There are some specific sounds that mark the month of December—Christmas carols, the rip of wrapping paper, and the whirr of the printer printing pictures for next year’s vision board. A practice so popular, preparing for the New Year wouldn’t be complete without it. At first, it was a simple list of goals, most often written in our heads on December 31, titled ‘New Year’s Resolutions’. Now, it’s a whole process where craft and design skills take centre stage, where goals are meticulously thought out and visualised. If you’ve never participated in this collage-making process, consider this guide as a stepping stone to manifesting your dream life.
But First, What Really Is A Vision Board?
It’s all in the name; a vision board is a collage of images related to the dream life you aspire to. Created like a collage, it’s a tool for manifestation, a practice that uses a mindset shift to achieve goals and turns dreams into realities. The logic behind it is simple. But visualising our goals and dreams, we give power to our subconscious mind to create the reality. Seeing our goals in picture format helps us put the process of achieving those goals into place. And if we lose motivation, those pictures will put us right back on track. It’s like a gentle nudge of what is possible.
What’s the Point of a Vision Board?
Apart from spending time being creative, a vision board helps us focus on our future clearly and confidently. Although there are no rules, and you can be vague with it, a vision board works best when it’s detailed, and the details are what build confidence in achieving those goals. By having clear intentions and thought-out goals, it inspires confidence to take action, which is the whole point of a vision board.
The vision board also works because it activates our brain’s RAS (Reticular Activating System). The RAS is a network of brain nerves that filters unnecessary information so we get to the important bits. It takes what you want to focus on and provides all relevant information about it. It’s why when you think about yellow cars, all of a sudden, all you can see are yellow cars. That’s not a coincidence; that’s your RAS signalling them out to you. With a vision board, your RAS will begin to look for any and all opportunities to achieve the goals visualised, thus taking you one step closer to your dream life.
So, How Exactly Do You Create a Vision Board?
We all have goals, so depending on how ambitious you are, your vision board can be simple or complicated. To make things easier, you can do it digitally. There are plenty of programs out there, like Canva, that make the process much smoother. When it comes to a physical vision board, all you need is a piece of cardboard and printed pictures of your dream life. Or, grab a stack of magazines and get to ripping pages out.
But before you commit to the collage, think about your goals. When it comes to identifying goals, most would think about career or fitness. And while that is important, a vision board should reflect your entire life, so it’s best to cover every aspect that you can think of.
Once the goals are decided and the intentions are set, it’s time to get into the pictures. Arguably, the most fun part of the vision board-making process, but also the most serious. It’s important not to select pictures based on aesthetics but rather on how they make you feel. The picture should evoke emotion within, part inspiration and part fear, because that means the change is near and very real.
It’s also important to keep things realistic. A ton of vision boards online will encourage straight-up delusional thinking. While there’s no predicting what the future holds, by giving in to it and visualising unrealistic goals, we’re setting ourselves up for failure and demotivating ourselves in the process.
What Happens After?
What do you do once you’ve made the vision board? It means you have to look at it. Every. Single. Day. Digitally, that looks like making your vision board your phone or desktop wallpaper. Physically, it means keep the board in a space you will always notice. It is recommended to look at the vision board before and after sleeping. Before, so the subconscious mind takes action, and after, just as a conscious reminder before we start the day.
