Four Things I Learned from Making a New Year’s Vision Board
I have been making New Year’s resolutions since I was a teenager. I am in my mid-thirties now, so that adds up to a fair number of promises, whispered notes-to-self as the ball dropped on TV: adopt healthier habits, lose weight, read more. Over these years, I have gained and lost the same 20 pounds countless times, read hundreds of books, racked up thousands of miles on treadmills and ellipticals, consumed metric tons of vegetables. But I don’t think I ever technically fulfilled a resolution because, inevitably, a few months into the year, I had forgotten what that whispered resolution even was. Sure, I might have jotted the specifics down somewhere, but where? And that’s the thing: there’s no achievement without memory. There’s no victory when there’s no finish line.
Like many people, getting older has helped me improve my ability to set and work towards goals. I have picked up new skills along life’s path. I have learned things about myself. I have accepted that sometimes the things we resist the most are the things we must run towards.
Vision boards. To me, they have long brought to mind Goop-y visions of blonde, Gwyneth Paltrow devotees in yoga pants wielding safety scissors and chugging organic wine, desperately trying to fend off, via collage art, an impending divorce or IRS audit. They brought to mind the…
