Goal Setting Lite

Wow! That was fast. We just blew through the first week of 2011 and I can't believe it's over already. I'm still writing 2010 on my checks!

This past week I talked an awful lot about SMART Goal Setting (maybe too much). Having said that, I'd like to share with you a method that works really great for getting the "things" we want in our lives. It's called a Vision Board and it has been highly effective for us in attracting to us the things we want in our life and it isn't half as difficult as SMART Goal Setting is.

A Vision Board is a device to help you keep some of your more tangible goals in the forefront of your imagination. It's simply a space to visually remind yourself with images of the things you want to manifest in your life. We simply cut out little pictures of the things we want and stick them on a board that we can look at throughout our day.

Creating a vision board is very simple. You can use a bulletin board, a white board (I like the magnetic white boards the best), or even the kitchen fridge to get started. Place the board in a location that you will see it multiple times during the day. If you don't want strangers to see your vision board, you may want to place it in your private bathroom or in the kitchen instead of your work place office. My wife and I have these all over our humble abode. There's one in the master bathroom, we still use the fridge in the kitchen and then we have a huge one in our home office (wait... I think we have two in there now).

Now comes the fun part. This is a little bit like scrap booking. You can cut out little pictures of the things you want from newspapers, magazines, books or whatever. I spend 75% of my life on the computer, so I simply print my images directly from web pages. Besides, Google makes it a lot easier to find images of what it is I want. For example, if you want to attain six-pack abs or a washboard stomach for yourself this year, clip out a photo of a model who is sporting the body you want to see for your own. If your dream is to travel more, you might find photos of airliners and cruise ships to add to your vision board. The more you can personalize these images, the better. For instance if you have cruise photos of yourself on the cruise ship, you might want to use those to conjure up memories of those feelings. The more emotional you make the images, the more powerful they become in the creative process.

We've used this method with great results in our own lives for things like cars, motorcycles, guitars and myriad other "material" objects. It seems to me that the physical fitness images are a little more challenging (at least for me they are). My wife still has photos of me and her stretched out on the beach when we were in our twenties. Maybe the key will be for me to actually put some "skinny" images there myself. You can use this method for anything. The pictures or images should be as close to exactly what you're dreaming of as possible. I've heard stories of people putting their dream home on a vision board, packing the board away for several years, and then realizing that they were actually living in their dream home when they unpacked the box and saw the photo of the home they have just moved into. OK... for those of you who know, that was from The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne.

You may be skeptical, and I don't blame you, because I too was thinking to myself that this was just a gimmick, but I have to tell you, it really does work. The more we think about and "see" what it is that we wish to attract into our lives, the more real a thing becomes. Have we acquired everything on our vision boards? No, but there have been so many countless items that have come to pass that it is scary. The washboard tummy is one of those more elusive goals. I also have some pictures of million dollar bills on my boards. I will tell you this. I am a heck of a lot closer to acquiring these things than I would be if I did not have a daily reminder poking my psyche and urging me to continue working out or creating new opportunities. OK, I've rambled long enough. You all get the idea. I'm going to start cutting and pasting some new stuff for this new year. If you don't have a vision board of your own, I urge you to try it. Use your bathroom mirror as a starting place. It works!