A BETTER Way to Make a Vision Board for your BEST Years

What is a Vision Board & Do They Really Work?

Have you ever created a vision board only to wonder why it didn’t seem to work? Or maybe you think to yourself, I don’t have any dreams to create a vision board about? Or maybe vision boards are completely new to you.

I’ve been creating vision boards for over 15 years now and never cease to be amazed that a dream that began on a little piece of cardboard actually came to life.

One of my favorite examples of this was a raincoat that I spotted in an Athleta catalog. The price was way more than I felt good about spending on a rain jacket, so I cut it out of the catalog, put it on my vision board and hoped for the best.

A month or two later I was shopping in a Gap outlet store and wouldn’t you know it. but there was the raincoat I’d been looking at on my vision board. It was a small fraction of the price, because it was missing a snap on the outside. However, it was such a tiny defect that you can’t really notice it. I’m still using this raincoat today over ten years later. 

If you are new to vision boarding, the simplest way to describe it is that a vision board is a way for you to have a picture of the life you would like to create for yourself. By looking at your vision board (hopefully daily), and feel what it would feel like to be living the life on your board, you essentially give your brain the information it needs to begin looking for ways and opportunities to make this a reality. 

For things to change in life, we have to pay attention to what we want. In this way we actually notice opportunities when they arise. A vision board is a tool to help you remember to pay attention. It can also help motivate you to put into motion the things that need to happen to get what you want. An example of this might be reading a book to increase your knowledge about a subject or perhaps learning a new skill. 

Dreaming Isn't Just for Children

Before we get into suggestions for a better way to create vision boards, I want to dispel the notion that once you hit a certain age you are too old to dream, as dreaming is what vision boards are all about. I’ve held quite a few vision board workshops and hear people say all the time that they are too old to have dreams. I just don’t believe it. Our dreams simply change in different phases of our life. 

My mother and I were talking about this some time ago and she told me she didn’t have any dreams for the future anymore. I pointed out that her dreams now are simply different than they were when she was younger. For her, she dreams about having a neatly organized craft room and picture-perfect flower gardens. My vision boards these days picture a healthy lifestyle, travel, and more time with family. 

Dreams don’t have to be about achieving something. Sometimes what we really desire is more time to simply be, to do fun things, or have time to express our creativity. These types of things can easily be dreams as well. 

There also are always a number of people in my vision board workshops that have no idea what they want to dream about. If this sounds like you, you just need a little help getting your creative juices flowing in the right direction. These folks have found my Guide to Creating Your Dream Bucket List very helpful.

My Favorite Vision Board Success Story

My very first vision board was entirely focused on travel. It too was an amazing vision board success story. To make this vision board, I went out and purchased a bunch of travel magazines and began flipping through them and cutting out pictures of all the places I wanted to travel to in my lifetime. Two or three years passed and at some point I forgot about the board altogether–it ended up tucked away in a closet out of sight. Yet the seeds had been planted and in 2008 what began as a trip to Hawaii as a graduation present from my parents to my daughter, ended up as a 3 month excursion around the world-the trip of a lifetime. 

Some time after we got back from that trip I stumbled across the vision board I had created and I was shocked to see that there were only a couple of places on that vision board that we hadn’t visited. It still blows my mind. The travel I’d dreamed of completing in a lifetime had taken place almost entirely in a three month time span.

I mentioned that I cut pictures out of a magazine when I created this first vision board. While it worked well for that vision board because the magazines were packed full of images of the exact places I wanted to travel to, most magazines aren’t going to be that specific. So if you do decide to use magazines, it helps to seek out ones that are very focused on what you want. I rarely use this method now, as it is just too time-consuming to find something that really looks like what I want to create in my life. Instead I rely on internet searches. 

A Better Way to Create a Vision Board

This brings me to a key point I want to share with you. Many people haphazardly flip through magazines looking for things that they are drawn to or that excite them. You can do this, but the closer you can get to creating a picture of what you truly desire in your life, versus flipping pages and cutting out what looks good, the more powerful your board will be in getting you what you really want and in motivating you to do what you need to do to get it.

So in my opinion, it’s best if you first have clarity on what you want in your life. That’s why I always start my vision boards from the goals or dreams that I am currently working on. I describe these on the early pages in my journal and then list the things that I am going to do that season (because it is a seasonal journal). I do this in my journal because that way I look at these for just a few moments every day during my journaling time–reminding myself that I need to make time for these things. 

Using Canva to Create Your Vision Board

Typically I’ll  begin my image search process in Canva, as they have a fairly extensive selection of images you can use. Canva is a program that makes designing things super easy for those of us that are not graphic artists. It is really a lot of fun to use if you enjoy being creative in this way. They have numerous templates for all kinds of things, including vision boards. For my vision board this season, I used one of their templates and was able to find all the pictures I needed right there in the platform. 

Another reason I like to use Canva is that it is easy to recreate and make changes to the vision board you created. Since I put a new one in my journal each season, most of the time, I am focused on the same things for longer than one season. I can swap out some pictures very easily and reprint the next season and in no time flat, I've got an updated vision board.

I usually download the completed vision board as a PNG file and then drop the picture into a blank Word document to print it. This way I can use the ruler in Word to get it to the size I want it to be to go inside my journal. This is also helpful if you want to drop what you have created into a picture frame that goes on your wall or sits on your desk. The important thing once you get it done is to put it somewhere where you will look at it every day and feel what it will feel like when what’s on that board is actually happening. 

How to Use Your Vision Board

The last thing I want to share with you about using a vision board is that when you are looking at it, it is also helpful to think about what roadblocks there could be on the way to making what’s on that board become a reality. The reason for doing this is that by thinking about the obstacles that need to be overcome, you will also begin thinking about how to go about getting over or around those obstacles. Absent doing that, your use of your vision board can become merely wishful thinking. 

One final thought - you have to believe that what’s on your board can and will happen. Believing is all about deciding what you want to believe and what you don’t want to believe. You can change your beliefs. If this doesn’t seem possible to you, I explain and show you how in my Secret to Creating Affirmations that Work course. Through a series of videos in this self-guided course, I teach you tools for managing your beliefs. If you change what you believe, you change how you think and this can change your life.

The ability to manage your beliefs is so important that there is a dedicated section for this in my Slow Living Project coaching program. One of my clients was sharing with me just the other day how impactful this section of the program has already been in helping her to make impactful changes in how she thinks and as a result, in what she does.

Key Points for Vision Boarding

1. It’s never too late to dream. Dreams change and that’s okay.

2. A better way to create a vision board, begins with clarity on what you want and doing your best to create a picture of this. (As opposed to randomly flipping through magazines.) 

3. Searching for images on the internet and using Canva are great tools for finding images and to help you create your board.

4. Look at your vision board every day. Feel what it would feel like if these dreams were true. This is the juice your brain needs to keep your attention focused on doing what you need to do to make this happen and noticing opportunities to help you when they come up. 

5. When you are looking at your board, also think about what the roadblocks are so you can figure out a way around them.

6. Visualization keeps your attention focused and helps motivate you to take action–this is what is really needed to make your dreams a reality.

7. It is important to believe that what’s on your board can and will become reality. You have the capability of changing your beliefs.