“Run your day by the clock and your life with a vision” — Zig Ziglar

Sometime ago, I had the opportunity of introducing the concept of vision boarding to a bunch of kids aged between 7 and 14.

While the concept of ‘Vision boarding’ has been widely used and probably abused, we clearly emphasised that it is certainly not the invention of some motivational speaker or celebrity’s master class. It is a concept that teaches the power of imagination as well as the power of the pen and paper.

Vision boarding dates back in time when the God who made the sun, the stars and the summation of the planets promised one man in a small village of prehistoric Israel that he would not leave him childless.

God was trying to birth faith and paint a picture to an old man who desperately needed a child but whose wife was well past the age of doing so by telling him to look at the skies and count the stars.

Scientific calculations estimate that there are septillion stars in the universe — a septillion is a 1 followed by 24 zeros. However, from the earth, only 5,000 of those stars are visible, and even fewer can be seen at once by a single human observer since half of these stars are hidden by the earth itself.

Gratefully, the man who beheld this star-strangled space believed that he could be the father of many nations.

In the later part of the 7th Century, a man by the name Habakkuk received instructions on the power of writing down visions.

This was the clear instruction:

“Write this. Write what you see. Write it out in big block letters so that it can be read on the run. This is a witness pointing to what’s coming, it can hardly wait! And it doesn’t lie. If it seems slow in coming, wait. It’s on its way. It will come right on time”.

The above was cleverly reworded by Albert Einstein who said,

‘Imagination is everything! It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.’

Creating a vision board or asking children what they want to be when they grow up might sound silly and far-fetched, but it is a mind stretching exercise — an exercise that defies logic and reality but activates the imagination.

Children are born with the incredible power of imagination. This power can shape a child’s identity and aspirations, helping them to become the person they want to be.

The story is told of when Steve Harvey was in sixth grade and his teacher gave the class an assignment to write down what they want to be when they grow up.

Steve, who had a severe stutter at the time, wrote that he wanted to be on TV. Upon collecting the assignments, Steve’s teacher thought his dream was absurd, especially for a boy who didn’t talk like everyone else. Believing that Steve didn’t take the assignment seriously, the teacher called him up to the front of the class and tore into his answer. She then called Steve’s parents to report that he was being a “smart aleck” at school.

When Steve arrived home that day, he knew he’d be punished for what his teacher perceived as him acting out. But while Steve’s mother was certainly upset by what Steve had written, his father was not. “My father said, ‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’”

While his parents began to argue, Steve was sent to his room. When his father came in, he told Steve what to do with the paper.

″He said, ‘Take your paper and put it in your drawer. Every morning when you get up, read your paper. And every night before you go to bed, read your paper. That’s your paper.’”

Steve says. “What he told me was a principle of success, that if you write it down and envision it, anything you can see in your mind, you can hold in your hand.”

That little boy with the stuttering problem is now on TV, seven days a week with multiple shows to his credit!

Many years later, after Steve had found success in the entertainment industry, he still thought about that sixth-grade teacher and sent her a TV for Christmas so she could see him on TV!

After the session that day, the kids understood the following:

• A vision board is a collection of images that represent a person’s goals, dreams and aspirations.
• A vision board is also called a dream board or an action board.
• A vision could be written or presented in pictures.
• A vision aids goal setting and getting.
• A vision fosters clarity, direction, motivation and focus.
• Visions and dreams do come true.