Example Vision Board

Have you created a Vision Board lately?

February can be a great month to get focused on what you want from the year ahead – or even your life!

• Would you like some to clarify who you are, what you want or where you’re going?
• Would you like some personal inspiration to get you through the murky days of winter?
• Would you like to tap into your inner wisdom and create some focus for yourself?

If so, creating a personal Vision Board can help you! And if we get what we focus on – we need to make sure we’re focusing on the right things!

What is a Vision Board anyway? A Vision Board is simply a collective name for a wide variety of inspirational maps (a collage) that we create from pictures. This map can be WHO we want to be or HOW we want our lives to be. It’s a visual representation of your goals and dreams—a powerful way to make your aspirations more tangible and attainable.

You can use it to focus on tangible areas – like work, home-life, relationships, goals. Or perhaps you’d like to work on less tangible areas like your physical, emotional, social or spiritual desires. You choose!

How they work: 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 all the time (look around you and think about everything you can see/hear/feel for starters). So, to ensure we do not get overwhelmed, our mind learns to filter information and to only show you pieces of information it thinks is RELEVANT. That’s why when you get a new car or find out you’re pregnant you suddenly notice little red Chevrolets everywhere or see pregnant women and moms all around you.

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 – and it may just draw your attention to something you might not otherwise have noticed. It’s a way of teaching our mind to focus on things that are important to us!

How to create a Vision Board: Simply cut out and collect pictures, words, quotes that inspire you or that simply catch your eye. DO NOT ANALYSE! If it grabs you, tear it out! Then paste and organize onto a big piece of paper, giving  it a title and date.

You’ll need: A piece of bristol board or cardboard, scissors, coloured pens, glue, any pictures you already have and a supply of inspirational magazines to cut out pictures from (eg. Oprah, home magazines, spiritual magazines, National Geographic – anything with pictures).

Top Tips:

• The idea is to create a collage of the life or ‘you’ you want. You can either start with a blank piece of paper and go totally freeform or you could create a “Goal Tree”, “Dream Book” or “Destiny Star”.
• Your Vision Board MUST HAVE PICTURES – even if they are just line drawings and stick men/women. You can even draw your own pictures if you like.
• While you look for pictures, allow your mind to run free and dream. INCLUDE ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING that appeals or speaks to you!
• Include PERSONAL AFFIRMATIONS or inspiring quotes to nurture and cherish your inner self.
• Use COLOUR! Coloured felt-tip pens, colour post-it notes, colour pictures, make it VIBRANT and exciting.
• Don’t try to understand WHY it appeals, get OUT of THINKING and turn up your CREATIVE right brain!
• Remember that when creating a Vision Board, HOW YOU FEEL is more important that what you think!
• You may like to actively look for the UNFAMILIAR – see outside your ‘normal’ box…
• This is not about creating an artistic masterpiece but creating something that visually inspires and excites you!

Struggling?

• Try answering these questions; 1) “What do you REALLY want from life?”,  2) “What is the life you REALLY want to live?” or 3) “WHO do I really want to be?”  If it helps you remember, jot down a few notes as you go along.
• Or imagine you have a magic wand or a ‘dream machine’ that can magically create whatever you wish.
• If you have NO IDEA where to start – LUCKY YOU! Simply start flicking through magazines, newspapers, the internet and cut out anything that inspires or grabs your attention until you have a pile of pictures to work with!

Finished? Well, there are two main schools of thought out there.

SCHOOL 1)  Says FORGET about your vision board: Put it in a closet. You’ll find it in 5 years and things will magically have happened.

The reason some people like to forget about the vision board is to remove any attachment to it – so we don’t FORCE things or try too hard. And also, this school says that when we put something somewhere obvious, after a while we tend to stop seeing it anyway.

SCHOOL 2)  Put it somewhere you will see it everyday – to remind, inspire and focus you: So, my personal preference is to keep your Vision Board somewhere you will see it regularly. And then every once in a while, just sit down and REALLY LOOK AT IT. Think about what is on there. Review it, allow yourself to feel it and get excited by it. JUST BEFORE you go to sleep is a great time to do this as it allows our mind to work on it and absorb it over night!

Because while you may achieve your vision WITHOUT taking deliberate action, if you take some action and get things moving – it’s MUCH more likely.

But it’s really up to you. I have had clients who have had great success with both methods. So, check in with yourself and see which you think will work for you.

MAKE IT EVEN MORE FUN: Why not get a few good friends together and spend an evening over a bottle of wine creating your own Vision Boards?

Why not use the Share This button below and let your friends know
you’d like to spend an evening Vision Boarding with them…

1. FRIEND IDENTIFIER: The Barbecue Test! Simply ask yourself who you would invite over for the “Perfect Barbecue”?
2. FRIEND IDENTIFIER: You’ve been selected to be profiled on “This is Your Life”. What names would you want provided to the show researchers?
3. FRIENDSHIP BOOSTER: Take some time out to tell your most important friends how you really feel about them, how they improve (and have improved) your life and how you’d feel without them…

For more detailed tools and exercises check out your Tools & Resources page.