How to use Vision Boards to Hack Your Goals (and excitement)!
The end of a year – or early in a new one – is a great time for people to get focused on what they want from the year ahead and their lives. A Vision Board is a way of teaching our mind to focus on the things that are important to us. Vision Boards can also be a great way to connect with our subconscious wants, desires and needs – and make them conscious!
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!
How much time should we allow to create a Vision Board?
This will depend on the individual however:
- If someone is doing a vision board by themselves – I would say to allow around 1 1/2 hours.
- When I run live Vision Boarding Workshop I allow around 2 1/2 hours in total. This allows for introductions, getting settled in and a little reflection/closing at the end.
- Finally, it can also be fun for your client to get a group of friends together and make an evening of it – then they should probably allow 2-3 hours to include chatting and sharing etc.
What supplies do you need to create a Vision Board?
- A piece of thick paper or cardboard
- Scissors
- Glue/blue tack
- Option 1: A supply of inspirational magazines to cut out pictures from. Some great magazines to use include lifestyle magazine, home magazines ,fitness magazines, travel magazines, personal development magazines and National Geographic.
- Option 2: A laptop and a printer to search words and find pictures that represent them in-line with your vision so you can print and cut them
- Coloured pens and stickers (optional) – helpful to add or highlight any personal phrases and notes to the board.
7 Top Tips for Creating a Powerful Vision Board
1. The Vision Board MUST HAVE PICTURES – even if they are just line drawings and stick men/women.
While you look for pictures, you should allow your mind to run free and dream. INCLUDE ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING that appeals or speaks to you!
When creating a Vision Board, HOW YOU FEEL is more important that what you think!
Include PERSONAL AFFIRMATIONS or inspiring quotes to nurture and cherish yourself.
Use COLOUR! Coloured felt-tip pens, colour post-it notes, colour pictures, make it VIBRANT and exciting.
Look for the UNFAMILIAR – to get outside your ‘normal’ box…
Finally, remind yourself this is not about creating an artistic masterpiece but creating something that visually INSPIRES and EXCITES you!
What happens after creating a Vision Board?
You’ve finished? Well, there are two main schools of thought out there as to what to do next and I have had clients who have had great success with both methods.
1. FORGET about the Vision Board
Just put the Vision Board in a wardrobe or behind a door. 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 awhile 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 yourself 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.
Wrap-up
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! Running Vision Board workshops is something I do with my clients a few times a year. I even run them as webinars and have everyone creating their vision board individually! Whatever you then decide to do with your Vision Boards afterwards, the vision has been created, is up to you. Who knows where that will take you?
