☀️ "this is dumb. i'm dumb."

I asked you for suggestions for my one-year experiment of radical self-improvement and when you all replied with "vampire facials" and "coffee enemas", I thought "oh lord, what I have I done? 😆

So when this one came through I sighed a huge relief..."

“You should make a Vision Board!”

YES. OKAY. THAT.

That sounds super fun, actually. I’m a highly visual person and once I realized that our brain finds visualization extremely useful in goal-setting, I could practically and logically buy-in to this exercise.

PLUS. COLLAGING YOU GUYS.

What I didn't expect was the intense depth of what would come next.

Point of order: "A vision board is usually a collage of images that represent goals and dreams. It can include cut-out pictures from magazines and words that help inspire you to “manifest” your dreams and get where you want to go."

For most of these challenges, I am walking into them as a recovering skeptic. My observation-comedy training has me primed to roast anything that feels a little “silly”. The good news is my brain seems willing to work with that anyway. Phew!

But for this one, I actually felt excited. But then I felt silly for feeling excited. I had a thought “I’ll just make this when Jared isn’t home and then I’ll find a spot in my closet where I can see it but maybe he won’t notice it.”

Ope! But wait. My ultimate goal/affirmation of 2024, the piece de le resistance is “I have a soulmate marriage filled with support, passion, and laughter.”

I can’t achieve a supportive marriage if I don’t even give the guy a chance to support me.

I don’t know when I created this mental habit of assuming “he’ll think my idea is dumb”, but it really isn’t fair or reflective of our history and says WAY more about me than it does about him: “If I pre-reject myself before he can, I don’t have to be vulnerable.”

re: “I have a dumb idea. This is dumb. I’m dumb.”

But by risking the discomfort of asking him, it would give me a chance to work on another goal for my 2024 experiment: “learn how to say what I want as simply as possible.”

So I did…

“When we go away for our anniversary weekend, I’d love to make a vision board with you of our goals for the year.”

I braced myself for rejection and had a 3-point speech prepared about how I know it’s dumb and we could do it while making fun of it and it’s just for my silly experiment when he said…

“Sure.”

Oh. …..Oh for real? Oh ok. That was easy.

So we did. I ordered a stock photo vision board book and brought scissors and a glue-stick. We begun with lots of jokes and laughter as we roasted the process, but then the energy shifted into something else...

We discussed why certain images grabbed us. We talked about our career dreams. We talked about each kids’ current struggles and how we might help. We talked about ways to improve our marriage. It was actually really beautiful. 🥹

I learned two things:

I can leave my comfort zone, bring my skepticism along and still reap the benefits. “Do it scared.” “Do it even when you don’t believe it.”
No one is going to take my requests seriously if I don’t take myself seriously enough to even ask for what I want. I have to be willing to be vulnerable enough to say “I want to try something but I’m scared to ask you because I feel silly.”

Tara Swart, neuroscientist, and author of The Source prefers to call these “action boards” because while the vision is important, it’s the actions you take toward your goals that count.

“Making an action board, based on science, changed my life and it can transform yours too. Action boards are the new vision boards because making a collage then sitting on your porch waiting for the checks to roll in is a fantasy. Instead, I believe it’s about using the science of how the brain works to make your dreams come true.

If you create an action board, look at it daily and visualize it coming true, this tracks images to your sub-conscious and primes your brain to grasp opportunities that may otherwise have passed you by. Add in doing something each day, no matter how small, to move you towards your goal you’ll be transforming abundance thinking into reality.”

We ended up making a marriage board, career board, and general life board. (Just 3 8.5x11 letter-sized papers.)

In our getaway cabin. on our 17th anniversary. Selecting some goal words for our "marriage board". The book says to lean more on visuals than words so from this pile, we tried to edit down to only the words were most representative. (Spoiler: Collaging is still as fun as it was in middle school, you guys!)

I’ll keep you posted about whether our collages starts to become reality, but I didn’t expect the very act of making the collage to already accomplish progress toward two goals. So I’m already counting vision boards as A WIN.

Vulnerability is so beautiful.

What about you? Would you ever make a vision board? What is one goal you have that you’d like to be accomplished by this date next year?

xoxo- Katie Day (write back soon!)

Current Read:

Just finished Dark Matter by Blake Crouch in one day. 😆 It was a instant-grab, bingeable thriller WITH heart and exactly what I was craving to take a break from self-development books. (also I heard it's a series which means I will get to exercise my very favorite toxic trait saying 'the book was better')

Current Growth Goal:

I am headed to my parent's house for a week which can often send me into "vacation mode". RE: "binge mode". Because they are the BEST hosts. My goal is to maintain my healthy habits even while away from my status quo whihc historically has been very hard for me to do. I'll report back if I found any practical strategies helpful with this! Wish me luck!

Goal Update:

I completed the movie night wall which was my goal from last week! It feels so good to finish a space. Completing even small wins carves the identity that we are "finishers" and sets us up for more wins! "Incomplete projects, unfinished business, and piles of cluttered messes can weigh you down and take away from the energy you have to move forward toward your goals.”

— Jack Canfield