The following excerpt is transcribed from The Future Of Now event that took place on 10 March 2022.
 

Patti Dobrowolski

Patti Dobrowolski has achieved international recognition for her signature high energy take on goal setting, high performance business consultancy, and her two books (9 Tips to Up Your Creative Genius and Drawing Solutions: How Visual Goal Setting Will Change Your Life), as well as her four TEDx talks. She has touched millions of futures with her videos, her books, and her podcast – Up Your Creative Genius. Patti believes that your drawing skills don’t matter, but the simple act of visioning  your future and drawing it will change your life.

 

Key points

• Dream It, Draw It, Do It – the process of visual goal setting radically improves your success levels.
• Support your Future State to achieve positive change with daily action and regular goal setting to step into your future with confidence.
• Define the goals that matter the most to you and actively pursue them daily with incremental action.

 

Visual goal setting: why drawing works for future you

The difference visual goal setting makes is the way it affects your brain – by linking your positive dreams of your future to positive creative flow, you intermingle the goal with your brain’s success process. 

The success process refers to the chemical reaction in your brain when something good happens, dopamine in particular is triggered by your internal reward system.Combine this initial boost of dopamine while drawing and dreaming your future state to the visual and emotional reminder when you see your future state drawing – and you’ve got a repeatable system to fulfil your goals.

If you draw a picture of where you want to be, put that picture somewhere you see it every day – like your bathroom mirror or the dashboard of your car – you look at it, you daydream it, and you start taking small incremental actions on it.Those actions add up into bold changes – taking these steps boosts your chances at success by 42%!
 

The Process of visual goal setting: how to harness creativity and dopamine, and getting that 42% increase in your chance of success

How to use drawing to set goals:

• Set aside some time to be calm and reflective. Use deep breathing, physical mindfulness, or guided meditations like those available from Positive Intelligence. 
• Think about the good things in your life right now – the things you’re thankful for or consider a success – then acknowledge the things that are tough. 
• Re-center and imagine your ideal future – what are you doing professionally? How’s your health? What needs to be going well for you to feel successful, fulfilled, and happy in your future state? 
• Start by writing out the word, then follow that by adding a drawing that represents it – don’t worry if your drawing is terrible, trust the process!

 

“We care a lot about the experience that we’ve designed for them in the workshops, but sometimes, so much of what we do is out of our control. And I think the big lesson we learned this year was: If it’s not in your control, not your accountability, or responsibility – let it go.”
– Patti Dobrowolski

  
Below is the map the group co-created as led by Patti during The Future of Now session.

How To Use The Map Going Forward

1. Put it somewhere you can see.
2. Once a week spend a little time focussing on it, remind yourself of the things you did and decide on a few things to do in the next week to achieve the future state.
3. Rinse and Repeat – every time you start feeling like you need a change, get out your  paper and draw!
4. Colour it as much as you want, or draw it in black and white and colour them in as you achieve these things.

 

“One of the easiest ways to create flow is to get outside and do something challenging – hike and climb something hard, go surfing a wave that’s a little too big. Take yourself out of your comfort zone. If you take a problem into that space, you’ll have better ideas come to you there.”
– Patti Dobrowolski

 

What are some of the biggest roadblocks for people to stop drawing and being creative?

Patti: Well, I think your inner-critic is the biggest roadblock you’ve got, and so if you can overcome this then what? The technique I use is a method of self-talk to say everything’s fantastic. For example, if I fail at something, if I draw a picture and somebody doesn’t know what it is – I’m like, ‘that’s fantastic, that is so great!’ So, I’m always just affirming that my drawing is going to be good, because trust me, my drawing was so bad when I first started – it just was stick figures.

Breaking through the fear of that critical voice, for me, was to just draw constantly.

What are some of the key themes that you notice people are adding to their vision boards, especially now we’re so deep into the pandemic?

Patti: A lot of people are adding health, and they’re adding connection – community is showing up everywhere! On every vision board, people tend to talk about the importance of community.They’re also talking about partnership – because we care more! We’ve realised how little we cared before, stuff was a bigger priority than connection.

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About The Future Of Now series

Our goal at More Space For Light with The Future of Now (FON) series is to build a community of like-minded passionate professionals. We intend to bring together like-minded professionals to share, inspire, and explore new opportunities for growth. So you can discover new ways of working to bring back into your organisation.

 

More about the organisations connected to this event

• morespaceforlight.com.au – A strategy and innovation consultancy specialising in both in-person and/or remote workshops, design programs and Design Sprints.
• MURAL.CO – a remote collaboration whiteboard. With this platform you will supercharge your remote and in-person meetings and workshops.
• Butter.us – an all-in-one remote workshop tool designed to help put your energy back into facilitating.
• hacker.exchange – a global education company that is supercharging the next generation of startups & leaders.