The Case for Visualization and Manifestation

Vision boards, tattoos and a new essay

I’ve practiced visualizing and manifesting since I was a teenager, although back then I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing. I was much older when it occurred to me that when I was a competitive swimmer imagining myself winning races and writing down my goals in my log books alongside the descriptions of my twice daily practices, I was indeed using visualization and manifestation techniques to chase after my athletic dreams.

With those methods already established, that’s probably why I immediately signed up for the vision board workshop my yoga studio announced a few years ago. I told the other participants in the class that I’d never made a vision board before, but as I thought back to the collages I was constantly gluing into notebooks with magazine clippings alongside my poetry and random quotes and song lyrics throughout high school and college, I wondered if I’d actually made so many I couldn’t count.

I went to that workshop at my yoga studio and left with a completed vision board that sat atop my dresser in my bedroom for a year, until I attended my second workshop the following year. That vision board sat on my home office desk for a year until I attended a third workshop, this time with my teenage daughter, who made one of her own.

After taking those classes I realized that I visualize and manifest in different ways beyond vision boards on a daily basis. My phone’s camera roll is filled with images that represent things I want in my life, from beach sunsets to invoke a sense of calm and peace, to snapshots of my past travels to remind me to get out of my house and explore new places, to photos of my published writing and current works in progress to encourage me to keep pursuing professional goals. And for the ultimate visual representations, I got a tattoo of a turtle on one forearm, a symbol that inspires me to breathe through stress and keep moving forward no matter how slowly, and a tattoo of a pen and ink on my other forearm that reminds me to never stop writing. I call them My Peace and My Passion tattoos.

Visualization techniques like this may not make all our dreams come true, but I truly believe that putting this kind of positive and hopeful energy out into the universe and formulating a vision of what we want in our lives can get us closer to those things, can motivate us to keep moving toward them. It’s also why I try not to put my fears and negative thoughts verbally or visually out in the universe. That’s not always easy, I know. But I believe if we can manifest positivity and hopes, so too can we manifest the opposite.

Interested in making your own vision board? In my latest essay I wrote for Good Housekeeping that was published earlier this month, I offer tips I learned from those workshops that you can use to make a vision board at home.

From the Archives:

• One year ago, my essay How Chronic Pain Changed My Writing Process went up on Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog.

• Two years ago, my essay about my dog Gunner in the book Chicken Soup for the Soul: Lessons Learned from My Dog hit bookshelves.

• Six years ago, my essay How a Hysterectomy Helped Me Talk to My Tween Daughter About Her Body was published at SheKnows. (Looks like it was recently updated with a new title and timestamp. Nice to see it getting some fresh life.)

• Fifteen years ago I launched a blog called Riding the Roller Coaster. I wrote about life as a military spouse, then about divorce, then about dating as a single mom. Nowadays it's quietly random, but it's still alive. This little blog paved the way for my career as a writer.

Recent Reads

I try to read three or four books a month, but cold weather tends to increase that number. Here’s what I read or am currently reading this month:

• What Happened to the Bennetts by Lisa Scottoline

• Counting Miracles by Nicholas Sparks

• Strip by Hannah Sward

• Blow Your House Down by Gina Frangello

• A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy by Tia Levings

May you be happy.

May you be healthy.

May you be safe from harm.

May you live with ease.💫