Vision Board Experiment: One Year Later…

Time passes in a flash, isn’t it? It seems just like yesterday that I first started the Vision Board Experiment and now it has been a year. If you didn’t follow the experiment, about the same time last year, I created an electronic picture board of goals encircling major areas of my life. I went about reviewing it everyday – or at least I try to – and wrote 2 major updates.

A year has come and gone. Did the Vision Board work for me like what it has done to John Assaraf in the Secret? We’ll see.

vision board examples a year later

Health & Fitness

After completing the 5km race, things pretty much went into stagnant mode as I became more complacent. I was enjoying some leftover energy from the training and going for a regular jog merely for benefits of a healthier body became weak motivation. Even though logic told me it wasn’t true at all. At that time, I needed another concrete reason for me to keep running. And you know what I did?

I signed up for a 10km women’s race! I remembered signing off with a tease in my previous update that I’ll probably participate in a 10km run next year. And it actualized! Much earlier than I thought.

Soon, I was training for the race. I stretched myself to running longer distances progressively and covered 4km, 5km, 6km to eventually surmounting the 8km psychological hurdle. Never in my life had I ever run that far! And that much! If you were to ask me a year ago if I would go for a 10km, I would definitely say “you must be crazy”!

But that same athletically challenged girl not only overcome her self imposed limitations to complete the 10km race in July this year, she’s now actively training for her next 10km and harbouring a dream to run a half-marathon one day. Could I have done it without the Vision Board? Certainly. But I admit the daily reminders helped.

Definitely.
Living Environment

While developments in my health & fitness took a strong boost, there wasn’t much “luck” in the living environment sector. I’m still staying in my humble abode. The previous option of bunking in with my other sister also came to a standstill as she faced difficulties balloting for her ideal government housing apartment.

There were some slight disappointment and frustration initially. Even though I knew right from the start that this isn’t going to materialize in the short run – not in the next 5 years at least – there was still this cherished hope for a “miracle”. Recently however, my thoughts about moving out kind of took a change. I became undecided.

A few months ago, one of my sisters passed away after a year’s battle with cancer. When I saw how devastated my elderly parents were beside her deathbed, I was heart wrenched. Thoughts such as “who will take care of them when I’m not staying with them” would occasionally flood my mind when I was reviewing the Vision Board. I knew it overrode the intentions I was sending out. Which kind of explained why I was encountering more limitations in this sector than the others.

Perhaps this is an indication that I should review my goals.
Social Activeness

While I was writing this article, I just received an email from a friend saying she “missed me” and wanted a meetup. Trust me, it can be really heartwarming to know that someone somewhere actually appreciates your company enough to go that extra mile. My stance still stands. When you start detaching any expectations in the things you do for others, it’ll definitely come back to you in ways you never imagined.

Remember the Google Calendar project I started a year ago? On my own birthday this year, I received more well wishes than I ever did in the past! An overseas friend even sent me a cheque “drawable for unlimited amounts of happiness and joy”. Her creative gift took me by surprise! I cannot imagine who would have the capacity to send me cash! Little did I know that it was something more precious than that! Thank you, my friend.

A lot of people have also given me great support during my sister’s passing. In fact, some were long lost friends whom I’ve not contacted for quite some time. That gave me an opportunity to reconnect with them and rekindle the relationship.

As for the romance side of things, nope, no capricorn guy turned up on my doorstep! But there was still a continued abundance of opportunities to meet up new people. And yes, I did exchange numbers with a few eligible guys. But nothing really exciting turned out. At least not as of this writing.
Career Development

Careerwise, I’ve evolved towards a totally different direction. The mastermind groups that I used to be in introduced me to various online business models and opportunities. I researched on these ideas, experimented with a few and went full fledged on one. Though those took time away from Goal Setting College, they were great platforms for me to learn and grow beyond the world of blogging.

Regardless of the moves I’ve taken in my career, Goal Setting College still remains a very sentimental part of my business. After all, it’s the place that got me started. It’ll still remain as an outlet for my creative expression. But most importantly, it’ll continue to be a place I share my personal learning experiences on.

“So, what has all these got to do with your Vision Boarding?” Though it may sound far fetched, the way all these opportunities have been “attracted” to me were nothing short of mystical. There were instances when after reviewing my vision board, I would come across an article that talks about something in the new line of business I was interested in. I would also receive joint venture offers or requests in the email. Recently, I’ve even received requests from a relative to do up his business website after he had seen what I’ve done here.

Coincidences? Maybe. But I choose to believe otherwise. What about you?
Financial Wealth

I didn’t have time for my “pseudo” value stocks portfolio and ended up working on 2 other investments instead. First, on my partially passive portfolio and second, on my new line of business. I took advantage of the current economic downturn to stock up on my index funds and reviewed the performance of my other mutual funds. The fundamentals of the economies are still going strong so even with the reds I’m experiencing now, things will definitely pick up in my opinion.

As for my other business, I got a profit in less than 2 months. Considering it was something really new to me, I don’t think it was that bad at all!

It has been intriguing experience running the Vision Board experiment on Goal Setting College over the past year. I quit my job, covered long distance races, met new people, rekindled friendships, family ties and came across new business opportunities. Although I agree that not all turned out to be what I thought they should be, such “meanders” & “failures” became springboards for new learnings and realizations as my circumstances changed. I’m glad that I’ve tried it after all!

With the celebration of this one year anniversary, I’ll also be drawing a close on this experiment. Like the Self Hypnosis, Vision boards & visualization is just another way to get your goals to stick in your mind. At the end of the day, you still have to get your hands dirty, do the work and make the change. But that’s one thing I really like about Vision boarding more than anything else.

It can be really fun!

Update : For your convenience, here are all the links to the Vision Board Experiment logs :