00:00:00] We’re about to jump into this episode, but before we do, I had to tell you, we have a new free resource. Okay? So it’s kind of new because it’s the desktop organizer, which we’ve had forever, and I know so many of you love this thing. I can’t even believe how many times it’s been downloaded, but now we’ve turned it into a vision board desktop organizer, and you can access that through the show notes.

I’ll talk about it more in this episode. But you can just go to Vision board dot balancing busy.com. I’m going to convince you to start a visualization practice. And Oh man, do I have some stories to share with you? Now I’m doing this episode a little bit differently.

Normally I have a bunch of notes. I’ll even have a script. This one I’m just sharing. So this starts with a story about my [00:01:00] son. When my son was eight years old, we had. Recently returned from our trip. For those of you who may not know, we took a year and we traveled the world. It was, yes, as incredible as it sounds.

It was hard and it was amazing, and it’s one of my favorite memories that I think I’ll ever have from my kids’ childhood. And so we would travel and we would go to a different country and spend about a month in each country. During this time, we started the practice of having the kids visualize. So at night, as they were trying to fall asleep, we would encourage them to lay down in their beds and just visualize whatever they were dreaming about the things that they wanted as an adult.

Maybe a few things they wanted now, and every so often we would pause and we would ask them what they’ve been visualizing about. Well, after we got home from our trip, we were actually really struggling with figuring out where to live. [00:02:00] It was just, things just weren’t lining up. We kept thinking about places and we just really weren’t sure.

We didn’t feel great about any particular place and we were, we were counseling with the kids and we were asking them, ’cause we’re like, you know, we can go back to where we were before we went on our trip, or we can go somewhere else. What would you guys like? And so we were kind of having these conversations and the kids had been visualizing and, and in asking this, we asked, we asked our youngest, and he said, where would we need to live for me to get to snow ski in the winter and wakeboard in the summer?

And my husband, he was like, oh gosh, I don’t know. Somewhere like Leavenworth now. For the rest of you who are like, where the heck is Leavenworth? It’s not Leavenworth, Kansas. It’s Leavenworth Washington, which is this darling little Bavarian town nestled in the mountains where there it’s right next to a ski resort, only about 20 minutes, and also has some great lakes and um, some very amazing weather for [00:03:00] Washington state.

If you think of Washington, you probably think Seattle, which is rain and cold. This side of the state is very sunny. And so, you know, Payson just sort of processed that and went along. And a few days later we asked them what they had been visualizing about and Payson said that we live in Leavenworth. And we stopped him.

I mean, we actually stopped him because we were like, oh buddy, we have to have jobs. And we don’t know what people do in Leavenworth. I mean, it is a tourist, tiny little town. And, um. I can work from anywhere, but my husband, he, that’s not quite as easy. And so we told him, sorry, that’s not gonna work. And a little while later we asked again, what are you visualizing guys?

And again, he was visualizing Leavenworth. And again, we tried to deter him. Well, guess what? Some crazy things happened and we ended up shifting completely and we [00:04:00] made this decision to buy our second home first. So we thought, okay, we’re gonna buy our second home and we are going to fix it up as a family, and then we’ll figure out where we really want to land, and then we’ll go there.

Well, the part of the story that I didn’t tell you is that. After Payson shared with us that he’d been visualizing and he got the idea in of his, in his head about living in Leavenworth. He got into our Zillow account. Remember this is an 8-year-old. He got into our Zillow account and he put some houses in there for Leavenworth and he said, Hey, I’ve put, I’ve put some houses in your Zillow.

You should go check it out. Well, we ended up buying the very first house that he put into our Zillow and we closed on his birthday. On his ninth birthday, we closed and bought the house that he had been visualizing and moved in. Now our [00:05:00] intention was to just be there for a few months, fix it up, and then move on.

We all loved it so much that we stayed for two years. That is the power of visualization, not fully convinced. Okay, let me share one more story. I set the goal that I wanted to host a mastermind retreat. Abroad and very specifically I wanted it to be in London. I had never been, it was such a dream of mine to go to London to get to experience it.

I wanted to rent a gorgeous mansion, you know, just a historic, beautiful like feel like I was in my own Jane Austen type movie and host a mastermind retreat there. So I bought this print, this beautiful print of London, and I ordered it on Etsy and it came and I framed it and I put a couple more [00:06:00] things around my office and every day I would just pause and I would look at those and I would just imagine, I would visualize that I was teaching a mastermind retreat in London and, and that it was happening.

Well, it did. Within one year, we decided to travel for a year. Our first destination was England, and I hosted a mastermind retreat at the most gorgeous house. I will actually put pictures in the show notes so you can see this beautiful house, and my dream came true, and again, it was visualizing.

So I hope I have convinced you how much I believe that visualization works, that what we are putting out into the universe we attract now, that’s negative or positive. If you’re constantly putting out, it’s not gonna work, it’s gonna go bad. They’re gonna hurt me, they’re dishonest. It’s not, it’s not gonna [00:07:00] be the thing I hoped for then you’re probably right.

If we put out this idea of it is going to work good things are going to happen again. You’re probably right. We’ve all listened to the Secret, I’m sure by now, right? That idea of like visualizing the parking spot. But truly this is about recognizing that we’re energy and everything around us is energy.

We need to be putting out positive energy. And why not try visualization? Why not try spending a few minutes just visualizing the life that you dream of and see what happens. Even if you land below that, you’re still gonna be above where you are now. So let’s talk about how we can visualize what this can look like.

Now, obviously I shared one strategy, which is. Very powerful, and I really believe it’s even more powerful among children. [00:08:00] So, you know, just if you’re a mom, mom to mom, I really suggest encouraging your kids to visualize at night. It has been incredible. I mean, the most remarkable is definitely. Payson managing to get us in the house that he put in his Zillow.

But all of our kids have had some very crazy experiences with visualizing something that they wanted so bad that often it was mom and dad who were super anti. We were like, no, no, no. And then it still happened. They still were able to get it. It’s still, it still came to pass, which is pretty incredible.

So I definitely think kids, I don’t know, there’s just something, they’re just, you know. They’re just pure, they’re in, they’re in better alignment, right? They’re just better. They’re better at living than we are. Um, so kids are definitely amazing at this, but one strategy is truly as you go to sleep, as you go to bed at night, visualize, just as your eyes are closed and you’re trying to work on falling asleep, start envisioning.[00:09:00] 

Your dream life, your dream experience, that big goal that you’re working on right now. Visualize everything as if it had happened and get into as much detail as you possibly can, as clear and specific and detailed as possible. So that is definitely a way to visualize and super powerful. And I like the idea of doing it at night because I don’t know about you, but I have a difficult time just sitting and pausing in the middle of my day for more than just a couple minutes.

I just, my mind wanders. It’s like meditation with me. I wander off instantly, so I really like the nighttime and I can keep just coming back and then I drift off with these thoughts in in my mind. The other thing is, of course, things like a vision board. But the vision board only works if we remember to look at it.

One of the things that I think was so powerful about my visualization with getting to speak in London and host a mastermind [00:10:00] retreat in in London was that I put triggers up to help me think about it. To help me remember. I purposefully went and bought this beautiful illustrated print and put it in my office, and I would look at it.

Every single day I put these triggers around me to remind myself to stop and to think about visualization. And I would just take a couple minutes. I mean, I would just take a couple minutes, I would imagine myself, I would see it happening, and then I’d go right back to my day. So those are two simpler ways to visualize that can fit into our days better and can help us to actually remember to do it.

’cause one of the biggest things is I tried visualization. Practices for years, but I would do it for a day or two, and then I would just forget setting reminders and triggers that became the difference between. Actually feeling like I had a practice of visualization versus I tried it for a day and then [00:11:00] whoops.

Now here’s where it gets really crazy, and that’s thinking about how much we’ve learned from science in the more recent years. Brain studies are revealing to us that thoughts produce the same mental instruction as actions. So what you maybe learned by doing, you can also learn. By thinking through it.

And of course we definitely see this in sports. We know of so many athletes who talk about how they visualize the entire process. Tiger Woods and Muhammad Ali and. So many others. It’s so popular. I feel like in the Olympic arena. There was also this incredible study done. Um, it was by an exercise psychologist from Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio.

And ultimately what he was trying to see is, can you gain strengths just by thinking? And so he was working on finger abduction strength, so like finger strength and um. [00:12:00] People made gains. That’s what’s so crazy. There was a physical exercise group, a mental exercise group, and of course a control group.

The control group really didn’t make any gains. The physical group as expected made gains, but so did the mental group. That is the power of our brains. Okay, so how do you use visualization? Obviously you can use it for those huge, amazing dreams the same way I did for getting to speak in London, or for my son getting to live somewhere where he could snow ski in the winter and be on the boat in the summer.

By the way, I’m finishing this recording and we’re literally getting ready to go out on the boat. I mean, he got his dream. So yes, we can visualize for the big things, but we can also visualize. Being more at peace, having more purpose, being more connected with our [00:13:00] family, visualizing a happy family movie night, or a great date night, or maybe a wonderful family vacation or incredible conversations with your kids.

I mean, I don’t think visualization needs to be. Set for only the big things. I believe that we can really utilize the power of visualization and positive thinking in all the areas of our life. Now, I have a bit of a confession for you. The biggest download freebie gift that we have on our website is the desktop organizer.

It’s not the biggest in like value or. Or how much I put into it, but it is definitely the one that gets downloaded the most. In fact, I would’ve scrapped it years ago, but it performs so well that we’ve always kept it. Well. The truth is, the desktop organizer that I am using this year is very different than the one that maybe you’re using if you have downloaded our desktop organizer.

And that is [00:14:00] because at the beginning of the year. I decided to remake my own desktop organizer and create it as a vision board. So all year on my desktop, I still have all those blogs for organizing projects and all the different things to be able to just have it really clean and, and simple and organized.

But behind the Blocks is my own vision board. Well, I have finally created it and made it possible to share it with you. I’ve brought it into Canva so that you can download it, drop in your own pictures. And make it your own desktop organizer vision board. So I thought, oh my gosh, if I’m gonna be talking about visualization, I have to share the vision board with all of you.

So now it’s available in Canva. You can access it by going to the show notes of this blog post, and I’ll have the link right there for you to access it. So I hope I have convinced you to give visualization a try. I mean, what do you have to lose? Give it a try and see what happens. [00:15:00] Commit to. 30 days and just see what’s possible.

Set that big goal, that big thing that you want, figure out how you can trigger yourself to think about it regularly, and let’s see what’s possible for you. Now, I wanna challenge you to share this episode with someone you’d like to be your visualization partner. You two can keep each other accountable and just check in and ask each other.

Have you been visualizing? What are you visualizing about? Here’s to ditching the hustle harder mentality so that we can balance busy and find that sense of calm in our lives, even amidst the chaos. Until next time, if no one has told you already today. You are amazing.

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