You may have heard about vision boards, but have you ever made one?
Last week, I hosted my 2017 Vision Board Retreat and I’ve had a lot of questions about it, so I thought I’d share some tips this week to help you if you’ve never made one OR if you haven’t made one in a while and need a refresher. We had a vision board virgin at the retreat that I hosted last week, and I was so excited! It is so thrilling to introduce this playful, creative, intuitive, magical process to people who are on a personal and professional development journey. This year, I made my 17th vision board!
I was first introduced to vision boards in the year 2001 by my friend Laura. She and I had started a book club together in Asheville, North Carolina and Laura suggested that we all get together on New Year’s Day and make a vision boards together. None of us had done it, but it sounded fun, so we said OK! We had a great time choosing images, designing our boards and sharing our hopes and dreams for the coming year with our circle of friends. Thus began my love affair with vision boards.(Thank you, Laura!)
For years, I claimed to not be a creative person. I was interested in math and science in grade school, I was a biology major in college, and felt woefully inadequate in any requisite art classes I was forced to take as a kid. Neither of my parents were artistic. My mom grew up in an orphanage and my dad was a drill instructor during Korea which means that our house was kept spotless… like a museum. Art and creativity is, by nature, messy. That was never encouraged or tolerated in my home as a kid.
But vision boards allowed me to access my creative self without being “too” messy! It was the perfect creative outlet. And, coupled with my new career as a coach (I entered the profession in 2000) and helping my clients to clarify their visions for the year ahead, it was a great new tool.
Not sure it’s worth your time? I wasn’t either. I’m pretty left-brained… I like lists, I like organization, I like taking action. But the process of creating a vision board is a really right-brained activity and stretches your mind in new and expansive ways. It can be a great complement to traditional goal setting and planning. The vision board helps to create a visual anchor of the goals you wrote down on paper. It reinforces the dreams you desire achieving!
So why create a vision board?
- Inspiring tool for focus – it’s a great tool to support your goals and dreams for the New Year.
- Intuitive process – it gets you out of your head and into your heart. You focus more on feelings, less on accomplishing specifics.
- Permission to be creative – vision boards help you feel creative, even when you think you’re not.
- It’s fun! Sitting on the floor using scissors to cut out pretty pictures and use purple glue sticks kind of takes you back to being in kindergarten.
Essential supplies to create your vision board:
- Magazines
- Scissors
- Glue sticks
- Poster board
Tips for creating a successful vision board
- Set aside 2-3 hours. Pull images for up to an hour, then start placing and gluing them. As you arrange them on the board, you’ll see where the gaps are and you can search for more images to fill them in.
- Variety. Be sure to pull your images from a variety of magazines. Some of my favorites are National Geographic, Oprah, Real Simple and any travel magazine!
- Images first, words second. Be very judicious with your use of words on the vision board. The less the better. Let the images be strong and powerful and evoke feelings that you desire.
- Organize it. It’s been my experience that organization naturally happens for most people (i.e. career images cluster together, family images cluster together, etc), but if you want to be intentional about it, consider creating your board with a theme in mind or use your word for the year as a guide.
OK it’s done. Now what?
Sit down with it and let it talk to you. Soon after the creation of your vision board, grab a journal and spend time with each of the images. This may sound woo-woo, but pretend as though you are engaging in a two-way dialogue. What does that image have to say to you? What is it trying to convey to you?
Hang it in a place you’ll see it regularly. It could hang in your closet, your bathroom or your refrigerator. Any place that you go daily where you can intentionally look at it and also receive subliminal messages from it.
Sit back and be amazed. Over the years, I’ve had the most incredible stories about things that people manifested as a result of creating vision boards. Houses, spouses, babies (me!), trips and more… and I’ve had clients come back to me years later to say “Hey, Elizabeth, remember when I made that vision board with you? Well… X came true!”
It’s pretty powerful stuff AND it’s lots of fun. Whatcha got to lose? If you create a vision board for yourself this year, send me a photo! I’d love to see it!
Here’s to revitalizing your biz + life with a vision board!
Elizabeth