Welcome to the Very Well Mind podcast. We've interviewed over 100 authors, experts, entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, and others to help you learn strategies to care for your mental health.

This episode is hosted by psychotherapist and bestselling author Amy Morin. Now let's get into the episode.

Okay. You're listening to the Friday FIx.

Every Friday, I share a quick mental strength exercise that will help fix the thoughts,

emotions, and actions that train you of the mental strength you need to be your best. Now, let's dive

in today's topic. I want to talk about visualization. Visualizing things happening can be a really

effective strategy for building mental strength, but only when you use it in a certain way.

A lot of people tend to use visualization in a way that actually does more harm than good.

Let's start by talking about vision boards. They're really popular with a lot of people.

I've spoken to some really successful people who credit vision boards with being the secret to their success.

They pasted pictures of things they wanted or words that spelled out their lifelong dreams onto a wall, and over time,

those things happened. But I have to say, I actually don't like vision boards. I think the way

people use them sometimes causes them to backfire. Here's an example for my therapy office. I worked

with this older woman who was really quite spunky. She referred to herself as an old hippie, and she

liked to tell stories about how she spent the 60s and 70s traveling around the country in a Volkswagen

bus following the Grateful Dead. But now her car was falling apart, and the mechanic warned her that

he could only put it back together so many times. But this woman said she wasn't worried, because she

had a picture of a bright red sports car on her vision board. Every day, she spent a few minutes

in quiet reflection thinking about this red sports car she was going to get. She didn't know how

or when it was going to happen, but she was convinced that someday, somehow, the universe was going to gift her with this red sports car.

I'm not sure if she ever got that car or not. I do know, though, that she never put in any effort to make it happen.

And that was my concern. She thought that the vision board was the secret to solving all of her problems in life.

...