I used to be a vision board fanatic.

I would make one every year, placing the hope-filled poster board in clear sight. At one point, I was even in a vision boarding group!

My process was a messy curation—getting lost in ripping pages that depicted my deepest desires, cutting out images with careful precision, and arranging them with intention according to the Feng Shui Bagua Map.

I am not saying I have never had a good experience—I have. The creation process is fun, connected, and often comes with a supportive community.

However, when I think back to all of the vision boards I have created, there was only one that gave me results worthy of fireworks. While I look back at that experience, it wasn’t the vision board at play, but the feel-good vibration that my situation had guided my every cell to feel.

The most potent vision boarding encounter I had was several years ago:

I had just met this humorous, smiley, loving man. At that time, I wasn’t thinking about marriage or family, or anything that I really wanted. I was simply enjoying the butterfly feelings of newly felt infatuation, and who knows, it may have been love at that time.

The critical thing to note here is that I was in an absolute state of euphoria. My heart experienced an open and expansive state it hadn’t felt for some time, and my tummy fluttered with butterflies. The can’t eat, can’t sleep, all-consuming “I think I am in love” sensation took over my body.

During this vision boarding session, I was sitting on the floor, tearing pages out of magazines that called to me, not knowing why. There was no goal in mind and not a care in the world. I felt immense love in my heart, was grateful for the encounters and intimacy the previous days had brought, and I was completely blissed out of this world.

The host was the aunt of the man I had just met. (Spoiler alert—little did I know she would become my family.) Also in the home lived Layla, an adorable, gentle, and sassy dog.

While creating my vision board, I listened to the other hopeful women around me share what they wanted. Some craved new careers, one hopeful mama wished for a baby, and another, a new, creative endeavor.

As I continued to rip out photos from magazines that matched my already buzzing, exhilarated state, I listened to the ever-so-hopeful wishes we were entrusting to our boards. I was in a space of just being—enjoying the feels and tearing out images that presented themselves.

Listening to the others unveiling their wishes triggered a memory of a chance meeting with a labradoodle dog I had met a few months prior.

I shared that I might place a small doodle mix dog on my board—and not even 10 seconds after saying so, Layla, the furry hostess of the home, slowly walked over to me, her soft, shiny coat swaying side to side, and plopped right down. Her body covered the entire vision board. She would not move, and we all laughed, full of joy.

We decided she was trying to tell me to place a dog on the vision board. I flipped through a couple of pages, found the cutest labradoodle-looking puppy face, tore out the page, and just like that, Layla got up and walked away.

Without having an attachment to how this was to transpire, the dog went on the vision board next to random images of Christmas wreaths, lights, trees, and beautiful homes.

Fast forward to eight months later, I found myself head over heels in love with the man I had met before this vision board gathering. Much to my surprise and delight, the birth of an almost identical puppy to the one placed on my vision board then prompted my move to Missouri from California, on Christmas Eve, to start a new life with my now-husband.

At this point, anyone could be questioning, “Well, doesn’t that mean the vision board worked?”

No, and here’s why.

Firstly, it’s important to understand subtle energy and the rate of vibration; everything is energy, and everything moves all of the time, even if we can’t see it, from objects to emotions.

It boils down to whether things either move from point A to point B quickly or slowly. When the rate of vibration is fast, some people refer to that as being “high vibe,” and when it’s slow, “low vibe.”

A vision board is a collage of images, pictures, and affirmations of one’s hopes, wishes, dreams, and desires designed to serve as a source of inspiration and motivation. It is a representation of what we want.

That feeling of “wanting” something can keep us right there; wanting, craving, wishing, hoping, just like the women who surrounded me, wanted new careers and babies. This state of “want” is slower on the vibrational scale.

Remember, I had joyfully created the vision board I explained above—I had just met someone I’d fallen head over heels in love with, and I had no care in the world, including if the dog I placed on the board actually came to fruition.

While I am not inferring I was a miserable human before meeting my husband, days leading up to our encounter were a struggle for me: divorce, heartbreaks, health challenges, not loving my nine-to-five. I am not complaining about having it oh so bad—but my life lacked happiness. It had been a long time since feeling pure joy and love like that. Most days, I experienced more slow emotions (or vibrational energy) than fast ones.

Meeting the man who would eventually become my husband sparked the expansive feelings of love in my heart and the butterfly feelings that took over every cell of my body. That all-consuming “I think I am in love” state of bliss was much “faster” moving energy.

Looking back, that is what I believe was different about that vision board compared to any others I have done. I was not in a state of wanting and craving, but rather in the space of love, being, expansion, and bliss.

I was ripping out images that called to me, without knowing why, or having any attachment to what came to fruition, rather than needing to find the perfect picture of a dog I had to have, or searching for photos of weddings to call in a marriage with the man I had just met.

I perceive what happened to me as the result of laws of the universe, subtle energy, and quantum physics at play.

One of my favorite authors, Dr. Joe Dispenza, explains this well when he says, “The quantum field responds not to what we want; it responds to who we are being.”

The problem I find in vision boarding, is that it keeps us in a state of wanting and dreaming, which keeps the very thing we wish for out of reach.

I am not saying we shouldn’t dream big. I do goal setting and planning every three to six months, and in fact, I am leading a group now in that.

However, I find time and again that when people stay in a state of “wanting” and don’t take the time to feel joy, love, and happiness, we can easily trade the present moment for future fantasies, and get lost in a vortex of “wanting” energy.

Instead, can we come into “vision being?”

I use a tool with my clients and members that I have called a Vibration MeMO.

It’s called a memo, as it acts like a note from the highest part of ourselves—a reminder of who we were born to be rather than what we hope for and what we want. If we can think it, feel it, see it, or know it, it is already a part of us.

The “M” and the “O” are capitalized at the end to remind us to keep our “M.O.” (modus operandi) to be moment-to-moment, high-vibrational living; to stay in a feeling state similar to how I felt when I met my husband—full of love, feelings of joy in every cell, heart expansion.

We can all choose to do things that will support us to feel in our power, have more peace, and feel more love. We can all choose activities and friends who bring more joy and happiness.

To help, we can begin asking ourselves each day, “What can I do today to be truly helpful, and what can I do today to live in moment-to-moment joy?”

Then follow the answer to that question, feel the emotion it brings, and do that thing to access a faster vibrational experience. When we joyfully act on the answer with no attachment or expectation, real miracles occur.

Try it. Try right now thinking about something you want. Then pause, close your eyes, and imagine, feel, know, and sense with every cell of your being that it’s already here. Feel the vibration of your body shift from slow to fast. This is the miracle that creates more miracles.

May your moment-to-moment living be full of expansive joy!