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Anecdotes about vision board success always include statements like "Then I forgot all about it until the very moment, years later, when I found myself standing on the Champs-Elysées, holding that exact plaid umbrella!" The key phrase is "forgot all about it." The purpose of the vision board is to focus your attention—briefly. After that, the less mental strain you feel, the sooner good things will happen. That initial intense focus helps us create "search images," and by relaxing, we increase our chances of noticing the things we seek. Then it's time for the trickiest step of all....

Step 3: Be Still and Still Moving.
Making a vision board is not a substitute for elbow grease. Magical cocreator or not, you still have to do stuff. For example, I want to be better at social media—you know, all that Faceplace Twootle Googler stuff. So I put a headline on my vision board: SOCIAL MEDIA GENIUS. I tried reading blog posts and signing up for all sorts of new online accounts, but I was making zero progress. Two weeks later, I was working on my laptop in a bookstore when a man with a kind face asked me if I liked my computer. He turned out to be a social media specialist and an extremely nice guy, and I hired him to be my social media genius. He's brilliant, he's motivating, and he's kicking my ass, teaching me how to accomplish my goals. I wanted the Force to give me fish; instead, it sent an expert fisherman to teach me.

This is the zone of reality creation: regularly picturing delights that don't yet exist, emotionally detaching from them, and jumping into action when it's time to help the miracles occur. I'm barely learning this, to be (in T.S. Eliot's words) "still and still moving." But in the moments I get it right, every step I take seems to be matched by a universal mystery, which obligingly, incredibly, creates what I can't.

So that's my 411 on vision boards, but please, don't believe me. Try it yourself. Do it as a lark, a hobby, a physics experiment (though calling it that may cause Werner Heisenberg to spin in his grave like an Olympic ice dancer). While you're oohing and aahing, cutting and gluing, I'll be wearing my fabulous headset, making the Mindflex ball follow my mental orders like my tiny foam bitch. If you happen to know I'm dreaming, please don't wake me.

See the vision board Martha Beck made here on Oprah.com—and get started on yours today

Martha Beck is the author of six books, including Expecting Adam (Berkley) and Steering by Starlight (Rodale).

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