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I was planning a trip to Puerto Rico when I stumbled onto a photo I’d pinned ten months earlier and got actual goosebumps.
Every year in January, I make a secret Pinterest board. It’s not for things I want to buy or rooms I want to redesign, but for moments I want to live, ways I want to feel, the life I want to be living when December rolls around. Back in January 2025, my bright-eyed, fresh-start self pinned a photo of women on a beach, running, laughing, completely free. I had zero plans for what that actually was or how it would happen. I just knew I wanted to feel like that.
And then life happened, ten months of it. Work and kids and garden harvests and foster dogs and school pickups. All the beautiful chaos that fills the space between January optimism and November reality.
Then a girls trip to Puerto Rico with my Wisconsin friends (the ones I’ve had for over a decade) popped into my life along with a gut feeling that I absolutely needed to be there. It was an impossible destination, three flights and a drive to get there. This would be the longest I’d be away from my kids in a long time. I knew I had to go, so I booked it. As I was pinning inspiration for the trip, I remembered my 2025 board and clicked it open, and that’s when I got the goosebumps.
There it was: the exact photo my January self had pinned with no plan, no idea, just a feeling. And my November self, ten months and a lifetime of ordinary days later, was staring at it, about to live it.
A few weeks later, there we were in Puerto Rico, on a beach, running around, laughing, completely free, exactly like the photo I had pinned ten months before I had any idea how or when or with whom it would actually happen. I was so awake to it when it happened because I had held a vision of it months before, and I knew it when I was in it. It felt like the most beautiful kind of magic: the kind where intuition meets intentional action and life surprises you with exactly what you asked for.
I’m a “where the woo meets the work” sort of girl, which means you set the vision first, you hold it, then you make the plan and take the action and let life unfold in the space between dreaming and doing. For the record, I also pinned photos of chickens and chicken coops for a full year before I held my first egg, so yes, this approach works for beach trips and backyard farming alike.
But here’s the thing I’ve learned: manifestation without strategy is just daydreaming with good lighting, and strategy without vision is just a to-do list with no soul. The magic happens when they meet in the middle, and that’s what I want to walk you through today.
Why Manifestation Alone Won’t Get You There
For a long time, I thought manifestation was about wanting something badly enough and trusting it would arrive, and while belief is powerful, what I’ve learned through building my business (and honestly, through seasons of trial and error) is that belief without a plan often leads to spinning in circles wondering why the thing hasn’t shown up yet.
Manifestation sets the direction, but strategy builds the road, and without that road, dreams stay abstract. They feel exciting but untethered, inspiring but incomplete, and I’ve seen this play out again and again in my own life and in the lives of entrepreneurs I work with who want more but don’t know how to bridge the gap between the vision in their head and the reality they’re living.
The moment things begin to change is when you stop waiting for clarity and start creating it, when you stop just pinning the photo and hoping and start holding the vision while asking yourself what would need to be true for this to actually happen. That question alone shifts everything.
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How to Turn a Feeling into a Clear, Tangible Goal
Dreaming big is important, but dreaming without direction can leave you spinning, which is why when I think about manifestation now, I think about clarity just as much as belief. I don’t just ask myself what I want; I ask how I want it to show up in my day-to-day life, what it looks like on a random Tuesday, how it feels in my body when I imagine living it.
That’s where visuals come in for me, because vision boards (whether physical or digital, hello secret Pinterest boards) help translate feelings into something concrete. They give your brain cues about what’s possible and what you’re moving toward, but the real shift happens when those visuals are supported by intentional goal-setting that turns “I want to feel free” into “I’m booking the trip, I’m protecting the weekend, I’m saying yes to the thing that scares me.”
I also love choosing a word of the year because it becomes a filter for every decision, and words like “ease” or “spaciousness” don’t just sound nice, they shape how I work, how I rest, and how I define success. From there, I get specific with goals, not vague hopes but outcomes I can actually measure, timelines I can work toward, and milestones that give my vision form. Manifestation becomes so much more powerful when your goals are clear enough to act on and flexible enough to evolve as you do.
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How to Reverse Engineer Your Dream Life and Business
Big dreams have a way of feeling overwhelming until you break them down, which is why one of the most grounding practices I’ve adopted is reverse engineering: starting with the end in mind and working backward to understand what actually needs to happen to get there.
Instead of asking, “How will this ever work?” I ask, “What would need to be true for this to be possible?” and then I look at the year, then the quarter, then the month, and finally the week. Suddenly, what once felt impossibly far away feels tangible and within reach, like something I can actually move toward one decision at a time.
This is also where tools and support can make a huge difference, and I often use platforms like ChatGPT as a brainstorming partner, not to replace my intuition, but to help organize my thinking and explore possibilities I might not see on my own.
Strategy doesn’t have to be rigid to be effective; it just needs to be intentional, and above all, it needs to allow room for life. Plans will shift, seasons will change, and flexibility isn’t failure; it’s part of building something sustainable that actually fits the life you want to live.
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How to Take Aligned Action (Without Overthinking It)
This is where manifestation becomes lived, not just imagined, because progress rarely comes from dramatic leaps forward; it comes from small, consistent actions that align with who you’re becoming, even when you can’t see the full picture yet.
I often think about showing up as the version of myself who already has what I want, not because I’ve arrived, but because I trust the process enough to act like it’s already on its way. That might look like writing one page, sending one email, or taking a few quiet minutes to reconnect with my intention before starting the day, and those small actions build momentum faster than we realize. They also build trust in yourself, in your ability to follow through, and in the fact that growth doesn’t have to be rushed to be real.
When I booked that Puerto Rico trip, I didn’t have a five-year plan for how beach runs with girlfriends would fit into my life; I just had a gut feeling and a willingness to say yes even though it felt impossible. That’s aligned action: not forcing, not over-planning, just trusting and moving toward what feels right.
A Visualization Practice Grounded in Science
One of my favorite conversations on this topic was with Dr. Tara Swart, a neuroscientist and executive coach who beautifully bridges the gap between science and spirituality, and what she shared completely reframed how I think about visualization.
Visualization isn’t about escaping reality; it’s about training your brain to notice opportunities, patterns, and possibilities it might otherwise overlook. When you visualize with intention, you’re priming your mind to recognize what aligns with your goals and values, which is exactly why I was so awake to that moment on the beach in Puerto Rico. My brain had been holding that image for ten months, and when reality matched the vision, I recognized it immediately, like my whole body knew before my mind caught up.
That’s also why visualization works best when paired with action. One builds belief and the other builds momentum. Together, they change how you show up in your life and business in ways you can’t always predict but can absolutely feel.
How to Build a Life and Business That Feels Like Yours
At the end of the day, this isn’t about choosing between dreaming and doing, because you don’t have to be all strategy or all intuition. You can be both, and honestly, the most fulfilling lives and businesses are built exactly where intention and execution meet, where the woo and the work shake hands and get to building.
When you give yourself permission to dream and create a plan to support it, you stop feeling caught between wanting more and not knowing how to get there, and you begin building something that feels aligned, grounded, and sustainable, something that supports not just your goals, but your whole life.
So make the secret Pinterest board. Choose your word of the year. Let yourself want what you want without apologizing for it or needing to know exactly how it will happen. And then ask yourself: what would need to be true for this to be possible? That question is where the woo meets the work, and I promise you, that’s where everything starts to shift.
