This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my link, at no extra cost to you. Please read the full disclosure here.
You may have heard of manifestation, the idea that by thinking about it, you may bring your ideal vision into your life.
Our dreams, however, do not materialize on their own. It takes effort to achieve your goals and realize your full potential.
At the same time, having a detailed vision and believing in your own abilities to turn that visualization into action is beneficial. And then there’s the transition from action to reality.
Vision boards are an excellent tool for creating a concentrated vision and kicking off the actual manifestation process. Let’s look at how to design a vision board for yourself and how to make the most of it once it becomes a reality, and turn your life into what you have manifested.
What Is A Vision Board?
A vision board is a creative representation of your objectives, values, and aspirations that is intended to keep you inspired and motivated. People frequently make vision boards at the start of the year to help them visualize their goals for the coming year.
Vision boards can be created digitally using free online tools or physically using items such as a poster board and a collage of magazine clippings, souvenirs, quotes, thoughts, and photos.
It is thought that vision boards, made popular by the “That Girl Era”, assist many people in achieving their goals because they condition their brains to detect an opportunity and go for it.
As people revisit their vision boards, the images and plans linked with them develop greater significance in their subconscious.
What Does A Vision Board Do?
If you don’t believe in the law of attraction or manifesting, you can still create a vision board. There are numerous compelling reasons to get one.
It’s not quite just magic and wishful thinking. Instead, it is the idea that thoughts come before actions. Mindsets drive behaviors, which in turn drive outcomes.
It’s really just a constant visual reminder of your objectives. Some people like to write down their goals, which I believe you should do as well, but there’s something about having a picture of your objectives up on your wall that you’ll see all the time that seems different.
Visual Reminder Of Your Goals:
Vision boards are useful because they serve as a visual reminder of your goals.
This reminder might help you keep focused on your goals even when things get tough.
By evaluating and updating your vision board on a regular basis, as well as reinforcing your intentions, you deepen your commitment and enhance your incentive to take action.
Makes Your Objectives Clear:
Vision boards assist you in clarifying your goals and objectives.
They can then point you on the right path in a variety of aspects of your life. Making a vision board necessitates a reflection on your ambitions and aspirations.
You acquire clarity and a better grasp of what you genuinely want to achieve by visually articulating your goals. With this clarity, you can set clear and meaningful goals that are in line with your vision.
Helps You Manifest And Visualize Your Life:
This visual prompt encourages you to “manifest the things you want” by taking action to obtain them. Your dream board is there to remind you of what is important to you whenever you need to make a decision in your life. Consider it a little push in the correct direction.
You can picture your achievements through vision boards. By glancing at your vision board on a frequent basis, you immerse yourself in a visual picture of what you want or aspire to achieve.
This helps to form a positive and powerful mental image, making it simpler to believe in your abilities to attain your objectives.
In this way, vision boards are very similar to journaling, but just for visual people.
Some people feel that writing things down makes it easier to set objectives and visualize what they want. However, vision boards are ideal for those who prefer a visual representation of the same aim.
Keeps Your Priorities Straight:
Vision boards serve as a constant reminder of your priorities. Clarifying what you want can help you get to know yourself better.
Makes You Determined:
A vision board is a collection of images, words, and symbols that are meant to inspire and drive you.
Looking at your board should elicit good emotions, excitement, and passion, which can fuel your ambition and drive.
It serves as a visual depiction of your dreams and serves as a reminder of the possibilities that lie ahead.
Seeing your dreams and ambitions reflected on your vision board can boost your confidence and self-esteem and push you to accomplish them.
It serves as a constant reminder that you are capable of achieving your objectives and just drives you to get there.
Why Visualization Is So Powerful For Your Brain?
Visualization is more than just drawing an image on a piece of paper to “manifest” what you want or employing “the law of attraction.”
It’s all about your brain: Your reticular activating system is your brain’s “filtering station.”
Seeing the images on your vision board on a regular basis helps your brain filter out what you don’t want while focusing on what you do want. Seeing a regular visual reminder of your goals keeps your subconscious mind focused on them.
When you make one and keep it in a visible location, you can practice small visualization and goal-setting exercises throughout the day. You might not even be aware that you’re doing it.
What you concentrate on grows. Creating a vision board allows you to view your goals in a visual form and establish a mentality to achieve them on a daily basis.
How To Create A Vision Board
The stages below are designed to assist you in creating your vision board for the coming year.
You can use a similar procedure to construct a vision board for a specific area of your life, and you may even opt to make many vision boards. It is entirely up to you!
From start to finish, this procedure will take just a few hours, or less, depending on how much time you spend on introspection or the creative process. Make these steps your own by following them as a guide:
Step 1: Reflect On The Past
Laying the groundwork for a vision board begins with internal contemplation on who you are, where you’ve been, and what you’ve learned thus far.
Take five to ten minutes (or however much time you believe you require) to reflect on the previous year. If you keep a journal throughout the year, you may use this opportunity to go over your entries from the previous year.
- What happened in the previous year?
- What made me happy?
- What would I like to do more of?
- What do I regret doing less of?
- What did I discover?
- What did I give up?
- Did my actions reflect my values?
Examine your responses (add more questions as you see fit) and make a note of any recurring themes.
For example, were your activities centered on a specific aspect of your life? Did you party too much, or maybe not at all? Did you improve your self-care? Or maybe you did no self-care at all. As you proceed to stage two, keep these ideas in mind.
Step 2: Set Your Vision
After you’ve reflected on the previous year, it’s time to look ahead and consider what’s possible in the future. This step will examine your objectives, dreams, intentions, needs, and desires for the coming year.
Making a vision board necessitates a reflection on your ambitions and aspirations. Take some time to establish your vision before you begin crafting.
Ask yourself, what do you hope to achieve with your board?
Make your vision as clear as possible. Don’t rush through this process. It serves as the framework for the rest of your board. As you work on the board, you will notice that you gain even more clarity and detail.
Don’t distract yourself with other activities during this step, such as watching TV or chatting with a family member while thinking about your vision. It’s critical to stay self-aware when you define your vision.
If writing things down helps, you can keep a journal about it.
Consider what you want to achieve in each aspect of your life during the following year. Take into account family, relationships, interests, passions, social life, work or education, health, and finances.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
- How do I want my house to look?
- What kind of life do I wish to live?
- What do I want my nutrition and meals to look like?
- Every day, how do I want to feel?
- What activities do I want to do more of in my life?
- What physical items do I wish to incorporate into my life?
- What words, phrases, or quotes make me happy?
- What is my ideal trip destination for the coming year?
- What significant purchases do I want to put money aside for?
- What financial and professional objectives do I hope to achieve in the coming year?
Step 3: Gather Your Materials
Now, vision boards come in many forms, but I’m only a fan of the good old fashion physical board. So that’s all we’ll focus on in this post.
A vision board will require a range of materials. In some circumstances, you can get by with what you have. Some materials, however, are more important than others.
As an example, you’ll need a board as a base. You can utilize various sorts of boards, including:
- Printed circuit boards
- Whiteboards
- Magnetic board for your refrigerator
- Corkboards
- Foam board
- Posterboard
It is not required to utilize one of these sorts of bases if you do not want to spend a lot of money on new products to build your vision board. Instead, cut a huge piece of cardboard from a box you already have at home. Alternatively, you can buy a giant poster board at your local dollar store.
You will also require photographs or products to place on the board. Images can come from a multitude of places, including:
- Magazines and catalogs from the past
- Printed reproductions of photographs found online
- Photos from the past
- Postcards
Following that, you’ll require something to secure your things to your base. You can use what you have on hand or buy what you desire. Pins and clips are effective. Glue sticks and tape can also be used. If you’re building a magnetic board, you can secure your images with little magnets.
Scissors will come in handy for cutting out your photographs.
Finally, you’ll need a range of art supplies such as pens, markers, paint, stickers, and anything else you wish to use to decorate your board.
Step 4: Curate Your Board
The photos, words, statements, keepsakes, and scraps you select for your vision board are supposed to evoke a sense of emotion associated with your intents, aspirations, and dreams.
These photos are intended to motivate and inspire you as you return to your vision board on a daily basis.
Consider what pictures come to mind as you read through the notes and goals that rose to the top.
Quotes can be added to your board in addition to photographs. You can print them or handwrite them using a beautiful pen or marker.
Is there anything related to memories from your life that evoke the sensation you’re after? If so, think about adding it to your board.
You can also include DIY materials such as fabric scraps. If your goals allow it, you can also use natural elements such as tree branches. Adding some leaves or pine needles, for example, could remind you that you desire to spend more time in nature.
After you’ve curated your numerous sources of inspiration, filter them down to the ones that speak to you the most. And then sort them into the categories on which you wish to focus your vision board.
Step 5: Arrange Your Layout
Take everything you’ve prepared and arrange it on your board.
Enjoy yourself with this step. Your design should motivate you.
Feel free to experiment with different layout options until you find one that works for you. This procedure is part of the process of creating a clearer, more specific vision for the future, arranging the photos in a way that mimics how you want your year to flow.
When you get to this point, you might realize you’re missing something. If you want to add something new, don’t be afraid to go back.
When you’re finished, use your preferred binding material to keep everything in place. Don’t rush to secure your things. Make sure you’re satisfied with it.
Begin assembling your vision board now that you have a plan and know your layout. You should already have your elements organized in a style that works for you at this time. Begin putting items onto your board and expanding it as you go.
Step 6: Display Your Vision Board
Finally, it’s time to hang your vision board. Select an area that makes sense for you. It should be easily available on a daily basis.
- Your refrigerator
- A blank wall in your kitchen
- A reflection
- Your bedside table
- Behind your bedroom door
- If you work from home, in your office
Make sure not to over-secure your vision board in its new place. This is simply in case you change your mind about where you want to put it.
Step 7: Put In The Work
This is the most crucial stage. To make your vision board a reality, you must first put in the effort. The car you want will not buy itself. The keys will not fall into your lap just because it is on your vision board and you tell the universe you want a new car.
It’s time to hustle and work hard to make your ambitions a reality. That is not something the cosmos will accomplish for you.
I believe in the law of attraction and envisioning what you want in life, but that is only a tool to get you excited and motivated enough to put in the work to make that dream a reality. The law of attraction will not bring you a new job. You have to work for it!
Now get out there and make your vision board for 2024 a reality!
Categories To Add To Your Vision Board
You now understand how to make a vision board from the start. But getting started might be difficult when you have so much to do.
Let’s go over some manifestation ideas to help you decide what to put on your board:
- Career goals: photos from trade periodicals, tools of the trade, and visions of financial abundance
- Self-care includes inspirational quotes, reminders, and peaceful visuals that promote wellness, and fitness motivation.
- Quotes on love and relationships, as well as images of loving relationships, are available.
- Positivity: photos that make you happy, words that help you feel good and psychologically fit
- Travel: postcards with images of your ideal places, images of planes or trains, and photos of you traveling
How To Use Your Vision Board
You may utilize your newly constructed vision board in a variety of ways to help your affirmations come true.
First, include your vision board into your regular self-care regimen. You can look at your vision board first thing in the morning. Meditate, and use the images you’ve made to guide you.
You can do the same thing before going to bed in the evening. Rather than going through your phone in bed, take some self-care time to revisit your vision board and meditate on it. It molds your thoughts and reinforces your priorities. It can be really inspiring.
The last thing you’ll think about before going to bed is what you want your life to be like.
Another strategy is to state your objectives aloud. When you gaze at your vision board, offer affirmations to yourself about your abilities to achieve your goals. If speech helps you relax, you can incorporate it into your meditation.
You’re not so much “speaking your goals into existence” as you are repeating good self-talk in your head. It’s difficult enough to achieve your goals without having to deal with a runaway train of negative self-talk.
Making sure you don’t only visualize is one of the finest methods to make your vision board work. You must also take action.
Start building the abilities you’ll need to succeed in your ideal job if you want to get it. If you want to travel more, open a new savings account and set up monthly recurring payments. If you want to spend more time outside, block off some time on your calendar for outside activities.
Finally, whenever you feel the need to, update your board. When glancing at the board no longer inspires you in the same way it used to, it’s time to renew it. Perhaps your true north and passion have shifted over time.
Does A Vision Board Actually Work
It turns out that writing your objectives down in this graphic style can actually help you attain them. There is also a lot of research to back it up.
Mental techniques (such as visualization) can boost motivation, confidence, and even motor performance, according to Psychology Today. In fact, one study revealed that visualizing was nearly as helpful as actual practice in athletes.
It’s also a fun arts and crafts activity that lets you see how your objectives will look once you’ve achieved them. For example, if you want to be more confident in your physique, you could include images of happy, healthy women alongside empowering words like “confidence” on your vision board.
[…] Making a vision board is a powerful and great way to achieve your goals, I made one when I started my website and it has helped me scale my business and attain my dream life. If you need help with your dream board I have a great post on how to make a vision board. […]