Vision boards are highly versatile. You can use them to manifest your personal goals or create a visual representation of a personal vision statement. They’re perfect for helping you envision your dream life. But you can also use a vision board to outline your professional goals. Although vision boarding is a commonly used tool, there is not a lot of research on its effectiveness. Initial research suggests it can help us more easily reach our goals. This may be due to how vision boards help us gain self-awareness and self-reflect on what is important to us. Everyone has something that they want to bring to life. But what if you can't see it? Without a clear vision, it's hard to direct your efforts in ways that serve your goals. It's also hard to attract the support and resources you need. That's where a vision board comes in. I know countless highly successful business people, athletes, authors, artists, and more who say their vision board helped them get where they are today.
Why Visualization is So Powerful for Your Brain?
Visualization is not about simply placing an image on a board to “manifest” what you want or just using The Law of Attraction. It's all about your brain. Your Reticular Activating System (RAS) is the "filtering station" of your brain. Constantly seeing the images on your vision board helps your brain filter out the stuff you don't what while focusing on what you do want. Vision Board helps us to focus on values, gratitude, and lifestyle choices, becoming an effective tool for authentic alignment and change. Seeing a constant visual reminder of your goals is how your subconscious mind stays focused on your goals.
A Vision Board will not make your life perfect, but it puts the creative steering wheel in our hands in a way that I think many of us forget is a possibility. Instead of getting stuck in the shoulds and routines of our lives, let’s consider the clouds and the what ifs and the maybe, possibly. Instead of always reacting to the circumstances around us, let’s consider what circumstances we’d like to create. Instead of letting others’ wishes dictate our actions, let’s give a little more attention to our wishes.
What is a Vision Board?
It may be the most important thing you hang on the wall. A Vision Board is a board, on which you place images or sayings that represent what you want to achieve. Vision Board act as a map toward our dreams and goals, helping us to focus, plan, and do the tasks necessary on the way to achieving them.
Vision Board is a collage of images and words representing a person's wishes or goals, intended to serve as inspiration or motivation. By assembling a collection of images, mottos, or affirmations, you create a tool that helps improve concentration. It's wholly possible to turn your dreams into reality. It's called manifestation. Well, that and hard work. Vision Boards are an amazing tool to help you create that focused vision and kickstart the real manifestation process. When you regularly see what you want to either be or achieve, there’s a higher chance that you’ll arrive at your desired destination.
People who use Vision Board usually place them where they’ll see them often. For instance, you can place a Vision Board on a mirror you use to get ready in the morning. Other people will prefer to hang it on a wall in a room they use often. There are no rules when it comes to Vision Board since it's about crafting something that will inspire you to realize your dreams and goals daily. Exercise your imagination and create a vision of how you want your life to go! It's not total magic, though. And it's not something that happens overnight. For success with manifestation, you have to set your intention, believe that it will become a reality, then take active steps toward making that abstract idea come to fruition.
Some vision boards hone in on a singular idea, while others look at the bigger picture of what you might want the future to look like. No matter what your goals are to learn how to relax, to be more patient, to improve your relationship, to travel more, to find a job you adore, or to simply be kinder to yourself a Vision Board is a great tool to have during your journey.
What should a Vision Board include?
When you make your Vision Board and display it where you can see it every day, it helps remind you of the bigger picture and what your ultimate purpose in life is. The sky’s the limit when it comes to what to include in a Vision Board. To start, you should add images that inspire you or make you feel a certain way. Start by exploring your values. If your goals are not aligned with your values, achieving these goals won't provide the sense of satisfaction and well-being that you're seeking. Ask yourself:
- What matters to you?
- What gives you meaning?
- Who do you want to be?
- Who do you want to help?
- How do you want to spend your time?
Setting Goals for your Vision Board.
When making a Vision Board and thinking through your goals, keep these values-focused questions in mind. Sometimes Vision Board can end up being a collection of all the goals we aspire to be rich, beautiful, and successful. When you create a Vision Board and put it somewhere you will see every day, you’ll be more likely to achieve your goals. We want to achieve these goals, but we need to be more realistic with them. Remember that your goals can be spiritual, mental, or personal growth based, as well as materialistic.
What can we reasonably accomplish in a year or five years? Try to better understand why the goals you've set are so important to you. Or revise them if you discover they are not as important as you once thought. You can visualize your priorities by focusing a Vision Board on your most important life goals or by placing them above, in the center, or over a greater majority of the board. The goal of having a Vision Board is to give yourself a powerful daily reminder of the reality you want to create.
Vision Board can give you:
- Motivation – Looking at images that represent your dreams every day gently pushes you forward to create your best life.
- Intention – They visually depict the reality you intend to create and the commitments you have made to yourself.
- Inspiration – A Vision Board encourages you to believe that anything is possible!
- Clarity – Vision Board helps you remain clear on your goals and priorities even when everything else is uncertain and unclear.
Areas of Your Life you want to improve.
Your Vision Board should ideally represent a comprehensive view of all areas of your life, including your health, career, finances, relationships, home, hobbies, personal growth, and travel goals.
Be sure to add anything important to you. These goals can include your biggest, most ambitious dreams of your life, such as finding your “starting a business” You can also consider smaller goals that you know will increase your happiness levels daily, such as decluttering your bedroom. Be sure to dream big but always make sure your dreams accurately reflect what you want in life not what someone else thinks you should want.
Look at your dream board often and feel the inspiration it provides. When you are thinking of goals for your vision board be sure to consider all areas of your life and make sure your vision accurately depicts what you want for your life, not what someone else thinks you should want. Close yourself and visualize yourself living the life represented by the images on your Vision Board. Feel yourself in the future you have designed. Be grateful for the good that is already present in your life. Exactly what you add to your goal-setting Vision Board depends on what you‘re trying to manifest in your life. For example:
- Financial Goals - If you’re hoping to attract more money into your life, you may want to include images of actual cash or the items you would like to buy with that money (such as your own home, a car, an e-bike, etc.).
- Relationship Goals - Are you looking for romantic love? You may want to include images of happy couples doing romantic things, such as enjoying a fancy dinner, going for walks in nature, traveling, cooking together, and snuggling up on the couch. Choose whichever activities you dream of enjoying with a significant other.
- Happiness Goals - If you are looking to experience more joy in life, add images that evoke that sense of joy in you. These could be images of nature, happy people laughing, or cute animals whatever causes you to feel the emotion you want to experience.
- Spiritual Goals - To find greater spiritual understanding and contentment, include images that evoke the kind of spiritual enlightenment you seek. These could be images specific to your faith tradition, or they could be serene images from nature that awaken the sense of harmony you’re looking for.
- Travel Goals - f you want to experience more travel and adventure, include images of the exact places you would like to travel to and the types of experiences you would like to have when you go.
Potential Problems With Vision Boards
Vision Board is somewhat controversial in the scientific community. Because Vision Boards are often associated with the "law of attraction," which doesn't have scientific support behind it, many assume Vision Boards are not useful tools. Indeed, we don't fully understand the precise benefits of the Vision Board, but the truth is we don't understand the precise benefits of many tools that are used in coaching, counseling, and psychotherapy. That's because testing each one of these tools without the others is quite burdensome research. Anyway, given we know that the very act of setting goals is better than not setting goals, Vision Boards are indeed likely to be a useful tool, at least for some people.
If you’re ready to make a Vision Board to keep your goals and dreams top of mind, I encourage you to go for it! Creating a vision board is a powerful way of getting to know yourself and what it is you truly want to manifest and call into your life. A daily visualization practice also helps you orient toward your goals and provides you with clear direction on how to accomplish them every day.
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