Photoshopping Your Dreams: Visual Goal Setting, Goal Movies, & Vision Boards
W. Clement Stone said “[w]hatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” Back in the day, my former self tuned out whenever it heard that quote; it just seemed too cliché. But I became reminded of Clement’s words after seeing more than a few photoshopped goals.
Photoshopping a goal involves manipulating digital images to visually represent your goals as if they already existed. An example would be taking a PDF version of your bank statement and adding a couple of zeros to the balance. A low tech (i.e. non-photoshop) implementation might involving having a picture taken of you in your dream car (even if it doesn’t belong to you), and then meditating on the resulting picture while holding thoughts of ownership.
The idea is that photoshopped goals help your subconscious believe that you can attain things previously thought impossible. Getting your sub-conscious to buy into a goal radically empowers you to materialize the goal in real life. Some call it self-deception, others call it the law of attraction.
Goal Movies
Goal movies are basically Steven Covey’s concept of “beginning with the end in mind” on steroids. Here’s an example:
The above movie was created using a free software program called Memories on Web. And for $37, Mind Movies will show you how to produce similar mini-films (they’ve produced some great how-to videos). All the tools, however, are free and if you wait a week or so I’ll show you how to make one (but if you poke around long enough, you’ll probably figure it out on your own). I’ve created a few goal movies and they’re relatively easy to produce.
It’s important to note that goal movies frame not-yet-attained goals as if they’ve already been fulfilled.
What quantum physicists and Einstein tell us is that everything is happening simultaneously. If you can understand that there is no time, and accept that concept, then you will see that whatever you want in the future already exists.
-Rhonda Byrne
The idea behind this future-as-present formulation is that time doesn’t exist from a quantum physics perspective (something I’m unsure of). Here’s Robert Collier’s position:
See the things that you want as already yours. Know that they will come to you at need. Then let them come. Don’t fret and worry about them. Don’t think about your lack of them. Think of them as yours, as belonging to you, as already in your possession.
-Robert Collier
If you’re interested in seeing another goal move, look here, see the clip below, or go to YouTube and search for “mind movies.”
Visions Boards
Creating a vision board or dream board essentially involves taking a surface and placing on it pictures of the life you envision, the happiness you seek, the body you desire, etc. It’s important to place the vision board in a place where you’ll regularly view it. Vision/dream board advocates will encourage you to intentionally experience feelings of possession and gratitude while looking at vision board items. As goals are manifested, you can remove the associated items and add new ones.
Vision board items are by no means limited to material possessions. If you want to be happy, tack up a picture of you with a big smile smeared across your face. If you need a break pronto, put up that picture of you relaxing on a Hawaiian beach. You can also find pictures on the internet and print them up and cut them out, our use magazines. Some people like to add affirmations like, “I am living the life of my dreams” or “today’s is the best day of my life” or “my vacation to Thailand was wonderful.”
My belief is that while tools offered in this post may be useful, we need to make sure that our desires are sincere and authentic. Shakti Gawain does a good job of explaining this in Creative Visualization.
As always, thank you for reading. I’d enjoying hearing about your visual goal setting thoughts and experiences in the comments.
Jonathan Mead said,
Wrote on February 26, 2008 @ 10:29 pm
I’ve never thought of photoshop-ing my goals before. I’ve used visualizing to achieve goals, like pictures of the body that I want to have. That’s a great idea though, I’m going to have to give it a try.
Caron said,
Wrote on February 27, 2008 @ 2:41 pm
I have done both what you call vision boards and goal movies and have found them very helpful and inspiring. Every few months or so I seem to make a new goal movie nowadays. I used to use the irfanview freeware ( http://www.irfanview.com/ ) for this and now I usually now use Photostory 3 ( http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx ) which is free and slicker and gives more control. I usually just grab images from google images and flickr of things related to my goals and touch up, resize & add an “I statement” to the image in the open source gimp ( http://www.gimp.org/ ) photo editor. I was inspired to do this by Malcolm Cohan’s vid here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=5oIQHsj5xIQ
Cohan’s quite a character and I also wonder if somehow your post about the “mind like water myth” might somehow apply here as well. I once read online somewhere that visualizations like these are only good because they make us drop our self-created barriers to our goals like, “Oh I could never do/have that.” But beyond that, they actually get in the way because we think it is “us” doing and achieving the goals. Or something like that. I guess I prefer Bruce Lee to The Secret. :)
This is a great blog - great design & great posts.
Kelly Rigby@ SHE-POWER said,
Wrote on February 28, 2008 @ 6:05 am
A nice and very thorough article on visualizing your goals in creative ways. I’ve done the photoshopped vision board before and it was a really helpful exercise in that it helped me clarify that something I THOUGHT I wanted, was really just what someone else wanted for me and I adopted it somewhere along the way.
Don’t you love the twists and turns of life?
Cheers
:) Kelly
JEMi @ InMyHeels said,
Wrote on February 28, 2008 @ 10:51 pm
I was brushing my teeth as I envisioned what my lil goal movie would look like. I admit this is a good, likable idea. Got my wheels turning.
This post also reminded me that I would like to create a vision board and am curious about what I’ll have put together when I’m through. I can go off on my creative tangents and surprise (inform) myself
I’ll let you know how that goes. :)
Clay Collins said,
Wrote on February 29, 2008 @ 7:13 pm
@ JEMi: Nice. Here one new tip for the goal move: (1) have the words and images come at you (zoom in, not out) during the slide how. It creates the psychological sensation of things come to you.
Clay Collins said,
Wrote on February 29, 2008 @ 7:26 pm
@Kelly: That’s my experience to. It’s easy to become so focused on your goals that you forget to evaluate whether or not you really want them anymore (I wrote about this in an article called Changing Our Goals Everyday). Visual goal setting is a good litmus test.
Thanks for your comment, Kelly. I’m glad you dropped by.
Antonina said,
Wrote on March 3, 2008 @ 9:17 pm
Hi Clay! I saw your comment on Zen habits site))that’s how I got here))
Great idea about Goal movies! Thanx a lot!
Clay Collins said,
Wrote on March 4, 2008 @ 12:53 am
@Antonia: I’m glad you like this post. Please do let me know how it works out for you. I wish you all the best.
Laura said,
Wrote on March 4, 2008 @ 3:03 am
Excellent article. I usually just write my thoughts and goals down in my journal daily. This takes it to another level. Visual goals just seem so much more moving, beautiful and inspiring.
Clay Collins said,
Wrote on March 4, 2008 @ 3:16 am
@Laura: I’m really glad you liked the article. Someday down the road I might share my goal movies with the rest of this blog. We’ll see :-). Thanks for stopping by.
Anne said,
Wrote on March 4, 2008 @ 6:20 pm
Wow love the second video. Amazing! I’ll have to look into that software - I’ve been thinking about making some sort of vision board but a movie could be interesting…
Louise Pool said,
Wrote on March 4, 2008 @ 9:41 pm
I absolutely love the idea of a photo shop vision board. I have made many vision boards before, but living on an island in the middle of the ocean, it’s a little hard to get magazines. This way I can download images of the web and bypass the problem of paper (ecologically sound, too!). Great idea, thanks! Although I like the idea of a goal movie, I’ll leave that one ’til later; a tad too sophisticated for me at the moment …
Clay Collins said,
Wrote on March 7, 2008 @ 1:17 am
@Louise: I’ll try and help out in the future with a post on doing goal movies. Hopefully it’ll make sense to non-techies. And thank you for subscribing!
@Anne: It’s really easy to do. Finding the pictures on Flickr and creating the affirmations is the most difficult part (even though it’s non-technical).
Tracey said,
Wrote on March 11, 2008 @ 1:42 pm
I love the whole idea of vision boarding and your goal movie idea but I just wanted to post that I also think you are amazingly good looking!!! I mean seriously hott, Clay! Just thought you should know, we should chat more ;) Tracey
Ken Hughey said,
Wrote on September 29, 2008 @ 9:13 pm
Thanks for sharing about Memories on the Web. I was all jazzed (still am) about MindMovies, until I saw that the price has jumped from $37 to $97 to $197.
The Memories software is really easy to use and very powerful.
Cheers,
Ken
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