However, one mental health practice often feels personally enjoyable, even comparable to an art project (just, you know, with way more brain-building benefits): We’re talking about vision boards. And as neuroscientist and author of The Source Tara Swart, M.D., Ph.D., explains on the mindbodygreen podcast, you can make any vision board even more effective with this easy switch. You can make a vision board out of magazine and photo cutouts, or you can opt for a digital vision board and print it out for less waste. The process is broken down in this story, but here’s a quick overview: Vision boards help your brain sift through that information and home in on exactly what it is that you want. Your brain’s natural filtering mechanism ensures that you don’t notice things that aren’t relevant to your survival; however, in modern times, you may actually need to pay closer attention to those stimuli. The next mechanism, Swart explains, is selective attention, which means that you start to notice things in your daily life that you already have on your vision board. “It’s like when you buy a new car, and you suddenly see it everywhere,” she says. “It’s basically priming your brain to notice opportunities that will take you closer to your goals.” Finally, you have value tagging. The brain does this in two ways, Swart says, including a cold or logical way and in a warm or emotional way. Your survival necessities fall into the logical tagging, while more emotional things (like those on your vision board) fall into the latter tagging. “By repeatedly exposing your brain to these images, you’re priming it to not just notice but also grasp the opportunities that will take you closer to what you want,” she says. “That’s why I call vision boards ‘action boards’ because I don’t believe that you can create this fantasy image and sit at home and wait for it to come true,” she adds. “I believe that you need to be out there networking, dating, whatever it is, to get the things that you want.” “There’s a psychological phenomenon called the Tetris effect1, which says that the thing you look at last imprints on your subconscious more strongly than anything else during the day,” Swart explains. “So, I keep my physical action board next to my bed so that I see it first thing in the morning and at night.” When the body goes from a sleep state to a waking state (or vice versa), the body kicks into what’s known as the hypnopompic and hypnagogic stages. “They are stages where our subconscious is very susceptible to suggestion,” Swart says. So, long story short: Let your vision board be the last thing you look at before bed and the first thing you look at when you wake up.
