3 Unbelievable Visualization Board Success Stories

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Visualization boards, collaged with images and words depicting our goals and desires, are a popular technique for manifesting what we want out of life. It's really quite simple: Paste visual representations of your wishes and intentions on poster board, thereby activating the subconscious mind to focus its energies on manifesting them to come true. (See also: One Thing You Need to Do to be Happy and Improve Your Relationships)

"If you repeat the word, 'blue, blue, blue,' and you start looking around the room, all the blue things will start popping out," says sociologist and life coach Martha Beck. "Part of it is quantum physics… We know now, scientifically, that consciousness brings matter into being where there was energy. So it's not even necessarily that it draws it toward you. The conclusion is you're literally creating some of this stuff."

It's a concept that has been given the gold star of approval by the likes of Oprah. But if it sounds a little hokey to you, you've got company. Dr. Neil Farber, an expert in psychology, writes that visualization boards fall short in helping us achieve our goals because they don't require us to take any real action. Rather, they are all about letting our thoughts do the work for us.

"Fantasizing about your perfect world and your perfect life may make you feel better in the short term but will limit your ability to transform your dreams into reality," Farber writes. "Dream about it, envision how you will realistically do it or get it, and then get off your tush and make it happen."

So: Do visualization boards really work?

It's a controversial question, and there's little scientific evidence to support or deny the blessings they're meant to bring into our lives. But there are certainly believers among us. Read on for our roundup of the most amazing visualization success stories out there. You just might be inspired to create your own.

1. Manifesting Love

Life Coach Cheryl Richardson said she pasted a photo of a man on her visualization board. Not just any man — a man representing the person she wanted to fall in love with and marry. Now she's married to a man who looks like the picture of the man on her visualization board. Coincidence? Maybe, but Richardson says no. It didn't happen overnight — in fact, it took years — but Richardson said she firmly believes she manifested her love and marriage from her visualization board into real life.

Richardson's marriage may be the most miraculous thing she's manifested, but she said her visualization board has brought her many other successes. "Phil Donahue was on here, and that's the first national show I ever did after I put him on the board," she said.

2. 15 Minutes of Fame

When Lisa Nichols, a struggling single mom turned successful entrepreneur, made her visualization board, she included the following words: "Lisa Reveals All On Oprah." A few years later, that's exactly what she did. Nichols, a motivational speaker, was invited by Oprah to discuss her visualization board experience on the show as part of a segment inspired by The Secret, a movie about the law of attraction in which the main character manifests his dream home from a visualization board.

"It's like if you were at a restaurant and you ordered something," Nichols said, describing her own visualization board process. "You fully expect it to come served that way. That's how the universe is. You're putting out orders consciously and unconsciously and expecting it to come back. So if you say, 'I'm never going to have a good relationship.' — you just placed an order."

3. Olympic Motivation

When three-time Olympian Ruben Gonzalez was a kid, he wrote Sports Illustrated asking where he could learn how to luge. The magazine mailed Gonzalez a photograph of a man racing on a luge, and Gonzalez framed it so he could see it from his bed every morning when he woke up.

"Every morning, the first person I saw when I woke up was 'The Luge Man,'" Gonzalez wrote. "Seeing 'The Luge Man' was a constant reminder that I was training for the Olympics. He reminded me to eat right, to work out, and to surround myself with winners. At night, before turning out the lights, the last person I saw was 'The Luge Man.' All night long, I dreamt about the luge and the Olympics.

"During the day, the picture focused my conscious mind on the dream. At night, it conditioned my unconscious mind to aim for my goal."

Gonzalez is now such a believer in the success that visualization boarding brought to his life that he has an entire website dedicated to encouraging others to try it for themselves.

Do you use a visualization board? Has it worked for you? Please share in comments!

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