Let me tell you what I do not do.
I do not cut pictures out of magazines and paste them on a poster board and hang it somewhere I will see it every morning as a reminder of everything I have not yet achieved. I do not sit in a circle of well-meaning women with scissors and glue sticks and a collective vision of abundance while someone plays soft music in the background.
I respect the people who do. Some of my closest friends swear by it. It works for them and I believe them completely.
It does not work for me. And I have spent enough time pretending otherwise to know the difference between a practice that serves you and a practice you perform because it is what people like you are supposed to do.
What I actually do.
I keep a list.
Short term goals. Mid-term goals. Long term goals. Three columns, updated regularly, revisited often. Not a dream board. A working document. The difference between a vision board and a list is the difference between a wish and a plan. One hangs on a wall. The other goes in my bag.
A short-term goal might be something as simple as getting out of bed and taking a shower on a day when my anxiety is running the show. That counts. That is a win. And here is why it matters more than it sounds – on the days when the short-term goal is just survival, I can look at the mid- and long-term columns and remember that this is temporary. I have things to do. I have places to go. The depression is not the destination. It is weather passing through.
The list keeps me oriented when my own head is working against me. It says- you have a plan. The plan is still there. Get through today and the plan will be waiting.
That is not small. That is everything on certain days.
The spiritual infrastructure.
Here is the part that does not get talked about enough in the productivity conversation.
I meditate. I pray. I sit in intentional silence and I visualize what I want my life to look like- not as a poster board exercise but as a genuine spiritual practice. I believe with my whole chest that what you put into the universe with a pure heart has a way of coming back to you. What’s for me is for me. The Black community has been saying this for generations and we are not naive. We are being spiritually precise.
But I also believe the devil knows the Bible better than most people do. He used to be an angel, after all. Which means that intention without discernment is just hope with no armor. My intention has to be clean. Free of jealousy, spite, pettiness, and the kind of low-frequency energy that cancels out everything good you are trying to build. You cannot manifest abundance while actively wishing someone else’s downfall. The math does not work that way.
So, I am deliberate about what I let into the space around my goals. What I think. Who I talk to. What I consume. What I give my attention to. All of it feeds or starves the intention. I choose to feed it.
I also leave room. For the path to look different than I planned. For my ancestors to redirect me toward something better than what I imagined. For God to do what God does- which is frequently not what I expected and always better than what I asked for. I have specific goals and I hold them loosely enough to be surprised by where they actually lead.
That is not contradiction. That is faith with a list.
Purpose-driven goals should be simple and actionable.
This is the part where a lot of goal-setting advice falls apart. It gets complicated. It gets abstract. It turns into a framework with subsets and quarterly reviews and color-coded categories that require their own management system.
No. A goal should be simple enough to state in one sentence and actionable enough to start today.
I want to build a content platform that reaches Black women with real talk about real life. I am writing six posts a week and building a system around it. That is a long-term goal with a short-term action attached to it every single day.
I want financial independence that does not depend on any single income source. I am building multiple streams simultaneously and making decisions that serve that goal. Every day something moves.
I want a life that feels as full as it looks from the outside. I am designing it intentionally- the travel, the furniture I build with my hands, the solo dinners, the coffee house mornings, the relationships I protect and the ones I let go. Every choice is a vote for the life I am building toward.
Simple. Actionable. Reviewed regularly. Adjusted as needed.
No scissors required.
The honest truth about vision boards.
They are not wrong. They are just not mine.
If cutting a picture of a house out of a magazine and looking at it every morning keeps you connected to what you are working toward- do it. If a full altar with candles and crystals and an ancestor offering keeps you grounded- do it. If the group vision board session with the soft music and the communal scissors gives you life- go get your life.
I will be at home. With my list. And my very specific, very powerful, entirely non-poster-board board of directors.
The Father. The Son. The Holy Spirit. Every ancestor who scraped, sacrificed, and prayed so I could be standing here with options. Georgeann- my grandmother, the one who taught me to cook and still whispers in my ear about the proper amount of spices- is in that boardroom. My mother Shirley, who taught me construction and how to run rental properties before dementia started taking her memories, is in there too.
That is a serious boardroom. Those are serious people. And not a single one of them has ever handed me a glue stick.
Now a glue gun? Whole different conversation. That thing is cordless, baby. I have reattached a sole on a shoe in a hotel room in Mexico. Fixed a hem thirty minutes before a dinner. Secured a broken drawer on a piece of furniture I was mid-project on at midnight. A glue gun is a life skill and I will defend it at full volume. But a glue stick and a dream collage? Chile. My ancestors did not survive the Middle Passage for that. Tee-hee-hee!
What is your manifestation practice – vision board, list, prayer, something entirely your own? Drop it in the comments.
