In my book ‘Born to Do It’ I discuss the importance of a vision board. A vision board is a tool that can help you manifest your goals and desires more swiftly. It is a visualization tool comprising a board (of any sort) that you use to build a collage of words and pictures that represent your goals and dreams. Vision boards provide you with a daily visual reminder of these dreams and goals. The reason vision boards work so well is because you can see them every day.
It’s very important that the images you place on your vision board reflect your goals and dreams and they must always be images that you are drawn to and that you would want to look at every day. Photos, quotes, sayings, affirmations, images of places you want to go, reminders of events, places and people, postcards from friends – in other words, just about anything that will inspire you.
It is also very important to get into a routine of looking at your vision board several times a day, ideally first thing in the morning and before you go to bed. Looking at pictures related to what you want helps you to feel the positive feelings you want to cultivate more easily. I created a vision board that was very specific and focused on what I wanted to achieve for myself and my business, which included being booked for high profile speaking events, features in prolific press, earning more money per month, working with more amazing films and filmmakers, winning more awards, and securing more festival screenings for our clients.
So how does this apply to your film festival strategy? First of all, buy yourself a board – A3 size is ideal. Then start collecting images that you are drawn to of film festivals this can be your dream film festival logos, filmmakers winning Best Director awards or Best of Fest awards, looking glamorous on the red carpet, prize money, securing a distribution deal and most importantly images of people responding positively to your film.
I look at my vision board every morning and every night which kept me motivated and inspired me to stay in alignment with my goals. And this will help you stay on track and keep on top of your festival strategy. It will help you not give up when rejections pop up and stay grounded. A couple of months later one of my client’s films was accepted into a very prestigious film festival – the Locarno Film Festival and I had the festival’s logo on my vision board. Seeing is believing.
