Almost every business coach or coaching program I’ve seen encourages participants to create vision boards. If you haven’t heard of them, they’re a visual representation of where you see yourself in 5 years or whatever timeframe they set.
When I was growing up, these would be created by cutting pictures out of magazines and greeting cards and whatever else the organsier could provide.
Now, they are often created in programs like Canva using stock images.
I know how to do them, I’ve done my fair share of them over the years. Often, they are a fun exercise, however they don’t do anything to motivate me towards any goals.
I have been reflecting on this recently, along with working out how my brain works, and a few reasons why it doesn’t work come to mind. Here are a few things that I’ve thought of.
- Now or not now – my brain seems to work on a ‘now or not now’ basis with little concept of time. I have no idea how long five years will be. I have no idea how long five years ago was. I’m constantly surprised that I’m 47 years old and my kids are adults! Trying to do a vision for the future feels like writing fantasy.
- What does the trainer want to see – because I often have no idea what 5 years in the future will look like, and because I’ve been told my dreams are wrong, I think ‘what does the trainer or facilitator want to see?’ and add that to my vision board. A big house – check. A fancy car – check. High income – check. Overseas holiday – check. Because I’m often not given space to work out what I actually want, my vision board really is a work of fiction!
- My dreams are ‘wrong’ – For most of my adult life at least, I’ve been told that I need to strive to be bigger, better, earn more money, climb the ladder, or whatever you want to call it. I have been told that wanting to live in a small cottage somewhere and write my books & run the odd workshop isn’t thinking big enough and that I need to work on my ‘growth mindset’. In short, I’ve been told my dreams are wrong. This is one of the reasons that visions boards don’t work because I’ve been told that my actual dreams are too small.
- Reality of life – another thing I’ve found is that the reality of my life to this point hits hard. All the struggles I’ve had because I’m autistic and ADHD come to play and I think ‘what’s the point of dreaming this way when the reality is that it won’t happen?’ This is not me being negative, it’s realistic. I’ve had dreams and done vision boards before and have never been able to make them happen. It has nothing to do with mindset and more to do with practical reality and supports.
- Forgetting it exists – the idea of vision boards is that you put it up and look at it often to remind you of where you want to go and let it motivate you. Even when I’ve had them printed and on the wall, I tend to forget that it exists, so it doesn’t serve any practical purpose other than adding to the stuff in my house!
Vision boards may seem like a great exercise, and I know there are many people who find them highly motivating. However for me, they don’t work very well.
It would be interesting to see what happens if I ever get to the stage where I have proper supports to make things happen, at that point, they may actually work. But for now, they serve no practical purpose other than being an exercise to pass the time.
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