Who else is totally shook that 2017 is about to be over? I honestly can’t believe it, but I’m so pumped for 2018! The start of the new year brings out a lot of conversation about goal setting, and reflecting on accomplishments from 2017. One of my favorite ways to reflect on the current year and look forward into the upcoming year is to create a vision board. I love vision boards because they’re a totally creative way to have this conversation with yourself about setting goals and to reflect on what your dream life looks like. I honestly consider it to be a self care practice because it’s an amazing way to spend some quality “me time” especially during the hectic holiday season.
Interested in creating your own vision board? Keep reading to find out how to create a vision board that actually works for you. I even designed a free workbook to guide you through the process and help you utilize your vision board to its fullest potential. Ohhhh, and some pretty free printables to include on your vision board too!
“Create the highest grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe ~ Oprah Winfrey
How to Create a Vision Board
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The Mindset + Purpose
First things first, you need to truly understand the meaning and purpose behind a vision board, and cultivate a positive mindset. If you think you can just slap a bunch of pictures onto a poster board and call it a day then you’ve got it all wrong. If you think you can just cut and paste down pictures of things that you want in life, and you will magically receive them because they’re on the board, you’ve also got it all wrong. You should be choosing the pictures and words for the vision board intentionally, and understand that you have to put in work in order for the vision board to work. The vision board is not magic on it’s own, but with the correct mindset, and ambition, the results can be magical.
Don’t expect your vision board to work unless YOU do! Click To Tweet
Related: How to Maintain a Positive Mindset When You’re Surrounded by Negative Minds
The Preparation
1. Reflect on the Current Year
Like I said, it’s important to be intentional in creating your vision board which means there’s a lot of things to think about before you go crazy and start picking out a bunch of pictures. That’s why I designed a Vision Board Planning Workbook to guide you through the the steps to create a vision board that actually works. The workbook has worksheets for each step I’m going to talk about + some free printables that you can can actually use on your own vision board!
Vision is merely a dream without action ~ Joel Barker Click To Tweet
With that said, the first step is to reflect on the current year. Why? Because it’s a good idea to build off of your accomplishments from the current year, when you’re writing goals for the upcoming year. It helps you to create measurable goals, and continue to grow in specific areas of your life. Download the free Vision Board Planning Workbook for journal prompts to help you get started with reflecting on the current year!
2. Areas for Improvement
The next step in preparing to create a vision board is to think about which areas of your life you want to improve or grow in. Take a look at the life areas in the Eight Dimensions of Wellness when completing this exercise: spiritual, emotional, intellectual, social, physical, environmental, occupational, and financial (sounds familiar huh? kind of like the 6 domains of self care!) Develop goals for each life area and reflect on the steps you need to take in order to reach those goals. This process helps to ensure that you pay attention to all areas of your life as opposed to only focusing on the one that may stand out to you the most in the moment. This is important because all seven life areas work together and contribute to your overall wellness and satisfaction with your life. If one area is particularly suffering, it can negatively affect other areas of your life and your overall balance.
Related: The 6 Domains of Self Care + Why You Need Them in Your Life
3. Bucket List
The bucket list is for the fun stuff! Think about places you want to travel to, new things you want to experience, fun things you want to do, new food you want to try, anything that comes to mind! Your bucket list is like the icing on the cake of the new year. Things to do to add some spice and excitement to the year, and switch things up from your regular routine.
4. Set the Mood
It’s really important to create a peaceful space, and cultivate a positive mindset before putting your vision board together. You don’t want any negative vibes to interfere with your process because you’re going to need all the positive vibes you can get! The vision board is all about manifesting positive energy into your life, so start this project off on the right foot. Create a calm environment for yourself and make sure you have enough space to be creative. Light some candles, diffuse some essential oils, play uplifting or calming music, meditate, do whatever it takes to get you feeling relaxed, motivated, and inspired. Like I said earlier, treat creating a vision board as a self care practice, and as quality “me time.”
5. Find Your Material
This is the part you’ve been waiting for right? It’s time to gather all of your pictures and words for your vision board! Use your pre-planning reflection worksheets as a guide when intentionally searching for your images. There’s a variety of ways you can go about this:
- cut them out of magazines
- use an image search engine
- use pinterest!
- create your own graphics online using Canva
- draw or paint your own images
If you’re creating your vision board digitally, just save all of your images into a designated folder on your desktop so that they’re all easy to find when you start putting them all together. If you’re using a poster board or cork board, you can copy and paste the images you find onto a word document, and then print them all out at once. Save the trees girl.
Create a vision board with intention & purpose to make next year your best year yet Click To Tweet
After you’ve found all your images it’s time to let the creative vibes flow. This is pretty self explanatory, and there’s really no right or wrong way to do this. Place your images on your vision board whichever way looks right to you! Just make sure you make it something that you’ll be happy to see every day. Something that truly represents you and your dream life.
“A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more ~ Rosabeth Moss Kanter
How to Make Your Vision Board Work For You
Like I was saying earlier, you gotta put in work, if you want your vision board to do anything for you. You can’t just sit back and relax now just because you made a vision board. Vision boards basically function like the law of attraction; the belief that the universe creates and provides for you what your thoughts are focused on. So basically, if you focus on positive thoughts, you will bring positive experiences into your life. That’s the ultimate goal here. Hang your vision board up somewhere where you’ll see it often. So most likely your bedroom, office, or any other room where you spend a lot of time.
- Look at your vision board every day to remind yourself of what you’re working towards, and to help you stay focused
- Visualize your dream life when you look at your vision board as vividly as possible. Think positive thoughts, and think about what you need to do to make that life a reality
- Look to your vision board when you’re feeling discouraged, lost, stuck, confused, frustrated, etc. Pull inspiration and motivation from your vision board when you’re feeling these negative emotions. Because you created your vision board while you were feeling happy & inspired, looking at your vision board will evoke those positive emotions in you!
“The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps – we must step up the stairs ~ Vance Havner
Ready to create your own!? Yass girl yass you are, and I have something to help you out. Like I said earlier, I designed a free workbook to guide you through the process and help you utilize your vision board to its fullest potential. The workbook includes 6 worksheets that will ensure you design your vision board with intention and purpose. The worksheets include reflection questions, and exercises to help you identify areas of growth for the new year, and recognize your accomplishments of the current year. Plus there’s 3 pages of cute printables at the end of the workbook! Happy creating, and I wish you the best for the new year.