Visuals are a Clarity gateway.
What if gateway had a positive connotation? Usually framed as a slippery slope toward bad behavior, a gateway can also be a portal into a new realm.
You might wonder why I’m offering a path forward in a world flooded with wellness advice, where credentials are often assumed, not earned. But my gateway of choice toward reduced Stress is visualizing.
Vision boards have become buzzwords—cardboard, inspo quotes, magazines, and scissors cover January dining tables. But why do we do this? Why create imagery to admire on your desk? Why does seeing your future ideas and words matter?
You are creating an imprint, preparing your neurons to accept a future state before it arrives.
Technically, our optic nerve sends visual input directly to the brain’s occipital lobe, where it begins to create meaning from what we see. Neurosciencist have studied the impact on our future selves to visualize activates the same neural pathways as the action itself, reinforcing motor and cognitive memory. This is known as “mental rehearsal,” and it’s used in everything from Olympic training to clinical recovery.
Over the course of my volleyball career, I visualized serves dropping like bombs in between players on the court and block the hell out of every swing the opposing team took. I imagined catching their ‘trick’ hits. I’d close my eyes and run the offensive sets and hits. Not just hoping—rehearsing. My coaches were not sophisticated at the time but I did this on my own. Intuitive before my time.
Sorry wellness mamacitas, but visualization is not new.
Ancient Greek leaders walked imagined palaces, placing ideas in corners, retrieving them later with eerie precision. Tibetan monks paint mandalas grain by grain, seeing enlightenment before speaking it. Leonardo da Vinci sketched wings centuries before the sky was ours. Roman generals carved battles into sand, rehearsing outcomes before a single sword was drawn.
Visualization isn’t pretend child’s play. It is direction we all need. Visuals give your brain proof in advance. The image becomes the invitation. You’re not faking belief—you’re laying tracks for it.
General vision boards, in my experience, don’t work though. Getting specific is helpful.
Doing repeated mediations or guided visualizations is how I run my reiki sessions and am creating a mini visualization vault library.
When you see yourself crossing the finish line of a race, the brain doesn’t wait for it to happen. It fires in advance. Your neurons form maps—an electrical rehearsal of a moment not yet lived. The body doesn’t know the difference—done right, it feels real.
That imagined future becomes a groove in your mind. One you return to—not with force, but with familiarity. This is why short term vision boards work so well, the images mark our brain waves.
Michael Jordan spoke of visualizing his games in the 80s and now professional and amateur teams to Meditation coaches to bring brain-to-body-connection use it. Pilots train in virtual reality which is a video version of what we can do in mediation. Modern day hippies like Lacy Phillips of To Be Magnetic created DIs or deep imaginings to stimulate an energy release.
Outside of work goals on paper, day dreaming with structure has been proven to begin to create the neurons to create an aligned life. Timing aside, having a dream or vision will bring it to fruiting.
My life as a financial services exec focused on the negative. What if someone dies young, why didn’t Prince (artist formerly known as) have a will, what happens if, how do you keep this inheritance.
Money Visualizing:
Different than a material items on a vision board (cars, houses,…) this is the abundance energy
What feels like a safety net for money to flow in?
How do you want to feel when money is in flow?
Mantra: I am grateful for money flowing in exchange for my gifts in this world. It’s less about thank you for these ‘things’.
I wasn’t taught to visualize a Finance future, but I’ve learned to bring money and energetics together. Financial visualizations occur to varying degrees.
So pin the photo. Sketch the scene. Close your eyes. See it. Again. Again. Again.
The future listens (our neurons) more closely when it knows where it’s going.
Good news for all of us, visualizing is a free resource, and it can be layered with movement, walking, breathwork, or reiki.
