How Scripting Can Help You Reinvent Yourself & Rebrand Your Life
What if I told you to throw your whole vision board away? Too drastic? Perhaps. But what if I said that taking a step away from your vision board—for just a moment—could ultimately lead you to reaching your goals this year?
Such is the advice of Morgan Ondree, founder and lead web designer at Wild Powerful Design Studio. “I want you to take your vision board and put it away,” she shared in her now-viral video. “Don’t look at it again until you do this.” As a TikTok creator and branding specialist, Morgan is in the business of getting individuals to rebrand their lives like a business.
Still, you may be asking yourself, what could possibly make you step away from the vision board that you spent hours curating and perfecting? The answer can be found in a writing practice known as scripting.
Scripting is a manifestation technique that combines visualization with writing out your dreams and desires as if you already have them. “This is ‘who’ you are as a person,” Morgan explains. The method involves you drafting the life of your dreams, verbatim, in the present tense in order to obtain and attract the change you want to see in your life.
Derived from neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), the visualization approach implies that our thought processes and behaviors influence how we think and the physical results we get. Meaning, in order to become the person you want to be, you must first think and adopt the traits of what that person would embody.
@morgan.ondree Stop wasting your time and ur mamas magazines #scripting #manifestation #rebrand
Back in 2020, amid the enduring time of quarantine, Morgan was in the middle of an identity crisis. After running a skincare brand for six years only to have it put on hold due to supply chain issues caused by the pandemic, Morgan found it difficult to show up for her business and felt lost. “COVID hit and we were in lockdown; I damn near went crazy,” she tells xoNecole. “Something about being forced to really look into who you are, no distractions from your bad habits, can either make or break you, and at the time it was breaking me.”
This period turned Morgan inward, as she began to attend therapy in an effort to get back connected to herself and gain clarity on her next chapter. “After one of my sessions, my therapist and I talked about creating an alter ego to align with whom I wanted to be, and I started this process of rebranding.”
While she was navigating feelings of being depressed, lost, and confused, she decided she would make a complete 360 and close her business, teach herself web design, and follow her true passion by opening her web and branding design firm, Wild Powerful Design Studio. “I started to find love in my work again. I started to feel naturally confident, show up online, and talk about the process of branding. I decided I was going to treat my life as I would a brand and create brand guidelines. These are very clear, concise, and easy-to-follow guides on how a brand communicates, what they believe, and the visuals.”
The key to finding her passions and unlocking her best, 'rebranded-self,' as she explains in her TikTok, was that she, “had a set intention and identity shift attached to her goals.” According to Morgan, in order to begin your rebrand, you must first evaluate what you’re doing that's not getting you to the place that you want to be. “I'm going to be really honest with you; I was creating excuses, allowing the fear of what other people will think to stop me from executing some of my best ideas,” she shares. “So I wrote these things down and decided they’d be things I would no longer do.”
@morgan.ondree Switch it up on em #personalrebrand @Jacklyn Sweet #brandingtips
Getting clear about the identity of the future version of yourself you want to become, is essential to ultimately becoming it. Ask yourself, what does that person (you) do?What are their habits? Their values? Their routine? Visualize it, script it, and begin to incorporate those traits into your daily being. “In the scripting process, you write about your highest and best future self as if it is in the present,” Morgan explains. “This can be hard to do when you are feeling low, so one amazing thing that I learned from my therapist was that your affirmations need to align with what you're doing physically.”
"In the scripting process, you write about your highest and best future self as if it is in the present.”
According to Morgan, it’s important to create affirmations that resonate with where you are until you’re in a space where they reflect who you want to be. “I would say to myself, ‘I am getting stronger every day.’ Then right after that, I would do my morning workout telling myself that I am strong while carrying out the behavior that tells my brain, ‘Oh, you are this.’”
Believing is truly the key to achieving all that you’re destined for. And once you shift your mindset, Morgan shares that’s when it’s time to script your way into your new life. To help you get started, Morgan has supplied a step-by-step guide to script your way into your newly rebranded life!
Step 1: Decide.
“Decide that you will be different. You need to actually be willing to commit to the promise you are about to make to yourself.”
Step 2: Write out your script.
“Rule of thumb: be clear. In my process, I like to script the overall ‘themes’ of my life: the physical, spiritual, emotional, career, friendship, etc. Then I write it down [in detail] who I am in those categories.”
“At the end of doing all of that, I like to have a quick summary sentence; you can refer back to this when you're feeling lost along the new journey. If your behavior or circumstances doesn't align with who you are, let it go.”
Step 3: The grace period.
“Start to implement habits that help you be the person you scripted about. That could be waking up an hour earlier or checking on your mom more; during this time you're going to give yourself grace to mess up and that's okay. You're learning something new, it's not easy to just get rid of bad habits in an instant. During this period, you're learning how to fail and keep going.”
Step 4: Create your digital vision board.
“Everyone knows how to do this already, but I personally like to create my vision board in Pinterest. I title [each section] by the themes of my script, and I save quotes and images that align with what I see in my brain.”
Step 5: Get ready for launch day.
“At this point, you've worked really hard to set the foundation for the rest of your life, so it's time to celebrate. I picked my birthday [as my launch day] because I like to make a big deal out of it—but this can be any day you like. This is not something you have to share with others, it can be a celebration of you and this new journey that you've committed to.”
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Featured image by Delmaine Donson/Getty Images
Aley Arion is a writer and digital storyteller from the South, currently living in sunny Los Angeles. Her site, yagirlaley.com, serves as a digital diary to document personal essays, cultural commentary, and her insights into the Black Millennial experience. Follow her at @yagirlaley on all platforms!
ItGirl 100 Honors Black Women Who Create Culture & Put On For Their Cities
As they say, create the change you want to see in this world, besties. That’s why xoNecole linked up with Hyundai for the inaugural ItGirl 100 List, a celebration of 100 Genzennial women who aren’t afraid to pull up their own seats to the table. Across regions and industries, these women embody the essence of discovering self-value through purpose, honey! They're fierce, they’re ultra-creative, and we know they make their cities proud.
VIEW THE FULL ITGIRL 100 LIST HERE.
Don’t forget to also check out the ItGirl Directory, featuring 50 Black-woman-owned marketing and branding agencies, photographers and videographers, publicists, and more.
THE ITGIRL MEMO
I. An ItGirl puts on for her city and masters her self-worth through purpose.
II. An ItGirl celebrates all the things that make her unique.
III. An ItGirl empowers others to become the best versions of themselves.
IV. An ItGirl leads by example, inspiring others through her actions and integrity.
V. An ItGirl paves the way for authenticity and diversity in all aspects of life.
VI. An ItGirl uses the power of her voice to advocate for positive change in the world.
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Megan Thee Stallion Shares Her Transformative Approach To Health And Wellness
Megan Thee Stallion is back and better than ever — both physically and mentally.
ForWomen’s Health May/June 2024 cover, the 29-year-old rapper bared all, opening up about her healing journey following the aftermath of the July 2020 shooting incident by rapper Tory Lanez.
“A lot of people didn’t treat me like I was human for a long time,” she told the publication. “I feel like everybody was always used to me being the fun and happy party girl. I watched people build me up, tear me down, and be confused about their expectations of me.”
She continued, “As a Black woman, as a darker Black woman, I also feel like people expect me to take the punches, take the beating, take the lashings, and handle it with grace. But I’m human.”
While the “Savage” artist exudes confidence through her stage presence and boisterous lyrics, behind the scenes, Megan was experiencing a silent battle with her mental health. “Before I went onstage, I would be crying half the time because I didn’t want to [perform], but I also didn’t want to upset my fans,” she says.
With pressures from the outside world piling up, Megan experienced “dark times,” that caused her to isolate from the public eye.
“I didn’t want to get [out] from under the covers,” she recalls. “I stayed in my room. I would not turn the lights on. I had blackout curtains. I didn’t want to see the sun. I knew I wasn’t myself. It took me a while to acknowledge that I was depressed. But once I started talking to a therapist, I was able to be truthful with myself.”
The “Wanna Be” rapper also details her current workout slip and diet that work hand in hand, giving her the mental clarity and stamina to perform at her highest level. For four to five days a week, Megan is locked in with one of her two trainers, Emory “Joc” Bernard and Tim Boutte, doing a variety of workouts like Pilates, running up and down sand hills at the beach, or hitting the StairMaster or elliptical for upwards of 40 minutes.
Best known for her “Megan knees,” leg day is a must — with hip thrusts, goblet squats, leg extensions, and “stallion kicks,” being included in her circuits.
With a combination of therapy, stepping away from imbalanced relationships, and daily movement, the Houston Hottie has since been able to reconnect with herself on a deeper level; putting her happiness before the opinions of others. “Working on myself made me get into working out because I needed to focus my energy somewhere else,” she shares. “I used working out to escape and to get happy.”
“I’m in a space where I feel good mentally, so I want to look as good as I feel.”
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Featured image by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
