Vision Boarding 101: Creating the Life You Want- PART 2

Here are 4 steps to help you create your own vision board:

1.    Define your goals

2.    Find your inspiration

3.    CREATE!

4.    Put your board into action

The good news is that there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to create your board. The basic premise is to create a visual representation of your hopes, wishes and desires. You can experiment with what feels right for you, knowing that you can always change it, add to it, or make a new one whenever you want… it’s YOUR board!

Defining your goals: What do you desire?

The first question to ask yourself is “what do I truly want?”. Most often, answering this question can be the most difficult part of the process. I first read The Secret right after my divorce, and I came to the stunning realization that I had never really paused to ask myself what I wanted. The question itself terrified and paralyzed me. I avoided creating a vision board for months because of this fear… fear of “doing it wrong” or “picking the wrong thing.” For my entire life up to that point, I had obediently followed societal expectations: I went to a great college, got a job and started a 401K, got married, and then bought a house with the proverbial white picket fence. I had allowed others to make decisions for me, even if they weren’t the best for me. I had never given myself the permission to dream and uncover what motivated me, and I felt like I was bombarded with societal messages like “be realistic” and “do what everyone else is doing”.  Since my marriage had dissolved and no one else was there to make decisions for me, I felt like I was starting over. Once I internalized that there were no ‘wrong’ things to put on my board, I was able to lift that veil of fear and move into a state of empowerment and love (love being the opposite of fear).

Creating my first board allowed me to be imaginative and generate feelings of expansiveness. By creating a vision board, we are able to move into this empowering space and tap into our intuition, AKA our “inner knowing,” and bring our deepest desires and most authentic wishes to light.

Pick a time period that these goals will apply to. Will your board represent this upcoming year? 2 years? 5 years? A lifetime? I have done new vision boards each year because I feel that my wants and needs shift each year. Plus I like to check things off my board when I receive/manifest them!

Think about all of the things you want to be, do, have, or experience. Perhaps it’s swimming with sharks on a dream vacation to Tahiti, the partner that has all of the qualities you are looking for, your dream A-frame home in the woods near the mountains, or a particular model of a car. Perhaps it’s that dream job or title at work. IT CAN LITERALLY BE ANYTHING!

What matters is that you physically create it on your board and that the images excite you when you look at it. It can represent your vision for a particular area of your life (like just one or multiple categories below), or your life in general.

Here are some category ideas for your board:

• Career/Business/Livelihood

• Wealth & Abundance

• Relationships (under this category I include family, friends, partner/spouse, aunt, sister)

• Health & Well-Being (I also include mental health under here)

• Appearance (I include self-care items here, like a monthly massage for example)

• Home (I have a photo album where I keep pics of my dream house, but I have one exterior shot of my dream house on my current vision board. I also love keeping photo albums of home design and décor on Houzz.com)

• Possessions

• Travel & Adventure

• Social Life

• Spirituality

• Creativity

• Giving Back / Volunteer Work

• Passion Projects

• Spirituality

Find your inspiration

Call me old school (I still use a paper planner if that gives you a frame of reference), but I love a good foamcore board for a vision board. I’m sure there are great digital platforms out there to create vision boards, but I’ve found that using my hands to detail my boards have been most beneficial and fun.

Find images, photos or visuals from any resource you can get your hands on. I’ve found that using Google images produced an even better image than what I was initially looking for. An alternative way of organizing your goals is to type or write out your goals/visions/desires using the applicable categories above. Then visual supplements can be created or found based on what you wrote. Your board can also include words, phrases and/or affirmations that are meaningful to you.

Each year I identify a one-word theme or intention for each year, and I print out a visual representation of that word and place it on the middle of my board. My 2020 word was “trust” and my 2021 word is “allow”.

Create!

Lay out your photos, images, words, and all materials that you’ve collected. You can arrange and glue these onto a posterboard, or even a piece of sturdy cardboard paper will work.

Take some time to mindfully assemble your board with positive intentions. Use the time to tap into your CREATIVITY. There’s no need to fill up the entire space, and you can always add to it later. There may be new intentions or goals that develop a few weeks after gaining initial clarity on your goals. When creating my first board, my desire for perfectionism was paralyzing. To overcome that pressure, I encouraged myself to add a few pictures and told myself that I could add to it later. That thought relieved some of those fearful messages in my head.

Put your board into action

Put the board in a place where you will look at each day, somewhere it can remain in your consciousness on a daily basis. Look at your beautiful board each day and imagine having all of the things pictured, and truly generate those FEELINGS of gratitude and abundance as you gaze upon its magnificence. Get those creative juices flowing and use your imagination to feel that you ALREADY have these things.

You can take it a step further and post a photo of your vision board as the background of your cell phone or your laptop wallpaper so you see it even more often.

You can create your boards by yourself or in a group. Perhaps you host a vision boarding night for your friends. For parents, vision boarding could be a fun activity to do with your kids!

YOU have the power to attract these things into your life just as I have.

Have fun with it and be open. The Universe is listening! Creating your board will be a source of inspiration to you for months to come.