The Benefits of CEO Vision Boards

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. Let’s talk about vision, here, as we approach the
end of 2021. Let’s go! Hey, welcome! Thank you for joining Leadership is Feminine podcast! This is Kris
Plachy. I am your host, your guide. And I’m glad you’re here. So, I’m doing a podcast today, that I wasn’t
expecting to do.

I spent the weekend with my girlfriend, and we worked on vision boards. And we did all sorts of fun things. We asked questions. We worked with my coach, Natalie Olsen. And did like a... kind of insights into next year. And kind of pulled it all together and I just love... I love this kind of time. This is why I lead my retreats in Hawaii. This is why I’m creating a program called the Sage CEO because I know... I know how much we all crave our own knowing and life is loud (haha).

And sometimes it’s hard to hear and believe what is possible for ourselves, right? Of course, Brook, my dear friend, right? That’s her whole mantra is to prove what’s possible... and so, we made vision boards. And so, I wanted to do this podcast for you because I think a lot of people talk about vision boards and I think everybody should have one and the irony is I haven’t had one in quite some time. I have a Pinterest board that is my future-self board, but it isn’t something that I look at every day. Even though I’ve tried. I’ve tried putting it on my computer.

I’ve tried putting it on my phone. It does work, but there is something about the tactile process of creating a vision board. So, I wanted to talk to you about... First of all, sort of the steps that we just followed to kind of make one and give that to you as something that you might like to do. And also, to really think about why they’re so helpful and why having visual representations of the feelings you want to feel is critically important for your success, but also... and your ability to achieve them, but also for your brain to believe them. The thing about the brain it doesn’t really know.

Like we think we know ‘cause we have all this prefrontal cortex and that we know the difference between a real experience and a non-real experience, but the truth is, right? You can evoke through emotion, through
thoughts... you can evoke something right now, sitting there as though it’s really happening. Fear, sadness, joy... And so, you can actually help your brain believe something exists in the world before it exists there by stimulating visual beliefs and then the emotions that come from that.

So, that’s why having a vision board with, you know, the house you want to own or the trips you want to go on, or the money you want to make, or the, yah know? Whatever. There really is some science behind putting that imprint in your mind and your mind believing it and then sort of through the power of both your own choices and then magic (haha); these amazing things happen. So, as entrepreneurs you’ve already
established your capacity for incredible vision and delivery on that vision for translating what’s in your brain into reality. Now, whether you had a vision board or not for your business. I don’t know, but you made one happen (haha) because you wouldn’t have a business right now if you hadn’t envisioned it. If you hadn’t seen what you were building, right?

So, I don’t want you to discount how incredibly magical you are already, and I believe you have a huge opportunity to create so much amazingness in your life whether it’s things or experiences or people or feelings, emotions. But I think what we miss out on, in this life that we live today, is time to reflect, think, feel, dream, and sort of touch that insight and wisdom that is there all the time.

Honestly, it’s there all the time like clambering. Like I have this little, tiny shih-tzu, she’s so cute, she’s only 6 pounds; and she jumps up on my leg if I’m eating, yah know, certain foods. She’s very picky, but if I’m eating eggs or like salmon she jumps up on my leg and she’s 6 pounds. So, I can barely feel her, right? But she’s right there. She’s just kinda like, “Mom, mom, I want some eggs. (haha) I want some salmon.” And I can barely feel her, but she’s there. And that’s what I feel like each of us have in terms of our wisdom and our knowing. It’s like the world is so loud. Life is loud and this little wisdom is there like, "Hello? Hi, do you remember me?” And that’s why women love coming to Hawaii with me so much because it just clears the deck for you.

And that’s my goal for Sage CEO is just to really say, “Yes, this is the year. I’m all in,” right? We’re gonna handle all the tactical pieces of your business. That’s fine, but let’s work on you because you are the magic, mama. So, your vision is incredibly powerful. We know this, but you have to curate what you want in the world otherwise you’re just reacting. And I know a lot of people have very busy lives, but I think most of us are craving fulfilled lives, right? And somewhere along the way that gets a little lost, but not anybody’s fault.

Just a series of subconscious, passive decisions. That often lead us to places where we realize, ”Oh, that was something I really, really, really always wanted to do; really always wanted to experience, but yah know? I just got so busy.” So, what if 2022... which is a 6 year (haha)… which is your heart’s desire. What if 2022 is the year you decided to invest in your vision... not your business’ vision? What are the things and the experiences and the feelings and the people you want in your life on purpose? So, the way that we started this is I wrote a question on my reMarkable (of course) and the question was: what are the questions that need to be answered or that I want answered in 2022? What are the questions I want answered in 2022? And then I answered them.

Ok, so, we start there and then we... then I made a list of wants. What are your magic wants? What are those things that you want most? And I want you to be big with that. Don’t censor wants. You may choose not to pursue all of them, but let’s dream. Let’s go there. And then the magic of vision boards... this is the part I’d forgotten about because I’ve curated pictures of things I want to look at, but a vision board is typically much more organic. And so, what we did is we drove around to find magazines, which by the way is hard.

To buy magazines (haha). I don’t know is there like a special magazine store? Even Target was terrible. So, anyway, we got some magazines and then we drove by an old bookstore like an old book, bookstore, and they had SO many magazines! So, we just bought a ton of magazines and then we went back to her place and we sat on her couch and we just went through the magazines. And what I would advise you to do is you go through the magazines, and you don’t... you’re not like looking for stuff.

I mean, it’s nice if there’s ideas that you want, but you wanna go through and just pull pages that have words, phrases, images of people, images of places, images of things, or just pictures that make you go, “Ooo, I love that picture!” And you rip it out. You rip ‘em out of the magazine. Just rip ‘em out. You rip ‘em out. You rip ‘em out and you make a big pile of everything you’ve ripped out.

Ok, so, what we’re doing in this is we’re following our emotional response, our energetic and our emotional response. We’re not following brain. Brain doesn’t make a list of, "I need a beach picture. I need a house picture. I need a car picture,” (haha) right? Brain just says,” I was doing that. I was like where’s all the pretty beaches?” But you know what? We picked these magazines for a reason.

So, my dog is totally snoring (haha). So, you’ve got to sort of trust a little? Trust the universe? Like maybe like why don’t we trust that? So, anyway, and then after you’ve gone through however many magazines you have... And I would have a really good array. 10, at least. And then once you’ve done that, then you go back through the pile, that you’ve ripped out, and you look at them again, maybe even the next day. And then, for me, the putting together of the vision board is pretty easy.

I just kinda smatter things together. Other people are much more strategic. That’s fine. Whatever feels good to you, but what we want is when you look at that vision board you wanna go, “*sigh. *” It brings you delight, joy, excitement, eagerness. A little bit of that night before Christmas. And then we wanna think about what will it be like when all of those things are in my life. Like we want to act as if.

So, if it’s a house you have on your vision board... if it’s a place you’re gonna go, experience as if you’re sitting there on the veranda with your espresso, you know? Whatever it is. I think as we get older, we start to think it’s silly to want things and I also know that as we get older... this is certainly true for me. And my girlfriend and I talked about this.

It’s like when you’re older and you’ve really achieved a lot of things that you though you wanted when you were 20 and 30 years old, right? ‘Cause I remember being that young, man. I had a huge list! Right? My list isn’t as big as it used to be and that’s fine for me, but I still am as excited about the things I’m excited about. But it is kind of interesting to be a 52-yearold woman building a vision board than a 32-year-old woman.

But I do think that we have this practicalness about us, that we dim the dreaming light; and I just want to encourage you to dream, dream, dream, dream, dream, dream, dream, dream, DREAM! It’s not gonna hurt you, is it? Right? And then put this vision board together with your quotes and your phrases and your words and your pictures and put it somewhere where you can see it every single day. Put it out in the world so it’s real to you. You can take a picture of it so then it’s on your phone. But there’s something about this kinda permanence. So, I’ll tell you a little story and then I’ll let you go.

Way back when, when the earth was green (haha) and dinosaurs roamed the earth. I had my very first job; and I worked in sales. And my first 6 months that I worked in it was pretty rough. I wasn’t very good at it, and I wasn’t making much money and I worked in a business that promised a lot of money, but I wasn’t making much; and I think I was making 28 thousand dollars a year and I wanted to double my salary. I wanted to make... I think it was 54 or 56 thousand dollars and I could do that if I hit this certain goal, by the next 6 months. And so, my boss, who was very clever, said, "What will you do if you hit that goal?” And I said,” well, if I hit that goal, I’m gonna buy myself a Jeep Grand Cherokee.” Now, this was in the early 90s.

This was the year the Jeep Grand Cherokee came out. Like 1992, 1993. Something in there. And he said, “Ok, that’s a cool goal. What color do you want?” And I said, “I want a forest green one.” I t was so pretty. I wanted a forest green one. He said, “ok, sounds good.” So, [the] next day he comes to my office, and he brings me... he went to the Jeep dealer on the way to work and he brought me one of those big, glossy car brochures.

And he said, “Here, I thought this would help you with your motivation, right?” I’m like, “Ok, cool.” And you
know? Those are... they have these huge sprawling pictures of Jeeps, right? But there was this one picture that was not very big. Maybe a 4x6? And it was the only picture that was small enough that I could cut out of the brochure, and I wanted to put it just to the right of my desk monitor on my bulletin board so every time I looked at my desk monitor, I saw this picture and it was a red Jeep Grand Cherokee.

And I looked at that thing every frickin’ day for 6 months and I not only achieved my goal I
beat it. And so, I made my promise to myself that I was gonna buy myself a Jeep Grand Cherokee, but
here’s what’s so interesting. If you asked me what color Jeep Grand Cherokee, I was gonna buy, I said, “I
would buy a green one.”

But I had been looking at a red one and imagining myself in a red one for 6 months that when I went to buy the car, I had to have a red one. It was a no brainer because I had visualized that every day for 6 months. So, it’s a silly little story, but it was a really powerful first lesson for me as a young 24-year-old woman that...ok, maybe there’s something to this? This was before the secret.

This is before all y’all were into this stuff, right? So, listen. Take some time. Instead of doing the
jig saw puzzle over the holiday or maybe and... make a vision board. Invest in yourself. Dream. Curate.
Invest in you. Let’s make a little magic on purpose. What do yah think? Let’s go!