Throughout this Vision Board Challenge, you’ve been shown all the ways a Vision Board can help you manifest your dreams and goals. It’s all baloney. Studies show that Vision Boards and fantasizing about seeing your wishes materialize before your eyes won’t happen. What you really need is an Action Board.
Why Vision Boards Don’t Work
A study conducted by researchers at the University of California took a groups of students and conducted a test to see how mental simulations affect goal achievement. The students were broken up into 3 control groups. These control groups were asked to focus on different aspects of taking a test. The first group was asked to visualize getting a good grade on a test. The second group was asked to visualize doing the work to get a good grade on a test. The third group was asked to visualize not doing so well on the test. Which group do you think did the best? The group that actually did the work to get a good grade.
Based on this, studies suggest that Vision Boards only encourage the dreaming portion of reaching a goal, not actually the doing portion of reaching a goal. An article in Psychology Today suggests “…Fantasizing about your perfect world and your perfect life may make you feel better in the short term but will limit your ability to transform your dreams into reality…”
If you don’t want to trash your Vision Board, you’ll need an Action Board.
What is an Action Board
In my Day 8 Vision Board challenge post, I actually alluded to the idea of an action board without calling it an Action Board. It was the need to make a plan and make it S.M.A.R.T. (Smart, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time Bound).
Vision Boards are a representation of what you hope to achieve. There are no rules, just manifestations of your desires. On the other hand, an Action Board is intended to identify the steps you need to get there. It’s the work – or actions – you need to take to turns your dreams into reality. It’s basically your roadmap or plan to achieve your goals.
With your Action Board, take a singular look at one of the long term goals on your Vision Board. Decide what steps you are going to take toward that goal. Remembering the S.M.A.R.T. planning process, your steps should be time-bound. So your should decide if you want your actions to be taken on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
Taken in chunks, you can more easily focus on short term goals needed to make up the bigger picture.
Why Action Boards Do Work
Action boards work as the visual representation of your accountability towards reaching your goal. It’s hard to look at the steps on an Action Board and not see where you are, what you’ve accomplished and what’s left to be done to get you to where you want to be.
What you shouldn’t do is look at your Action Board and be dismayed by how far you have yet to go. That’s not the mindset you want to adopt. Instead, look at your Action Board and celebrate what you’ve accomplished.
An Action Board is an evidence-based system founded on ground-breaking research studies in social psychology, positive psychology, mind-brain science, and goal achievement. There’s actual brain training going on with creating an Action Board, and it connects your conscious and unconscious mind which begins to reveal untapped thoughts and ideas. Yeah – it’s a real thing!
Now that you know what a Vision Board and Action Board will do for you, I give you:
Day 10: I challenge YOU to post one Vision Board picture a day for 10 days. No explanation, no review, just the picture. Nominate someone else to do the same!
