canva main page and then click custom size you can again choose pixels or inches centimeters create a new design and that has popped up something here and then you can copy and paste your images into this space here then when you're arranging your images I'd actually recommend placing related images nearest to each other for example images that are all about health all togethere or relationships kind of in a cluster ultimately there are no rules when it comes to Vision boarding find what feels good for you now for some common traps and pitfalls that people often fall into and mistakes that they make when making vision boards one really common thing that I see a lot is people focusing only on material outcomes so fancy branded luxury items or extrinsic material Goods that we think will bring us happiness but it's important to remember that honic adaptation is a thing and so this can easily become part of a honic treadmill and feed into this cycle of consumerism so it's just worth being aware of like are there actually things on the vision board that are part of your dream life not just because they're material Goods but because they are genuinely things that will bring you a richness to your life another common trap is limiting yourself from actually putting your dreams on your vision board I recently wrote a whole newsletter issue about this very topic of limiting beliefs and self-sabotage and how vision boards can actually help to discover and unearth them so feel free to check this out or join the free email Community where I sent this to I'll include a link down below the next common trap is getting too attached or too worried about specific timelines and deadlines for achieving these dreams on your vision board because a vision board is very different to creating a concrete plan of action I'd actually recommend having both and making an action plan after you've got your vision board but while a plan usually has a timeline with clear milestones and objectives and a kind of very clear path a vision board is a softer bigger picture approach to designing your dream life and by actively stepping away from including these kinds of timelines opens us up to an abundance mindset and allows us to hold our plans more lightly which means that we can follow the flow of life and take opportunities as they arise rather than holding on to them with too much attachment but while still keeping our dreams front and center the next common trap is only including the outcome or the results and none of the processes because vision boards work best when they are conducive to action and this is why I always try to include some images of the journey and the work in progress towards the dream destination to almost create a visual stepping stone and connect that Vision to action you can see this on my own vision board here where let's say this image here I've included a lady doing prenatal Pilates and there isn't any clear destination goal it's not like like the pose that she's doing is particularly challenging or as some kind of destination but it's more that I want to include this process in my life because I know by including more of this kind of process and acting on it I will by default get towards the dream destination that I have now for the final step of this Ultimate Guide to Vision boarding is the evidence-based application in your day-to-day life the first thing that's important is to look at your vision board daily so spend at least a minute per day looking at your vision board this is because in order order to actually activate your value tagging selective attention reticular activating system and get that subconscious mind on board with making your dreams a reality you need to constantly feed it reminders of what's important to you so for me personally I create wallpapers for all of my main devices with my vision board on it so this includes for example my phone literally my phone background is my vision board which I arranged into the right aspect ratio to fit nicely on my phone on my iPad as well which I use everyday is also my vision board on my laptop background everything all of my electronic devices because I use these every single day have my vision board on them front and center as both the lock screen and also the wallpaper in this way being repeatedly exposed to seeing my vision board and reminders of my dream life works on two levels on the conscious level it's a reminder of my goals and dreams to actually make plans and take action towards them and in terms of the subconscious level it's aligning my Raz and my sub conscious with noticing these kinds of opportunities that are important to me and making them happen an alternative to putting them on digital devices is to physically print it out on let's say a canvas or a poster and put it somewhere that you're going to see very regularly ideally daily such as maybe inside your wardrobe so that when you open your wardrobe and you're getting dressed and ready each day then you have a look at it or place it maybe above your home desk so you can look at it when hustling to make your dream life happen finally combining Vision boarding with written goal set setting and action planning I personally do quarterly goal setting with monthly and weekly reviews under this to align my actions with my vision and actually one of the biggest reasons why people fail at achieving their dreams is this execution Gap essentially this gap between vision and action so we want to close this Gap and now we have our vision that we feel motivated by every single day we're aligning everything in our mind and heart towards that we want to take action I'm actually planning a full video on this quarterly monthly and weekly review system which I actually Implement inside my journal so stay tuned for that if you're interested in every single video I always like to encourage you guys to actually take action on the videos that you're watching because it's all good and well watching YouTube videos for entertainment but I really want you guys to put this into practice in your own life so right now decide on two action points you're going to take away from this video that you're going to implement today and so think of those two action points and maybe share them down below in the comments if you like or send me an email or message with them or just write them down for yourself in your journal and make sure that you actually take action on this video If you enjoyed this video I think you might like this video over here where I talk about my exact process for journaling and how to bring more mindfulness intentionality and self- understanding into our lives with journaling so feel free to check that out over here otherwise thank you so much for watching take care of yourself and remember that the journey is the destination I'll see you in the next video bye