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This is an All Ears English Podcast, Episode 86: “Why You Need a Vision Board to Achieve Your English Goals.”

Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, where you’ll finally get real, native English conversation with your hosts, Lindsay McMahon, the ‘English Adventurer’ and Gabby Wallace, the ‘Language Angel,’ from Boston, USA.

In this episode, you’ll learn about a visual and artistic way to reach your English goals.

Hey Lindsay. How’s it going?

All right Gabby. How ‘bout (about) you?

Doing well, thank you.

Excellent. I’m glad to hear it.

Yeah. So (in) today’s episode, our ‘Wisdom Wednesday’, we want to share with our listeners, with you guys (um), what, what is a vision board or what a vision board is and how you can use it to achieve your English goals.

Nice topic.

Yeah. So I learned about vision boards, (um), from, from a co-worker of mine, who, (you know), she’s a life coach, she’s an English teacher (um) and she told me about this idea where you create a visual. (Um) it could be as big or as small as you want. It could be (like) a poster, could be a piece of paper. (Um) you can draw, you can paint, you can cut out pictures from magazines. You have a lot of options obviously. (Um) so you take your goals and you put them into a visual format. So (you know), for example, if one of my goals is to take a vacation next winter, (um), I would cut out pictures of where I want to go. Maybe I want to go to France, so I would cut out a picture of the Eiffel Tower (um) and (uh) put that on my vision board.

Awesome.

Yeah. So that’s just one example right? And (um) I think it, it works well with concrete items like taking a vacation, but it could also work well with more intangible items, (like) I want to fall in love, (like), maybe putting (um), (you know) a visual of the kind of person you’re looking for, (you know) – not that it’s all about looks.

Right.

But, (um), (you know), someone with a big heart, so you draw a big heart.

Yeah. Or just to get in a certain mindset, I really like to (um) take quotes. (I mean) we do a lot of quotes on this show.

Yeah.

But my, in my, my space, I like to have quotes of people I admire and their (um) kind of philosophies because I want to take that on as part of my philosophy. So that could also be part of your vision board – having quotes.

Oooh Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I love your vision board that you have with the quotes on it. That’s really cool. And so the idea is to have your vision board in a place that is visible so that you look at it every day. (You know) it doesn’t have to be in a public place, ‘cause (because) you might feel like these are really personal desires. (Um) you could even have it online. I know there are websites for creating vision boards now. (Um) so you don’t have to make a physical one. Maybe you, you don’t like painting, or cutting out pictures or something. (Um) so you don’t have to do that, but (um) make it in a place where you save it, you make it visible and it will remind you of your goals that you want to achieve.

Yeah. So for an English student, for our listeners, what are some examples, (uh) very tangible examples of what they would put on the vision board. I’m, I’m thinking for example, if you want to spend a year in New York and work (uh) here, maybe a picture of the Empire State Building…

Yeah.

…or you’re working in an English speaking company.

Yeah, exactly. (Like) (um) work-related, last week, we had (um) presentation expert Carl Kwan on our show and he was talking about, (you know), ways to make your presentations better so maybe you could find a picture of someone giving a presentation (um) or draw it, (you know). And, and that would – yeah that would just remind you to work on your presentation skills or to, (you know) work on that specific presentation that you have coming up.

Yeah or just something a little bit more (um) of a past time if you have a dream of taking a road trip across the US which is a very common (uh) thing that people like to do when they come here. Have a picture of you in a, in a car going across the US. That sounds awesome to me.

Fun. Totally. Totally. You should have some fun things on the vision board, for sure.

(Mm-hm). Not all business.

Yeah. Yeah. I love that idea. And so you can use the vision board for really any goal that you have, (um) and again, customize it for you. You can just, you can have quotes, you can write words, you can have pictures. (Um) but put it somewhere visible where it will be inspiring you every day so you don’t forget about your goals and, and let those (kind of) day-to-day (um), can I say annoyances, occurrences….

Yeah.

…take away all your time (uh) before working on your goals. So, yeah.

Yeah, you’ve got to keep that vision in mind.

Yeah. If you, if you keep your vision board visible, then it’s more likely you’ll make your goal a priority. Right?

Nice idea. Thanks for bringing this up.

Yeah, yeah, no problem.

Lindsay: If you want to put your ears into English more often, be sure to subscribe to our podcast in iTunes on your computer or on your smartphone. Thanks so much for listening and see you next time