Your Vision Board Isn't the Problem. Your Dreamer Has Ideas. Your Leader Has a Plan. Your Woman Has Questions.

I was making vision boards long before I knew they were called vision boards.

As a teenager growing up in New York, I was a daydreamer. I would sit with my magazines and cut out pictures of the things I imagined for my someday life: city scenes, beaches, beautiful wedding dresses, cars, couture jewelry, and what I used to call my “power words.” Then I would tape everything to the back of my bedroom door.

The back of that door was important because behind my bedroom door, I was free. I could put on music, dance, jump around, dream, and do whatever the hell I wanted. It was my private little world, and apparently my dreams needed privacy too. I didn't want everyone having access to them, looking at what I wanted and deciding it was ridiculous, unrealistic, or too much.

To be fair, a few people had full access to the master plan: Madonna, Menudo, Michael Jackson, and George Michael. Their posters shared those walls, and I regularly held extensive discussions with them about exactly how I intended to make all of this happen. They were an extremely supportive advisory board. Never once did they tell me to be realistic.

Everyone else? Not so much.

I had already heard enough versions of be realistic. I came from a family and culture where there were certain things girls who looked like me weren't necessarily taught to believe would be accessible to us. There were respectable choices, responsible choices, and safe choices. Dreaming too far outside those lines could invite questions about whether you were asking for too much.

Behind that bedroom door, however, nobody got a vote but me, and I dreamed wildly. I cut out pictures of places that felt impossibly far away: the Egyptian pyramids, the blue city of Morocco, deserts, Greece, and the Western Wall. I didn't know how I would get there. I didn't have a travel strategy or a five-year plan. I simply knew there was a huge world outside of the one I knew, and I wanted to see it.

Interestingly, when it came to love, I never put a photograph of a man on those boards. I put the wedding dress and the ring because I knew I wanted marriage, but I never wanted to create a physical checklist for the man himself. I wanted to remain open to the person I would actually love rather than decide what he was supposed to look like before I met him.

My only real requirement was that I wanted him to be sexy.

Apparently, that part of the vision was sufficiently specific.

Decades later, I'm married to a sexy Israeli man of Moroccan descent, and many of those faraway places that once lived behind my bedroom door became part of the world I would eventually experience. Is that another thing to think about? Maybe. I've learned to leave room for a little mystery.

The Dreams Were on the Door. The Action Was in the Jar.

Alongside all those pictures, I also had one of those giant five-gallon water jugs. I papier-mâchéd images of my dreams all over it and started throwing my change and dollar bills inside. That was my “fund.” I wasn't particularly disciplined about it, and there was certainly no sophisticated financial strategy involved. I simply kept adding to it whenever I remembered.

That jug stayed with me for years. Throughout my thirties, I traveled extensively for work, and my life expanded in ways teenage me could never have predicted. It wasn't until my forties, when I moved in with the man who would become my husband, that I finally dealt with that old dusty jug that had followed me through all those different chapters.

I cashed it in and discovered there was a little over $1,500 sitting inside.

That still makes me smile because I didn't understand it at the time, but teenage me had stumbled onto something I would spend decades thinking about, practicing, and eventually teaching. I wasn't simply looking at pictures of what I wanted. However inconsistently, I was also doing something tangible in the direction of those dreams.

The dreams were on the door. The action was in the jar. Both mattered.

I Still Believe in Vision Boards

Let me make that clear before anyone comes for my scissors and glue stick.

In my twenties and thirties, I continued making vision boards, often as part of gatherings with other women. We'd cut pictures, talk, laugh and dream together, but I remained protective of what I wanted. I would participate in the group exercise and then go home and transpose those images onto a larger folding board that I could keep behind my bedroom door and tuck behind the bureau or into a closet when someone came over.

There was also a very practical dating reason for that. The last thing I needed was some man I had been dating for five minutes walking into my bedroom and seeing an engagement ring and wedding dress staring back at him. Sir, relax. I don't even know your middle name yet.

The funny part is that for years I was drawn to square-cut diamond rings and rose gold. As I write this, I can look down at my hand and see a ring remarkably similar to the images I remember choosing decades ago. My husband never saw those old vision boards, and we had never discussed what kind of engagement ring I wanted. The way I ended up married was itself a surprise, but that story deserves its own Sacred & Practical conversation.

The same thing happened with travel. Images that once seemed exotic and impossibly far away slowly became places I actually experienced as my life unfolded. I don't offer those stories as proof that if you paste something onto cardboard, God or the universe becomes contractually obligated to deliver it. That isn't what I believe manifestation is.

What those experiences taught me was the value of allowing ourselves to name what we desire, keep it within our awareness, and remain open to opportunities that may eventually move us toward it.

Then My Relationship With Vision Began to Change

After September 11, my relationship with my life changed profoundly. As my meditation practice deepened, so did the questions I was asking myself. Affirmations became more meaningful, manifestation became something I wanted to understand beyond simply wanting things, and my definition of success began changing.

For years, I also had a New Year's ritual of writing my resolutions, sealing them in an envelope and opening them the following year. Something interesting kept happening. I was accomplishing about eight out of ten. Apparently, keeping those intentions somewhere in my consciousness mattered. Of course, losing fifteen pounds and meeting my husband seemed perfectly happy rolling themselves over from one year's list to the next. Every system has its outliers.

As I traveled more for work during my thirties, I wanted a vision practice that could travel with me. I also discovered something about myself. Although I'm an extremely visual person, dozens of pictures competing for my attention could make me feel more overwhelmed than inspired. So I started writing my visions instead.

Eventually I began teaching vision-board workshops to other women, and that is where I noticed something that changed my approach completely. Women were very good at dreaming, but we weren't always as good at believing we had permission to live the dream.

Why Vision Boards Don't Work Without an Action Plan

When I asked women to share something they had placed on their boards, they could usually tell me what they wanted very quickly. Then I would ask a different question: Why do you want it?

The energy would change.

When I asked what would need to happen for that vision to become part of their actual lives, I would hear hesitation. Sometimes they described the dream almost as though it belonged to someone else. It belonged to someone luckier, richer, younger, or more confident. Maybe it belonged to someone with better connections, fewer responsibilities, or more support. Sometimes it seemed to belong to someone more deserving, or simply someone who didn't come from where we came from.

That was when I began to realize that the problem wasn't necessarily the vision board. We were missing what happened after the magazines were put away.

Most vision-board workshops are wonderful at helping us imagine. They give us permission to spend an afternoon looking beyond the ordinary limitations of our lives, and I believe there is real value in that. What is often missing, however, is the conversation about what happens Monday morning.

If you want to write the book, beautiful. What are you going to do next? If you want to start the business, wonderful. What is your first step? If you want to travel, where do you want to go, when do you want to go, what will it cost, and what might need to change financially or logistically? If you want a healthier relationship, what might that require from you? If you want to leave a career you've outgrown, what preparation, support, and courage might you need before you hand in your resignation?

The vision tells us where we might want to go. Eventually, we have to ask how we're going to participate in getting there.

The Dreamer Has Ideas

This is where I have come to think about three voices that can participate in the process: the Dreamer, the Leader and the Woman. This isn't a personality test, and I'm not suggesting we divide ourselves into three neat little identities. Life is complicated enough without giving ourselves three more labels. I use them simply as a way of listening to different parts of ourselves that bring different kinds of wisdom to the conversation.

The Dreamer gets to ask, What do I want? She gets to imagine without immediately having to defend the feasibility of the dream. That matters because we often invite practicality into the conversation much too soon. The moment the Dreamer says, “I want to write a book,” someone wants to tell her how difficult publishing is. She says she wants to spend a month in Greece, and immediately someone is calculating airfare.

Can we give the woman five minutes?

The Dreamer doesn't need a feasibility study yet. She needs room to dream recklessly, beautifully, wildly, and freely. She can imagine the book, the business, the home, the relationship, the journey, the creative project, the sabbatical, or the life she isn't quite sure how to create yet. Her job isn't to know exactly how she will get there. Her job is to allow us to see what might be possible.

The Leader Has a Plan

Then my leadership brain enters the meeting.

I spent years in professional environments where large projects had to be reverse-engineered. You start with the objective, determine the milestones, identify the resources, assign the tasks, create timelines, and begin moving things forward. At some point I thought, Why am I not applying the same principles I use to manage important projects to the dreams that matter most in my own life?

That question eventually became the foundation for what I now call my Vision-to-Life Map. I take one vision off the larger board and give it its own space. I ask why I want it and why it matters now. I consider what needs to happen internally and externally, what I may need to release, what support will be necessary, what boundaries need to be created, what my next physical actions are, and which milestones will help me recognize that something is actually moving.

Now the Dreamer isn't standing alone with a beautiful idea. The Leader has entered the conversation and said, Okay. Here's how we could begin.

I loved this. My inner project manager was delighted.

There was only one problem.

The Woman Has Questions

Apparently, the Dreamer and the Leader had been holding meetings without inviting the person responsible for implementing any of this.

The Dreamer has ideas. The Leader has a strategic plan. And the Woman would now like to call an emergency meeting of the planning and budget committees because apparently somebody approved a new business, a trip to Greece, a healthier body, a book proposal and a kitchen renovation without consulting the person responsible for actually doing any of it.

She has questions. When exactly are we supposed to do all this? With what money? What are we going to stop doing to make room for it? How much energy is this going to require? Who can help?

Also, the laundry is still in the dryer.

The Woman isn't there to veto the dream. She's there to help us create a life capable of supporting it.

That is an important distinction because I don't believe the ambitious, capable Leader in us is the problem. Neither is the Dreamer, and the Woman isn't the boring party pooper who arrives to tell everybody why their ideas won't work. She carries information the other voices may not have considered.

She knows whether the body is exhausted. She knows when the bank account isn't ready. She knows a parent needs more care right now, the relationship has been running on fumes, or the calendar is already full. She knows when something else will have to be released if this new dream is going to have room to grow. She also sometimes knows when all those perfectly reasonable explanations are hiding fear.

That matters too, because fear doesn't automatically mean stop. Sometimes fear simply means something matters enough to make us uncomfortable. The Woman gets a voice not because she gets to kill every difficult dream, but because she has to live the life we're planning.

Dream Freely. Plan Intelligently. Live Consciously.

This is the integration I was missing for years. The Dreamer gets to dream. The Leader knows how to build. The Woman has to live the plan. All get an equal vote.

The Dreamer tells us what we want. The Leader helps us create a thoughtful path toward it. The Woman asks what bringing that vision to life will actually require from the life we're already living. Then we listen to all of them.

Dream freely. Plan intelligently. Live consciously.

None of those is sufficient alone. If the Dreamer runs the entire show, we can end up with beautiful intentions and very little movement. If the Leader runs everything, life can become one enormous project plan where every experience is measured against productivity. If we confuse the Woman's legitimate needs with an automatic reason to avoid anything difficult, we can remain safe while quietly abandoning things that matter deeply to us.

Integration asks a better question: What choice honors the life I want to create and the woman who will actually live it?

That is the heart of my approach to vision.

Why My Vision Isn't Divided Into Boxes

As my methodology evolved, even the way I represented a whole-life vision began to change. Many vision board and life-planning exercises divide our lives into neat boxes: career over here, relationships over there, money in another square, and health somewhere else.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that structure, but it never quite reflected the way I experience life because our lives aren't boxes. They are living ecosystems.

That is why, when I created what I now call my ALMA Life Vision, I chose the metaphor of a flower. I place the woman, Mi Alma, at the center, with the different dimensions of her life represented as petals around her.

The flower matters because petals aren't permanent. They can open, change, and eventually fall away because their season has ended. Sometimes we release something because it no longer belongs to us. Sometimes something falls away precisely because we have grown. When the conditions are right, something new can emerge. Through all those seasons, the flower is still alive.

I am the flower. I am always blooming.

That means I don't have to treat every dream I once wrote down as a contract with my former self. A petal can fall without the entire flower dying. A vision can change without my life being a failure, and a new dream can emerge that I couldn't possibly have imagined when I created the original board.

This is also why my ALMA Life Vision doesn't ask only what I want to accomplish or acquire. I want to consider the life I actually want to inhabit, including my health and energy; spirituality and joy; love and relationships; experiences and adventure; abundance and security; leadership and contribution; legacy; and those other dreams that remain quietly alive somewhere inside me.

At the center isn't another accomplishment. At the center is the woman becoming, and perhaps remembering, herself.

Your Dreams Have Seasons Too

I stopped planning my life strictly from January to December a long time ago because eventually the whole thing began to feel too boxed in. January arrives, and suddenly we're supposed to emerge from the holidays with a brand-new body, business strategy, financial plan, morning routine, relationship goals, and twelve-month roadmap.

Meanwhile, nature is doing almost the exact opposite.

As my understanding of Ayurveda and seasonal living deepened, I began paying more attention to that contradiction. January arrives during winter, when much of the natural world is still turned inward. It is a season that can invite grounding, conserving, tending, reflecting, and preparing. The seeds aren't failing because we can't see anything above the soil yet. Something can be happening beneath the surface.

That changed the way I thought about my own energy and made me question why every season of my life should carry the same expectations. There may be seasons when my most aligned work is researching, saving money, strengthening relationships, tending to my home, caring for my body, refining an idea, or quietly preparing something that isn't ready to be seen yet. That doesn't mean nothing is happening. It may mean I'm tending the soil.

Then spring arrives with an entirely different energy. The natural world begins moving outward again, bringing emergence, growth, and momentum. Perhaps that is when I'm ready to take the bigger leap, launch the project, make the call, travel, pitch the idea, or move something that has been quietly developing into visible action.

Summer can bring its own intensity, expansion, and fire. Sometimes that fire fuels tremendous growth, and sometimes it illuminates what needs to be burned away, simplified, or released. Eventually the cycle begins turning again.

I don't use seasonal living as another rigid system telling me what I'm supposed to accomplish in March versus July because that would defeat the entire purpose. I use it as a reminder that my energy is allowed to have seasons too.

Why I Choose Only a Few Goals at a Time

A whole-life vision can contain many dreams, but that doesn't mean they all need to become active projects simultaneously. When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

I prefer to choose approximately one to three meaningful goals to actively move forward during a season. This isn't because the other dreams don't matter. It is because intentional focus does, and having more than one goal in rotation can actually work beautifully.

Perhaps Goal #1 requires me to send a proposal or make an introduction. I do it, and then I have to wait. Instead of obsessively refreshing my inbox every fourteen minutes, I can move Goal #2 forward. Maybe that goal requires consistent weekly action, while Goal #3 requires research, conversations, or internal preparation. Then I circle back.

Imagine what could happen if, over six or nine months, you meaningfully accomplished two or three things that had lived on your vision board for years while already beginning to move another few forward. That's progress I can live with.

Because I work seasonally, I also don't treat December 31 as some cosmic performance review. I prefer a broader 12-to-18-month vision with rolling seasons and intentional check-ins throughout the year. Every few months, I return to the flower and ask myself, Do I still want this?

Sometimes the answer is an enthusiastic yes. Sometimes the vision is right, but the timing isn't. Sometimes the goal has evolved because I have evolved, and sometimes I finally have enough clarity to admit that I simply don't want something anymore.

That isn't necessarily quitting. Sometimes it is alignment.

You Are Allowed to Want Differently Now

One of the things I remind women during this work is that you are not behind, and you are allowed to want differently now.

What you wanted at twenty-five does not have to dictate what you choose at forty-five, and what made sense five years ago does not have to remain your definition of success. The woman who created your vision board does not get permanent authority over every version of you who comes after her.

You are allowed to change your mind, change your timing, or move something into another season without declaring yourself a failure. A petal can fall without the entire flower dying. In fact, sometimes the falling is evidence that the flower is doing exactly what living things do. It is changing.

Yoga Has a Word for This: Svādhyāya

In yoga philosophy, svādhyāya is the practice of self-study. I don't experience that as self-judgment. I experience it as an invitation to observation and curiosity. Who am I now? What is true now? What am I learning about myself through this experience?

A goal can become its own form of attachment when we stop asking whether it still reflects what is true. Another yogic concept that informs this for me is vairāgya, often translated as non-attachment. Non-attachment doesn't mean not caring about the outcome, abandoning effort, or pretending we have no desires. It reminds me that I can commit deeply to meaningful action without demanding that life unfold according to the exact script I wrote for it.

Which brings me to manifesting.

Manifesting Has “Man” in It, as in Hu-man

I tell people this all the time: manifesting has the word “man” in it, as in hu-man. It isn't Godifesting.

I don't believe manifestation means praying to Santa God, handing over our wish list, and then waiting for our dreams to arrive wrapped beautifully underneath the tree. My understanding of manifestation is much more participatory than that. I believe we create in partnership with God.

Sometimes I think the dream itself may be an invitation. Perhaps it has been placed within us because there is something we are capable of bringing to life, experiencing, contributing to, or becoming through the process of pursuing it. We may not know exactly how it will happen, and we certainly aren't guaranteed the outcome simply because we want it, but I believe we have a responsibility to participate.

So yes, dream recklessly, beautifully, wildly, and freely. Ask yourself why you want what you want. Visualize it, write it down, pray about it, and affirm it. Allow yourself to fall in love with the possibility of it. Then roll up your sleeves and get to work.

If you want to plant something, you don't stand over an empty patch of earth praying for tomatoes. You prepare the soil, plant the seeds, water them, tend them, pay attention to the conditions, and protect what needs protecting. You make adjustments when something isn't growing. After all of that, however, there is still an enormous part of the process you cannot control.

That is where trust enters.

For me, surrender doesn't mean sitting still and hoping God does my part for me. It means doing the work that is mine to do while loosening my grip on exactly how the outcome must arrive. I can keep my eyes on the larger vision while remaining flexible about the road that takes me there.

Maybe the opportunity comes from somewhere I never expected. Maybe the timeline changes. Maybe the door I was convinced I needed closes, and another one opens. Maybe my intuition tells me to turn left when my carefully constructed plan says right. Maybe pursuing the dream changes me enough that the dream itself begins to change.

I can act and trust at the same time. Faith does not require inaction, and action does not mean I lack faith. For me, they have always belonged in partnership.

So Pull Out the Old Vision Board

Seriously, go get it. Pull it out from behind the bureau, under the bed, inside the closet, or wherever you've been hiding your dreams. This time, however, don't immediately start judging yourself for everything that hasn't happened because that isn't the exercise.

Look at it with curiosity. Notice what still has energy when you see it, what makes you smile, and what creates that little spark of, "Oh, I still want that." Notice what now feels like an obligation, what belonged to an older version of you, and what you have already accomplished but perhaps forgotten to celebrate. Ask what might need another season, what petal you are ready to let fall, and what deserves your intentional energy now.

You don't need to work on everything. Choose something and let the Dreamer tell you what she sees. Invite the Leader to help you figure out how you might build it. Then, for God's sake, invite the Woman into the meeting before anybody approves the budget.

Ask her what she needs, what she is willing to change, and what support would make the vision more possible. Ask what needs protecting and what might need to be released. Ask whether this dream will nourish the life she is actually living, not simply look impressive once she gets there.

Then listen.

Dream freely. Plan intelligently. Live consciously. All get an equal vote.

Because the goal isn't simply to build the life on the board. The goal is to still recognize yourself, and hopefully enjoy the damn thing, when you're finally standing inside it.

Take the Complimentary Workshop: The Woman Behind the Titles

If this conversation has you looking sideways at an old vision board right now, good. Make yourself a cup of coffee or tea, pull out the old board, grab your notebook, and give yourself an uninterrupted hour.

I've made my complimentary The Woman Behind the Titles workshop available so you can move through this process with me, beginning with reflection and vision, then choosing what matters now and creating an aligned path forward.

If you'd like to do the work alongside me, I've also created the accompanying ALMA Life Vision + Vision-to-Life Map worksheets in English and Spanish.

When Clarity Tells You It's Time for More

Sometimes we do this work and realize we already know what comes next. We simply needed enough quiet to hear ourselves. Sometimes clarity reveals something else: I know what I want. I know something needs to change. And I don't want to navigate this next chapter alone.

That is part of why I created ENCENDIDA, my four-month high-touch 1:1 experience for women ready to intentionally move into what comes next without abandoning themselves along the way.

There is no manufactured urgency here. Take the workshop, do the worksheets, sit with what comes up, and let things settle. Listen to yourself. If what you hear is I'm ready, we can begin with a complimentary Sacred Pause Clarity Call and explore whether ENCENDIDA is the right doorway for this season.

Because the Dreamer deserves to dream, the Leader deserves to build, and the Woman deserves to actually experience the life they're creating.

Ancient wisdom. Modern life. Real transformation.

Because wellness with soul and power in purpose isn't something we merely talk about.

It's something we learn to live.

With gratitude... always,

Erica Garcia Abergel
Founder, Nueva Alma ®

Ancient wisdom. Modern life. Real transformation.