Vision Board

I believe in the power of visualization. Whenever I believed for something, though, it took a lot to keep believing for it with only the image in my mind. I felt like I’d go on a high of expectancy and then fall once that fuel had run out; I’d get hope and believe, but eventually fall right back to not believing—almost as if it didn’t stick. I needed something permanent. I needed a place to record my faith of the future I saw.

How wonderful would it be to record all those things that could encourage me? To drag and drop inspirational media, personalized to my situations?

Enter OneNote. It’s basically an electronic notebook that you can cut and paste items into and records the source. I’d used it briefly before for recording notes for school, but it felt like the perfect for what I needed to create a personal board. Today, technology affords us to forget the logistics of assembly.

 I’ve written a YA novel and am currently seeking representation. Now in month five of querying, I find it vital to keep my vision—figurative and literal—on the future I’m believing for: encouraging others with my words, traveling for book tours, and even more importantly, to converse and spend all my time with the girls reading my works, picturing my book as a bestseller. Every peek at that OneNote section, my vision board, is a dose of goodness to my heart. (:

Vision boards give us a place to make our faith concrete. When I’d been believing for a relationship to turn around, I put the picture of us up and surrounded it amongst those things I wanted to see come to pass: a man with his arms up in the air in praise (his conversion), the wedding rings, wedding dresses, the wedding Bible I wanted, even where I’d honeymoon (the future), the alphabet of his first language that I’d teach my kids one day (reminding me of the possibility that faith could become recorded as reality). Anytime I felt down, I had that vision board—personalized with my own picture—to break through the convoluted doubt and frustration and remind me that my vision DID stand a chance.

I enjoy the flexibility of combining pictures, text, and links, along with the privacy of my own computer through OneNote; there are waves of giddiness knowing I can log onto my computer, click on that purple icon, and have the future I want—the public things I’ve admitted and the secret petitions of my heart—appear before me.

Similar ideas are:

• Pinterest! (No doubt, there is always such great material on that website; I could literally spend an entire day on there.) A public vision board, the visual listings rival a Google Image search. Further more, Pinterest has "Secret Boards," collages only you or anyone you invite can see; the visual wealth of Pinterest meeting privacy!

• A physical vision board: a presentation board; a section or an entire wall; a paper, pocket reference that can easily be pulled out; images compiled to become a phone background; an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper for a binder cover.

“Where there is no vision, there is no hope.”

– George Washington Carver, American scientist