Teach Children How to Create a Personal Vision Board on Steroids. In our every day clutter, how do you keep your challenges and goals organized? 

Imagine being able to teach ourselves and our children how to organize our lives by creating a vision board which includes not just our goals, but the challenges we need to overcome to attain these goals.

Oprah, Beyonce, Katy Perry, Lilly Singh, Steve Harvey, and so on, have been vocal about how their vision boards have helped them achieve both professional and personal successes. 

The Science Behind Vision Boards

There is a science behind the success of vision boards.  When you draw or look at images, the brain grasps information that may otherwise go unnoticed.  Also known as value tagging, this is where the brain subconsciously filters out needless information.  The brain absorbs visuals better, allowing for our brain to to keep items on our vision board at the forefront of our thoughts. 

Adding to this is the Tetris Effect. Much like the game we grew up with, the Tetris Effect occurs when people devote so much time and attention to an activity that it begins to pattern their thoughts, mental images, and dreams.

Scientifically, if we devote our time to thoughts of overcoming challenges to find balance and happiness, our brains will follow this pattern of thinking.   

The brains of our children are the most elastic and moldable during the first 20 years of their lives. If we can teach them to devote their thoughts to overcoming challenges and reaching their goals, the skies the limit for them! 

Organizing Our Life

The 5 Spheres of Fit is a lifestyle strategy assisting users in addressing their lives in all five spheres. 

Our 5 Spheres encompass the Physical – Mental – Financial – Social – Educational 

What if we organized our vision boards into the 5 Spheres so we can visualize how one sphere directly impacts the others?  Most vision boards I’ve seen include goals such as vacationing to Bali, meeting our soulmates or starting a savings.  What if we took this one step further by adding the challenges we are facing? By doing this, we keep at the forefront of our brain what we want or need to overcome to achieve success. 

If we begin teaching our kids how to organize their own 5 Spheres, it could look like the below at a point in time.  

Example of a 13 year old girl creating her 5 Spheres. Let’s call her Inez. 

Physical: Inez has a goal of joining her school’s soccer team.  She also has been getting a lot of headaches. Could these headaches be stress related? Perhaps.

Mental: Inez feels sad sometimes. There is a good chance she doesn’t know why. Could it be because she feels isolated on social media (as seen in her Social Sphere)? Is it caused by teenage hormones (Physical Sphere)? Or perhaps it’s caused by school (as seen in her Educational Sphere). Now that she knows this is a challenge, she can work on overcoming it, perhaps with the help of an adult. 

Financial: Inez has a goal of buying a new iPad. Her brain will continue to see this image which may stir up ideas on how she can earn money. 

Social: Inez feels challenged that she doesn’t get as many “likes” on her videos as she would like. There is a direct impact between social media usage and poor mental health which an adult can hopefully guide Inez through.  

Educational: Inez feels challenged by school as she writes in her Mental Sphere.  Now, that she knows it’s an educational challenge of hers, she can create a plan (again, hopefully with the help of an adult) to overcome this challenge. 

She also wants to learn to play the guitar. It’s possible that playing the guitar can be calming for her, balancing her mental sphere as well.  

The beauty of your 5 Spheres is you can update it whenever you choose and it’s completely subjective.

For example, suppose in the next 4-6 weeks Inez gets a math tutor and her grade improves to a B+.  Not only does her mental health improve as the stress induced by her educational imbalance decreases but the frequency of her migraines, caused by stress, decrease as well.

Like a vision board, the images of your 5 Spheres and what you add to them are subconsciously staying at the forefront of your mind. Your 5 Spheres however adds to a vision board the challenges you need to overcome to reach your goals.

Here’s another real life example. If I’ve been struggling to lose 30 lbs and add “I want to lose 30lbs” to my Physical Sphere, I may be able to determine why I haven’t been able to lose the weight. 

Looking at a snapshot of my 5 Spheres in time, is it simply that I am not eating healthy and not working out? Is it that I’m too busy working to achieve my financial goals that I’m not making the time for my physical sphere? Or could it be that an imbalance in my mental sphere is making me too fatigued, resulting in me not having the energy to exercise and cook healthy meals? 

We need to, as well as teach our kids to, find the root of the problem or challenge to overcome it. Simply envisioning I want to lose weight may not be enough.

A vision board helps you expand your focus and keep you attentive on the things you want to achieve. The 5 Spheres allows you to broaden your awareness and gives you the path to achieve what you envision.

Stay tuned for more examples…