Many people don’t know it but I’m a voracious reader of books about self-help, applied psychology, and business strategy. I also have tons of reference guides, but the first three categories have helped shape me over the past decade. Any person that has inquired knows that there are 3 books that truly shaped me: “Think And Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill, “How To Win Friends And Influence People” by Dale Carnegie, and “Never Eat Alone” by Keith Ferrazzi. Not only do I believe in the things taught by Napoleon Hill but I have lived the lessons and proven to myself that the theories work. I’m always interested in the theory of “success”. One theory that I came across recently was from the book “The Secret”, which has become a worldwide phenomenon. The theory was about “Vision Boards”.

Writing Down Your Goals

Before jumping in to my latest, top-of-the-line vision board, I thought it would be useful to go over the basis for it. There’s a classic myth which referenced a 1979 Harvard Business school study in which the new graduates were surveyed. The rumor suggested the following: among the new graduates:

  • 84% had no specific goals at all
  • 13% had goals but they were not committed to paper
  • 3% had clear, written goals and plans to accomplish them In 1989, the results were supposedly as follows:> The 13% of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all.

    Even more staggering – the three percent who had clear, written goals were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together.
    This example has been quoted by numerous business authors and I even believed it as a factual study. Despite it being a myth, a later study conducted by Dominican university proved that individuals who wrote down goals were more likely to achieve more. Event more importantly was the impact of “weekly progress reports”. Whatever report you quote, the reality is this: writing down your goals is important.

I usually don’t tell most people this, but I had a list of my goals written on a paper and attached it to my bedroom door in my old apartment. Included on the door was a dollar bill with the number $500,000 written on it. Within 16 months I deposited the bill in my account … literally. As such, I am a strong believer in the power of writing down goals and when I watched “The Secret” a few years ago, I learned about the concept of “Vision Boards”.

While many have succeeded without vision boards, there’s no doubt that writing down your goals will help increase the likelihood that you accomplish them.

Vision Board

So what is a vision board? I won’t rehash something which has been written all around the web, so if you want to learn more about vision boards view the following sites: Squidoo definition of Vision Boards and self growth’s definition. The bottom line is that it’s a board that has all of the things that you want in life illustrated in images. Personally, I think a lot of the vision boards that I’ve seen are really ugly and uninspiring. That’s why I decided to kick things up a notch with a digital vision board!!

Digital Vision Board

After thinking about the need for clearly defining my personal goals I decided to create my own vision board, however I didn’t like how all the others looked. Instead, I decided to make use of the television that sits next to my desk but is hardly used. The idea was to have a continuously streaming set of images with the goals laid over each one. In order to accomplish this, I decided that having a small computer that could display rotating images and double as a DVD player for my television would end up making the cost justifiable.

I ended up going with the Mac Mini, although I’m sure there are plenty of cheaper solutions. I’m running Boxee TV on the computer and it automatically rotates through a number of vivid images that have my goals written on the images as well. I also have Pandora running on Boxee while the images are running through. Now whenever I look over I can see my digital vision board in HD! It’s also rotating in my periphery throughout the day so hopefully it’s affecting my subconscious as well!

Have you used a vision board? What do you think of the idea of a digital vision board?