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This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.
One day last year, I was chatting with WNBA Hall of Famer Tamika Catchings about New Year’s resolutions when she said something that caught my attention: She brought up vision boards, a collage of images and quotes that represent a person’s goals and hopes for the upcoming year.
With respect to Catchings — and the whole vision board community — I never really believed creating one could make much of a difference. It seemed like a lot of flipping through magazines and cutting and pasting for something that might be nice to look at but isn’t functional.
Or is it?
“You don’t know what you want and you don’t know where you’re going if you don’t see it,” Catchings told me at the time.
Catchings is a four-time Olympic gold medalist, a WNBA champion and the 2011 league MVP. During her career, she was known for diving for loose balls, playing intense defense and outworking opponents.
She first got into making vision boards around six years ago at her annual basketball camp, where she heard from the authors of the book “One Word That Will Change Your Life.”
Every December since, Catchings has put together a new vision board for the coming year. She sits down, “stills” herself and reflects. What mattered to her? What impact did she want to have next year? What did she want to look or feel differently?
From that reflection, she chooses a single word that embodies her goals and aspirations — a word she can return to when she needs to get on track. She then writes it on a large board and surrounds it with magazine cutouts, newspaper clippings, quotes or a photo of who has inspired her. Some of the board is personal, and some is for dreaming. Whatever speaks to her.
She frames her vision board and hangs it in her closet. For her, it’s a map for how she wants her year to go.
Her word for 2026 is intentional. It is her measuring stick, she said, for everything she does. Her board holds her accountable.
Just a few minutes into hearing Catchings talk about her vision board process, I realized I wanted to try it for myself. And when she said at the end of our video call, “You better send me a picture of your board,” I knew I had to try it.
A few weeks later, at the beginning of January, Catchings asked me what I imagined myself being and feeling in 2026. I told her I would love to grow past overthinking and overanalyzing and become more confident.
I read aloud 10 goals that I had written down:
Read 35 books
Watch 35 movies
24-hour cap on responding to any message
Journal every day, even if it’s one line
Write and mail handwritten letters to my friends on their birthdays, milestones or just because
Join a new volunteer group
Limit social media (in Settings, plug in the time-limit feature) to one hour daily, no phone first 30 mins of day
Two cups of coffee per day max
Try one new thing a month (new place like museum, or new activity/hobby)
Stretch before bed
When I finished, Catchings told me she had written all my goals down as I was reading them.
“And the first word that came to mind for me,” she said, “was community.”
We hashed out every one of my goals and the reason I wrote each one down. For example, I told Catchings that I want to journal every day because it makes me feel more present in my life and forces me to remember more about each day. I also feel more in tune with myself, and it makes it easier to identify if I should make any changes.
From there, we threw some more words out there that might sum up my goals: “connect,” “learn,” “grow,” “new.”
As we continued to brainstorm, Catchings reminded me how important it is to write down any word that came to my mind. She said it helps you get to your perfect word quicker if you can weed out all the ones that don’t quite feel right.
Finally, I said two words to Catchings that really clicked for me: “expand” and “stretch.”
“Oh, you need to write those down, Elise,” she said immediately.
I want to read all those books and watch all those movies and try all those new experiences because, at the heart of it, I love learning. And in some ways, I thought it could also give me a confidence boost.
Catchings agreed.
That weekend, I flipped through some of the magazines I had lying around and ventured out to look for more at CVS. It was freezing in New York, so I happily spent the next few hours inside, cutting and pasting away.
Catchings told me the process can (and should) be different for everyone. But she had one non-negotiable: When finished, your vision board should be visible to you every day. She put hers in her closet so she sees it every morning when she’s getting ready.
That’s where I put mine, too. When I open the door to my closet every day, it stares right back at me: photos and cutouts sprinkled around my word for the year.
Expand.
It’s been a month now since this conversation with Catchings, and although I was nervous I’d grow numb to it, I’m happy to report I haven’t. I’ve enjoyed having a word to fall back on. A few times this past month I was tempted to scroll through social media instead of reading before bed but — and I am not making this up — I first thought of Catchings and then thought about my word. I picked up my book instead.
