Last week, I wrote about why vision boards sometimes stop working. 

Not because the practice itself is flawed, but because we often don’t have a clear or deep enough “why” for what we’re envisioning for ourselves.

Many of us know by now that vision is key to creating transformation in our lives. But knowing “about” vision is not the same thing as being able to use it.

The next layer of vision, the piece that moves us from thinking about a vision to actually embodying the energy of it, is specificity.

It’s similar to the distinction astronauts have experienced. 

Being in orbit around the moon, observing it through a small porthole is distinct from actually landing on it, bouncing along the surface, collecting samples of the moon’s dust and gazing at the surrounding stars from that vantage point. 

Most visions remain general. “I want a new home.” “I want more connection.” “I want to feel better in my body.” “I want to travel.”

Those are beautiful intentions. But they stay conceptual until we allow them to become detailed. Specificity is what makes vision inhabitable.

It’s one thing to say you want to host Thanksgiving in your new home. It’s another thing entirely to stand in your current kitchen and imagine yourself setting the table in that new space. 

To see the light coming through the windows. To hear the hum of conversation. To smell the variety of delicious foods cooking. 

To feel the warmth in the hand of the person on the right and the left of you, sitting around the table, as you share gratitude for being together.

And then take it a step further. When you’re at the grocery store, imagining the feeling of shopping for that dinner. Putting the items in your cart. 

Nothing has changed in your external environment. And yet something shifts internally. You are no longer thinking about the future. You are experiencing it.

This is where imagination becomes an extraordinary tool.

Imagination is not fantasy. It is rehearsal. It is the ability to allow your nervous system to feel what it would be like to live inside the life you are choosing.

When you say, “I want to travel,” it remains vague. 

But when you look up a specific river cruise, when you see the exact route, the villages along the water, the deck where you would stand with your beloved at sunset, the vision begins to take on form.

You begin to research cruise lines, and maybe try on some new sunglasses, shoes or dresses for the trip. You can feel the air. You can hear the water rippling by. You can sense yourself there.

And in that moment, you collapse time – the “future” life you want is already happening, as far as your subconscious mind is concerned.

Or perhaps your vision is to feel strong, fit and capable in your body. 

Instead of saying, “I need to get in shape,” you picture crossing a finish line. You imagine tying your shoes on a cool morning. You feel the rhythm of your breath, the power of your stride.

Specificity gives your vision real life touchpoints. Specificity moves the vision from an abstract desire into a lived, present experience.

And when you allow yourself to embody it fully, something powerful happens. The vision stops being something you are chasing. It becomes something you are practicing.

This is what it means to become facile with vision. You are no longer inspired by it occasionally. You are in relationship with it.

Throughout your day, in ordinary moments, you can pause and ask, “If my desired intention were already unfolding, what would I be noticing? What would I be feeling? What else might be happening?”

You don’t need to force belief. You don’t need to bulldoze your way forward. You simply allow yourself to experience, with detail and presence, what you would love.

And over time, that practice reshapes how you feel and move through your day. It influences your decisions. It informs your actions. 

Not because you pushed yourself into change, but because you began living inside the vision before it was fully visible.

There’s a saying, actually it’s more accurately a universal principle that says, “Everything is created twice, first in mind and then in form.” 

What I would add to this is, when you emotionally feel yourself in the life you’re imagining, you’ve then activated the creative energy required to bring it about. 

Sensory-based details connect us to the emotional experience. 

This week, I invite you to choose one part of your vision and make it specific. 

Zoom in. Add detail. Let your imagination do what it was designed to do.

Stand inside it. Feel it. Breathe it in. Bring it into your daily activity.

Rather than vision being something that will happen someday, embody it as something you are experiencing now.

Next week, we’ll talk about the third piece that allows vision to sustain itself. But for now, let yourself practice this. Specificity. Imagination. Presence.

And notice what begins to shift inside of you.