The end of a year – or early in a new one – is a great time for people to focus on what they want from the year ahead and their lives.
A vision board allows you to regularly exercise your imagination, creating a more vivid vision of your ideal life as you develop your ability with real, tangible benefits. None of which require you to believe that things will magically arrive in your mailbox or bank account if you think about them long and hard enough, by the way.
If you have a burning desire to realize a cherished, long-held dream, a clear vision is necessary. And a vision board can help you develop the skills to define and shape that within your mind, something that will stay with you long after the board comes down.
A Vision Board is a way of teaching our minds to focus on important things to us. Vision Boards can also be a great way to connect with our subconscious wants, desires, and needs – and make them conscious!
The benefits of creating a Vision board
1. A vision board creates an emotional connection that motivates you
Forget attraction, and a vision board motivates the crap out of you. Well, it can if it’s done right.
This works especially well if you make your vision board more than just pictures. Make it also about the emotions connected with your vision and the sensory experience of it all. What sounds, smells, and sights are associated with a particular aspect of your vision? What emotions? Relief, wonder, or joy?
A vision board is only as beneficial as the work you’re willing to put into it, so dig in and make it as thorough, exciting, and detailed as possible.
2. A vision board makes real the dream in your mind, so you begin to believe it’s possible
When you make something more clear and concrete in your mind, it feels more real and attainable. You start to believe that, hey, I might be able to make this happen.
That’s one of the most powerful benefits of a vision board. No matter what you believe about yourself, no matter how much self-doubt you have, a vision board done right will slowly begin to transform your inner belief system into one which is more confident, certain, and self-motivated.
3. A vision board helps you clarify what you want out of your life because it forces you to put something down
What if you actually don’t have a burning desire or a great, big dream? What if you haven’t really figured it out yet? If you have some vague idea, something you can at least get down on the board, I’ve found it can actually help us clarify our desires.
As you reflect on your vision board each day, certain things pull on you, and others become increasingly tiresome. After a while, you begin to notice you don’t really care about this. But that, well, that is something you’re excited to reflect on each day.
Go in the direction of those things that pull you, and don’t be afraid of modifying your vision over time.
Why Create a Vision Board?
A Vision Board helps people:
- Clarify who they are, what they want, or where they’re going
- Get their new year off to a flying start
- Tap into their inner wisdom and inner knowing
- Create some focus or refocus themselves
- Simply get to know themselves better!
What is a Vision Board?
A Vision Board is simply a collective name for a wide variety of inspirational maps (a collage) created from pictures.
The map can be WHO we want to be or HOW we want our lives to be, but it’s a visual representation of our goals and dreams—a powerful way to make our aspirations more tangible and attainable.
Our minds can only hold about 7 pieces of information at any one time. And yet, there are millions of pieces of information available to us at every moment (think about everything you can see/hear/feel, for starters).
To ensure we don’t get overwhelmed, our mind learns to filter information and only show you pieces of information it thinks is RELEVANT. That’s why when we get a new car we suddenly notice little red cars everywhere – just like ours.
THIS is one of the key ways that Vision Boards work. The very act of CREATING the vision board tells our mind what’s important to us. So it may just draw your attention to something you might not otherwise have noticed in your life.
How to create an effective vision board
1. Get clear on your vision
I assume that if you’re reading this, you already understand the importance of this. However, if you don’t, know that you need to have spent a bit of time crafting that vision first before you can create a vision board.
2. Create a folder and obtain images with Google search
Create a folder, either digital or physical, and start gathering photos representing each major goal or element of your dream.
My suggestion is to do a few quick Google searches. You’ll find images of literally anything you need in a matter of seconds or you can search in magazines.
3. Organize images onto a poster
Once you have your images, all you need to do is put them together pleasingly and effectively for you.
My suggestion is to take your vision board to a different level and, instead of just collaging a bunch of pictures together, create a page or a section on a large poster that represents each goal.
Type up or write a summary of each goal in these different sections and surround it with your pics. That way, when you’re reviewing your vision, the goals are already written within plain view to read and reflect upon instead of having to refer to a separate page with your written goals.
This might end up being a bit large; however, if you use a graphic design service like Canva.com for the entire process, you can make everything pretty tight and uniform on a single large poster. However, feel free to use whatever program or process works best for you.
Once that’s complete, you’ve officially completed your vision board. Just make sure to spend five to ten minutes each day reflecting on it, including the emotions and sensory experiences related to each aspect of your vision.
If you do that, you’ll make full use of the incredible benefits of a vision board to motivate you to action and make your dream more believable than ever before.
What are your major goals? Do you have one undying dream for your life? Expand upon that. What will each of the areas of your life — say professional, financial, relationships, and personal — look like once you’ve realized that dream?
Cut out and collect pictures, words quotes that inspire you or that catch their eye. Then paste and organize these images, words, quotes, etc., onto a big piece of paper or in a journal, giving it a title and date.
What supplies do you need to create a Vision Board?
- Computer/printer
- A piece of bristol board or cardboard
- or a Journal
- Scissors
- Glue
- Google folder, or a supply of inspirational magazines to cut out pictures from. Some great magazines to use include Oprah magazine, home magazines, travel magazines, personal development magazines, National Geographic, etc.
- You can also print out pictures and affirmations on line.
- Colored pens (optional) help add or highlight any personal phrases and notes to the board.
What happens after creating a Vision Board?
1) FORGET about the Vision Board
Just put the Vision Board in a closet. You’ll find it in 5 years, and things will magically have happened.
The idea here is that we remove any attachment to the vision and don’t FORCE things or try too hard. After all, when we put something somewhere obvious, we tend to stop seeing it after a while anyway…
2) Put the Vision Board somewhere you’ll SEE IT EVERY DAY
This way, our Vision Board will remind, inspire, and focus us. This is my preferred option!
If we do this, it’s important that every once in a while, we sit down and REALLY LOOK AT IT: review it, allow ourselves to feel it, and get excited by it. Just before we go to sleep is a great time to do this as it allows our mind to work on and absorb the contents overnight.
Vision boards are a great pre-cursor to goal-setting and help frame the mind in possibility. They are inspiring and fun to create – and help us connect to our sub-conscious desires!
~Diadel Kimberlee