Day 5: The Anti-Vision Board. Stop Manifesting, Start Reverse Engineering
September Rentrée Series
🍂 Welcome to the September Rentrée! Every weekday this month, you'll get one bold, bite-sized piece to spark reflection, shift your habits, and help you design a life that feels good in real life. 1 month. 20 bold truths. A life-changing September. In France, la rentrée (the return) is a national event. It's about fresh routines, new ideas, and intentional renewal. And that's exactly the energy we're bringing here!
It's Friday! Day 5 of your September Rentrée!
This week, you got honest with yourself. You stopped treating yourself like a broken machine. You audited where you actually are. You named the loops keeping you stuck. You caught your brain's lies.
Now for the final piece of clarity of the week.
Vision boards are procrastination porn for people who want to feel productive without actually changing anything.
You cut out pictures. You manifest. You visualise.
Meanwhile, your actual life stays exactly the same.
Maybe manifestation works, maybe it doesn't. But I'd rather make shit happen than wait for the universe to deliver.
I see it everywhere online: people spending entire weekends creating gorgeous vision boards. Carefully curated images of morning yoga, fresh smoothies, organised spaces.
They stare at them daily, waiting for transformation to somehow... arrive?
By March, the board is forgotten, and they're still hitting snooze 10 times every morning.
Here's what nobody tells you:
Your brain treats "future you" like a complete stranger.
UCLA researchers found we use different brain regions when thinking about our future selves vs our current selves.¹
We literally process "future you" the same way we process other people.
No wonder vision boards don't work. You're making a mood board for a stranger.
The fix? Work backwards.
Identity-based habit change starts with who you're becoming, then reverse engineers the daily evidence.
Instead of manifesting "January You", become "January You"
If "January You" has their shit together, what are they doing daily that "September You" isn't?
"January You" who meditates daily started with 2 minutes in September
"January You" who runs 5k began by putting on running shoes
"January You" who reads before bed put their phone charger in another room
You don't need manifestation. You need reverse engineering
Think about it: every current habit you have is already proving an identity. The person who checks email before getting out of bed is proving "I prioritise other people's urgencies." The person who walks after lunch is proving "I'm someone who takes care of myself."
Your brain believes what it has evidence for. So give it evidence.
Do this today:
Write one specific thing "January You" does effortlessly
Shrink it to the smallest daily proof (identity evidence)
Start that today. Not Monday. Today.
Example: "January You" journals every morning? "September You" writes one sentence after coffee. That's it. One sentence = evidence = identity shift.
Ask yourself:
What would "January You" thank "September You" for starting?
What identity are you already proving through your daily actions – and is it the one you want?
The Payoff:
Stop decorating your dreams. Start designing your days.
"January You" is just "September You" with 90 reps under their belt.
Every day between now and the end of the year, you're either gathering evidence for who you're becoming or reinforcing who you've always been.
Vision boards might make you feel good about tomorrow.
Reverse engineering makes you different today.
With love,
Noemie x
If today's post resonated, subscribe free to get the rest of Your September Rentrée series: 20 days of bold truths to design your wellbeing.
¹Hal Hershfield and colleagues (2011, UCLA & Stanford) used fMRI scans (which track and measure blood flow to “see” brain activity) and found that when people thought about their future selves, their brains activated patterns similar to when they thought about other people (particularly strangers). Isn't that wild?!