Using a vision board can help you stay focused and motivated to reach your goal.
If you’re like me and don’t like New Year’s Resolutions, but you still like the idea of creating annual goals and achievements for yourself, the beginning of the year is a great time to make yourself a vision board dedicated to the plans and goals you have for the coming year. Vision boards are a powerful tool for helping you to focus on your goals and dreams for the upcoming year, and they can also provide ongoing encouragement and motivation to help you see them through. On top of that, they’re just plain fun to put together!
A goal-oriented vision board is something that you can either update as you go along, or you can create a new one each year and have the fun of comparing your old and new boards to see how your goals have evolved and changed over time. Your vision board can be a paper based scrapbook or poster, or you can make an electronic board, either by creating a special folder on your computer where you can store your items, or by creating a special board on Pinterest. I use Pinterest for my vision board because I love the ease of being able to pin images and quotes I find when I’m online straight to my vision board for later perusal. It’s quick and easy, it doesn’t really interrupt what I’m doing all that much, and ensures that awesome stuff doesn’t get lost in the “must remember to add that to my vision board later” thinking.
“A goal-oriented vision board will motivate & energize you to achieve your goals!” Click to Tweet!
Whichever way you choose to create your vision board, here’s a great little method for putting together a meaningful goal-oriented board that will motivate and energize you to follow through with your goals!
Five steps to creating your own goal-oriented vision board
1. Write down one of the goals you want to achieve this year.
- e.g. “I want to lose ten pounds.”
- e.g. “I want to make an extra $10 000”
- e.g. “I want to release my own album”
2. Write down why you want to achieve it. Remember to keep your language positive when you do this — thinking about these goals should make you feel good!
- e.g. “Because I’ll feel healthy and sexy” (NOT “because I feel fat”)
- e.g. “Because it will make me feel secure and relaxed” (NOT “because I never have enough”)
- e.g. “Because it would be so much fun” (NOT “because I never took my music seriously enough”)
3. What word embodies the quality or internal state that you think achieving this goal will bring you? Use your reason statement from step 2 for clues.
- e.g. “sexy”, “healthy”, “confident”
- e.g. “security”, “freedom”, “relaxed”
- e.g. “fun”, “excitement”, “create”
4. What physical action will you take to make this goal a reality? Pick a word or an image that symbolizes this action.
- e.g. “yoga”, “walk”, “eat healthy”
- e.g. “invest”, “launch my own business”
- e.g. “find a writing partner”, “sing”
5. Finally, pick an inspirational quote that motivates you to accomplish your goals this year. Something that really clicks or resonates with you.
Once you’ve completed all five steps, put all of the images, words, quotes and phrases you’ve pulled together into your vision board. When you’re done with one goal, you can go then go through the above method for each of the goals you’ve set for yourself this year, either creating a new board for each goal, or putting all your goals together in one big vision board.
Other items you might also want to include in your board(s) are words and images that represent milestones that you might reach for a larger goal, song lyrics, MP3s, links to YouTube music videos that you find particularly inspirational, or links to blog articles that motivate you. Whatever bits and pieces you find that make you feel jazzed about your goal, that make you feel awesome and happy, enthusiastic and energized – anything that makes you feel good about your goal is perfect for your vision board, so be sure to keep adding to it as you find new items that appeal to you. You’ll want to refer to your board often to keep yourself grounded and motivated to keep going forward, so be sure to make it as inspiring and appealing as you can. 🙂
Once you’ve given this exercise a try, or if you already use a vision board to help with your goals, please tell me about it in the comments section below, and also feel free to share any other tools that you’ve found helpful to keep you on track and inspired!
