Visualize your dreams, goals, manifestations and resolutions
It’s a start of a new year and that means time to create a vision & action board. No matter what your goals are, get healthier, start a new routine, break a habit or focusing on career development, a vision board can be super helpful with growth, transformation and actioning on your goals and manifestations. Learn how to create an empowering and impactful vision board that actually works.
What is a vision board?
A vision board is a collage of images, quotes and affirmations that align with your goals, resolutions and manifestations for the new year. It helps as a friendly reminder each day to help keep both short and long term goals top of mind, relevant, actionable and serve as extra motivation. The usefulness of vision boards has been endorsed by many, like Oprah, as an exercise of the ‘Law of Attraction’.
What is an action board?
This may seem obvious but an action board is much more action driven, science focused where it’s less about the law of attraction but more actionable steps/words to succeed. A few key words that I like to think of when creating is ‘accountability, values, inspired action and mindfulness’. Think about the bigger picture and what you want to do to make your goal actionable, what steps will you take to do so and be successful at it? Forbes explains why it’s important to make an action board or include elements into your vision board to remain inspired but also drastically change your life.
Where do I start?
Step 1 – Define and list your goals
In order to create your visual collage, finding images and words that resonate with you, I like to write down a simple list of words, intentions, resolutions or new habits, bucket list items. I personally think this is key to creating a vision board that actually works. These can be really anything, big or small; health, family, finances, relationships, wellness, career, travel, etc. Read all of my goals here!
Don’t overthink this portion of the process, should really only take 10-15 minutes and jot down everything you can think of in that timeframe. I shared my list here if you’re interested!
Step 2 – Find Inspirational Images and Quotes
From there, this will help you find visual images or quotes that align with those goals of yours. Through this process, you may also find other things that resonate with you! Depending on if you want a physical or digital board, this will depend on where you go searching for the aesthetic assets which align with your goals which you identified in step 1.
Digital: I’m still a huge lover of Pinterest. Create a board (can be public or private) so you can collectively save all images. Sometimes I like to start here and then go ahead and print those images to help me get started on my physical board if I have no magazines handy. Take about 30 minutes for this exercise. If you’re only doing a digital version, this would be your stopping point!
Physical: If you want to create a physical version, something I love to do and keep up at my desk or in my room, you’ll need a poster board/foamboard, some glue, a pair of scissors and lots of magazines. Grab a coffee, tea or a nice glass of wine and spend about an hour or so flipping through your magazines and cut out things that resonate with you!
Step 3 – Assembly
Now for the fun part; putting it all together! This is where you can let your creative juices flowing and put together how you please. I always like to lay out all the pieces I’m working with and then start to arrange. Don’t glue yet! I spend about 10-15 minutes positioning and moving things round until I’m happy with my layout. When you’re ready to start gluing, start with the larger ‘background’ images first and then slowly start adding. I like to start with the images and add the smaller text/quote pieces until the end to make sure they don’t get lost!
Now what? What to do after you’ve created your vision board
You may be wondering, I spend all this time to put this board together, now what?
Keep your vision board in a place that you visit daily; I like to keep mine on my desk or in my room. It serves as a friendly reminder to keep going, keep doing and taking actionable steps to achieving your goals.
Whether physical or digital, always make sure to check your board daily and reflect at least weekly when journaling or planning out your week to make sure you’re staying on track. This is SO important to creating a system that works and is effective in empowering you to go after your dreams.
