Life! By Design_ 6 Steps to an Extraordinary You - Laura Morton [62]
One common mistake people make when they hear me talking about a vision board is to confuse it with a dream board. A dream board contains photos of things you think you want. It is made up of pictures cut out from magazines, catalogs, or books that represent everything you want—perhaps a fancy car, a beautiful home, a new watch, a healthy body, or even a happy, loving family on vacation together. Dream boards can be effective as temporary motivators. But though I don’t discourage them, there’s not a lot of purpose behind them unless you’ve got an overriding plan to turn those dreams into visions.
I once met a young man whom I called the “thirty-year-old virgin.” I don’t think he had ever been on a real date and yet he had five photos of recognizable supermodels on his dream board. When I asked him “why,” he responded, “These are the kind of women I want to be with.”
I couldn’t blame the guy for dreaming big, but I also knew that it was not currently realistic for him to attract a woman like this.
I said, “Without a vision and a plan to accomplish this, having those photos on your dream board is a complete waste of time and space.” I wasn’t trying to burst his bubble so much as I was aiming to motivate him to create a realistic plan to achieve his goal.
Don’t just tell me you want a brand-new Maserati, show me how you plan to own one. I don’t know many people who have achieved all the things they’ve pasted on their dream board, but I do know a lot of people who have had a vision and a plan and worked to acquire those things as a result.
Whenever we take a vacation, I encourage my sons to make a list of all the things they’d like to do together as a family. One of the activities they had been begging for was learning to paddleboard because they watched guys doing it in the bay near our house. They were enchanted with the idea of getting up on a board. So the boys and I decided to take some lessons and learn to ride.
We pulled up to our favorite surf shop near the hotel where we were staying and met our instructor, Blackbear. One of the first tips he taught us was “On a paddleboard, if you look down, you fall down. Keep your focus on where you are going. Focus on the horizon; otherwise, the waves and big bounces will scare you, and you’ll lose your concentration and end up in the water.” I couldn’t help but think how relevant that advice was to everyday living.
We spent the morning fulfilling the kids’ dream of learning to paddleboard together as a family. We had a lot of laughs watching one another struggle to stay on the board at first, but then we all got the hang of it.
A couple of days later, I revisited our paddleboarding trip on the plane ride home with my son Steven. We spent much of the flight talking about Blackbear’s wisdom and what we learned from our day of paddleboarding. When I asked Steven what that experience meant to him, he said, “If you’re always looking at the big waves [the problem], you will always fall down.” I thought about his insightful response and realized he was right. If you get stuck in the problems of today, you will be destined to fail because you will stay stuck exactly where you are—trapped in all of the small to-dos, time wasters, and pitfalls. But when you focus on the horizon—your vision—regardless of how rough the water can sometimes get, you will just keep paddling through life. When you know exactly where you’re going, life’s ride becomes easier to manage. It’s your vision, your plan that takes you everywhere you want to go.
Step 4: Do the things that bring you power!
“Do the thing and you will have the power. But they that not do not