In 2020, can visualisation boards really make all our goals a reality?

This time of year is heavy with traditions. One of my favourites is a relatively new one, in which my dear friend Victoria and I swap festive greetings on 31 December with a variation on the following words: “Next year is going to be our year!” “This is definitely our year.” Or “For crying out loud, it must be our year this time.”

Since we’ve started swapping these optimistic messages, I can safely say that it has never been “my year” (though Victoria has married a wonderful man and published a top 10 novel). But this year, my friends, will be different Chez Manby. I’ve decided to increase my chances of having a truly stonking 2020 by creating a cosmic-ordering-style vision board, featuring everything I need for my ideal life. There will be pictures of Californian beach houses, Venetian palazzos and shaggy rescue dogs. There will be a new car, big gold earrings and numerous Sardinian pastries. I’m sticking it all down and sending it out to the universe.

But is there any science behind creating what’s basically a wish list? Dr Tara Swart seems to think so. Swart is a neuroscientist and former psychiatric doctor. She lectures at MIT Sloan and Kings College, London. There’s nothing in the least bit “woo woo” about her CV but earlier this year, she published The Source: Open Your Mind, Change Your Life (Penguin, £8.99) in which she takes a closer look at the Law of Attraction that was popularised by that much derided spiritual bestseller, The Secret. Swart claims, “If we strip away the mystique, at the heart of this idea is a fundamental truth that is backed up by the latest breakthroughs in neuroscience: most of the things we want from life – health, happiness, wealth, love – are governed by our ability to think, feel and act; in other words, by our brain.”

Swart believes that visualisation is the key to success in most endeavours. Professional sportspeople have long known the value of imagining a match right down to the shoelaces in the trainers they will be wearing while they’re playing it. Swart says, “It works by raising our awareness, directing focused attention to the things we want most in life, and overcoming the brain’s desire to protect itself from new or difficult situations.” Visualisation encourages abstract thinking, fresh perspectives and the generation of new solutions to old problems.

To help with that visualisation, Swart suggests that her readers create an “action board”: a collage of images that represents everything the reader aspires to draw into their life. But merely putting together a wish list and hoping for a lottery win isn’t enough. Swart writes, “we are looking to create something that will inspire and manifest in your future through your actions, rather than merely a vehicle for daydreams of second homes abroad and lots of money.”

This is how it works, in neuroscientific terms, “You create an action board to prime your brain to grasp any opportunities that will bring you closer to the things you have identified you want in your life… For example, if weight loss … features on your board, an image relating to this will act as a prompt to encourage you to start going to the gym, do yoga or change your diet.”

Nice idea, Dr Swart. But what if, like me, you are a person who can ignore an inspirational note to self even when it’s written on multiple body parts (all your own) with a Sharpie? Ah, but that’s why you need to use pictures. “Images track instantly to your brain’s visual centres, bypassing conscious thought, which means the brain’s filtering system can’t edit them out or dismiss them.” Swart suggests you avoid words and phrases altogether, with the exception of figures. You can, for example, write down the exact amount of money you’d like to earn.

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Once you’ve made it, your board needs to be placed somewhere that you will see it every day. Ideally, Swart suggests putting it next to the bed so it’s the last thing you see before you fall asleep at night, the rationale being that “If you have paid deliberate attention to a repetitive activity just before falling asleep… then this will tend to dominate the imagery of your dreams”, making it more likely that your subconscious will spot opportunities to manifest those dreams during the day.

However, if you don’t want your on-off partner to see that you’ve specified a Jason Momoa lookalike for 2020, you could stick it on the inside of a cupboard door. Or create your Momoa worship board on Pinterest.

Swart herself used action boards to call love into her life. After adding a small picture of an engagement ring and the phrase “Joy comes out of the blue” to her 2016 board, she met her now husband on a plane. “I am sure that meeting in the sky counts as ‘out of the blue’…” Swart writes. Perhaps seeing that phrase every day led her to take a chance on their unexpected meeting on a long-haul flight when she might otherwise have taken a sleeping tablet and put on an eye mask. Action boards are all about priming your brain to recognise your lucky break when it arrives.

I’ve actually tried vision-action boarding before. Twenty years ago, at the behest of a friend who happened to be Australia’s biggest astrologer, I drew a picture featuring all the great things I wished for in 2000. I drew the little old house that I would later move into. I drew the sun to represent a trip to Los Angeles. I drew myself, with shorter and more fashionable hair, surrounded by hearts to represent the love I hoped to draw into my life. For good measure, I drew hearts fluttering right across my face like pink and red snowflakes.

It worked. I got the little house. But then when I drew the picture, I’d already exchanged contracts and had a completion date. Likewise, I knew I was going to LA that February and when I got there, it was indeed sunny. Because it usually is. The only thing that wasn’t already locked into my diary when I drew that picture in 1999 was love.

Love did not come knocking in 2000 but about three months after I sketched myself covered in hearts, I did come down with a medieval-style ailment that covered my body in a wandering rash. A wandering pink and red heart-shaped rash. My astrologer friend decided that I’d manifested the hearts I’d scribbled over my face. Apparently, the universe does not deal in metaphor. Swart would doubtless have a more scientific reason. Like “the rash was a coincidence”.

Towards the end of her book, Swart quotes Goethe. It’s a quote that a friend of mind scribbled inside a Christmas card for me many years ago – around the same time as my first action board experiment. I recently found that card again. The quote is “Whatever you do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

It’s certainly true that nothing happens unless you take a first step. Twenty years ago, I was much more willing to take chances. The dream boards I created in the noughties featured many little ideas that did eventually become books or other projects. Looking back, I’m not sure why I gave up the habit of optimistic visualisation. So this New Year’s Eve, I’m making another action board, taking extra care to avoid adding anything that looks like a hideous skin rash… 2020, my friends, is going to be our year.