How to Make a Vision Board in 6 Simple Steps

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Do you feel you need a push to focus on your goals? Daily reminders and motivators would be great, right?

But you might be wondering how it’s possible to keep your goals in mind every day. Your life is busy. You barely remember what you had for lunch yesterday.

One way to focus yourself on your goals and remind yourself of your motivation is through a vision board. When you make a vision board, you’re creating a motivating way to remind yourself to work towards your dreams every day.

What Exactly is a Vision Board?

A vision board is more than just a craft project. It’s a collage that includes pictures and words that represent your dreams and goals. The board can address your life in general or one or more specific areas that you choose.

A vision board helps you visualize what you want in life. It forces you to define and clarify your dreams and ambitions in a tangible way that makes them feel more real and achievable.

One of the most challenging parts of achieving goals is keeping the motivation to stick with them. It’s easy to become distracted, lose hope, or even forget about them.

A perfect solution for all of these challenges is making a vision board. It’s a wonderful tool for reminding yourself about your goals each day.

How to Create a Vision Board That Works for You

Regular use of your vision board keeps your goals fresh in your mind. Using a vision board also associates positive feelings with the achievement of your goals.

Nearly anything can serve as a vision board. Ideally, your vision board will be portable enough to carry with you. Then you can use it at any time.

Poster board, cardboard, or even a spare wall can suffice. You might decide to use a notebook or choose to go digital and create your vision board online.

No matter what you pick, the basic process of creating an effective vision board remains the same:

  1. Know what you want
  2. Define your goals
  3. Find relevant images
  4. Add powerful, motivating words
  5. Create your vision board layout
  6. Attach your elements to your vision board

Keep reading below for more in-depth info on each one of these steps.

1. Know what you want

The first step to creating any good vision board is truly understanding what you want. If you can’t create a clear vision for yourself, it’s going to be difficult to manifest what you truly need.

Before starting your vision board, ask yourself what your goals are. Do you know what you want your life to be like?

If you already know what you want, that’s great. You’re ready to move on and get started on your vision board. But if you don’t, you may need to do some soul searching.

One way to accomplish this is actually by creating a vision board! One specifically for discovering yourself. Collect pictures that you love and that inspire you and see what patterns are revealed.

You may find out something new about yourself to explore or discover that your subconscious is ready to tackle a hurdle you’ve been avoiding.

2. Define your goals

This is often the most challenging part. It’s tempting to just through everything you want on a vision board and call it a day. But for best results, you should limit yourself to a few goals on one board.

You can certainly make one large vision for the ultimate goals in your life, but much like the basics of goal setting, it’s better to break large goals down into smaller ones. This way, you can see progress quickly and feel more accomplished. This keeps you motivated to keep working towards that one BIG goal.

Remember, you’re never limited to one vision board ever. You can keep making new ones as you need them.

Once you know what you want, it’s a lot easier to come up with the goals you need to meet to get it.

  • Do you need more money?
  • Do you need to learn a new skill?
  • Are there blockages that you need to overcome?
  • Do you need to ask someone for help?

Ask yourself what you truly need to make your goal happen and if you don’t know, do the research to find out what needs to be done. You can always start your vision board with images of you learning what you need and then add more images later based on what you’ve learned.

3. Find inspiring vision board images

A picture truly is worth 1,000 words, especially when it comes to visualization. You want to make it as easy as possible to see yourself at your goal.

There are plenty of sources for images: photographs you take you’ve taken, magazines, various places on the internet, free stock photos, and more.

Find pictures that best represent the goals you wish to achieve. If you’re striving for a new car, find the exact model and color. When you look at the photo, you should get the same feeling you get when you think about the goal.

You should also include images that represent the work necessary to achieve your goal. Studies have been done that show that vision boards that focus on the necessary actions are more effective than those that only focus on the end goal.

4. Include power words and affirmations

Besides images, you can also include some words or text that inspires you. Common choices are power words, positive affirmations, motivational quotes, and title headers to separate different sections.

Like the photos you add, these words and phrases should help you either visualize working through your process and achieving your final outcome or inspire motivation to help you keep working towards your goal.

Some ideas for vision board power words

Choose the most relevant words, phrases, and quotes to go on your vision board. This may include the name of a vacation spot you want to visit or a car you want to buy.

Do you have a favorite quote that always inspires you? Be sure to add it to your vision board!

Below are some examples of power words that you may want to include if they apply to your goal and situation.

Consider how you want to feel when your goal is achieved:

  • Excited
  • Content
  • Proud
  • Successful
  • Grateful

What qualities will you need to achieve these goals?

  • Strong
  • Powerful
  • Persistent
  • Optimistic
  • Committed

You may also want to include some words for a state of mind or being that you want to create:

  • Mindfulness
  • Abundance
  • Confidence
  • Discipline
  • Positivity

And because I can’t help myself, here are a few more vision board power word ideas just for good measure!

  • Wealthy
  • Good Health
  • Debt Free
  • Joyful
  • Happy Family

5. Create a layout that makes sense to you

Do you prefer calm or chaos?

Structured and logical or jumbled and

How you design your board is up to you and there’s no wrong way to do it. As long as it makes sense in your head and helps you visualize your dreams, you’ve got the perfect vision board layout.

So don’t feel bad if you decide you don’t like the collage style that most people think of when they hear “vision board.” Be proud of knowing yourself and what you need to sort out what you want in life and make it happen. Explore different options and find what you like best.

Gather your words and photos, cut them out if necessary, and arrange them in a way that makes sense to you. Hold off on gluing anything together until you’re happy with your layout.

6. Attach items to your vision board

Once you have everything where you want it, it’s time to glue, pin, or tape everything down.

While doing so, you can continue thinking about your goals and how you intend to go about completing them. If you don’t have a plan 100% ready, that’s fine! Include learning what you do to do as a part of your plan.

Congratulations!

Your vision board is made!

As you can see, the process of building a vision board is easy and fun. It can really get you thinking about your life, your own happiness, and how you want to make others around you happier.

Creative Vision Board Ideas

There’s a lot of room to get crafty when you make a vision board. It’s already obvious that you have a collage of pictures and words, but you can always go beyond just those few basic things. Don’t be afraid to let your creativity show!

Here’s an interesting vision board take from @_studyvision_ on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBpzCwuBD4U/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading

If you have your own ideas, just follow the 6 steps mentioned above as a foundation and continue on with any other elements you want. If you like, try using some of the following elements on your vision board to make it even more personalized and unique:

  • Planner materials such as stickers, washi tape, or journal cards
  • Trinkets or ornaments that can hang from the board
  • Photos that you’ve taken yourself, such as vacation photos
  • Crafting materials like fabric, glitter, streamers, foam core, etc.
  • Mini collages for each section of your vision board—sort of like vision board inception!

Anything can go into the creation of your vision board has long as you can get it all to stick together.

It’s also perfectly fine if you include none of these items.

As long as you can look at your vision board daily and prep yourself and the universe for achieving your goals, your vision board will be doing its job. How effective it is doesn’t depend on how fancy your board is.

How to Use Your Vision Board to Manifest Your Dreams

Creating your vision board is only the beginning. There’s more you need to do in order to properly manifest the opportunities necessary to complete your goals.

Then, you still need to take advantage of the opportunities you manifest. Don’t let them pass you by!

Visualize daily

Returning to your vision board regularly is just as important as creating it. This action alone will greatly increase your chances of success.

Visualize or meditate on part of your vision board or the whole thing each day. Look carefully at each word and picture on the board. Take your time and see yourself having those things in your life.

Turn visualization into motivation

You should now feel more motivated to work towards your goals. You can have these things if you work towards them!

Maybe you woke up thinking you’d spend the day binge-watching Netflix, but now you just remembered something you can do that will further your progress but is still relatively relaxing. You might even be able to do it while you’ve got your favorite show running the background. Win-win!

5 Things to do After You Make a Vision Board

Below are some tips for how to use your vision board to manifest your desired outcomes.

View your vision board often

Keep your vision board in a place where you’ll see it at least twice each day. On the nightstand is a great location. You’ll see it in the morning and at night. If you’re comfortable doing so, you could mount it on the bathroom mirror.

Reflect on your goals in the morning

Spend a few minutes each morning using your vision board. This can set the tone for the rest of your day. Reminding yourself of your goals each morning will point your brain in the right direction.

This will get you in the right frame of mind to better see opportunities to help make your dreams come true. It’s then your job to seize those opportunities.

Don’t forget before bed, too

Using your vision board before bed is just as important. Your brain is highly active while you sleep. Your brain spends all night churning away, trying to find solutions to your requests.

Give your brain the information it needs. Look at the items on your vision board and imagine possessing them. Experience how that feels.

Part of your brain will spend all night trying to make your vision board a reality. I’ve definitely had some helpful dreams related to the goals I’ve set with a vision board.

Make a plan to work towards your goal

It’d be nice if we could just make a vision board, meditate on it, and suddenly get everything we want. But the truth is, you still have to make an effort and be prepared to jump on any opportunities that come your way.

I believe that the universe sends back the energy you put out, and if you’re lazy with taking action, the universe will be equally lazy with helping you out. You have to be willing to help yourself.

So rather than stopping with viewing your vision board each day, take some time to plan changes or actions that you need to be able to achieve your goal.

Open your mind to change, and it’ll be easier to follow through. You’ll suddenly be tuned into opportunities you wouldn’t have noticed before with your closed, static mindset.

Take action

Finally, be sure to follow through with your plan. You can have the best plan ever but it means nothing if you don’t take advantage of it.

I find this to be the most difficult part to actually do, but you have to remember that this is where the rewards come from. Your vision board is a source of motivation for this specific step right here.

Visualize yourself working through your plan to mentally prepare for what you need to do, then just that energy to actually put your plan to action.

Create a vision board and use it every day. Remember, it’s not magic, though it might seem like that at times!

The magic of vision boards is that they keep your goals fresh in your mind. Using your vision board each day, twice if you can, can boost your motivation and open your eyes and mind to new opportunities that will help you reach your goals.

Give a vision board a try for a few months and see for yourself how well it works!

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