One of my favorite tools for creating an empowered new year is a vision board. I used to have to explain this tool, about how it’s a collage of inspirations and aspirations for your future year but in recent years it seems to be everyone’s favorite new years goal setting activity and there are so many great reasons why it’s growing in popularity. Who doesn’t love visual crafting, that transports you back to grade school art class. Here is the thing, you can create a vision board that doesn’t have vision. Like most tools, a vision board isn’t a great tool, if you don’t use it correctly. I’ve made vision boards for decades now and I’ve realized that there are three important things that you need to do to ensure that your vision board becomes the powerful goal setting and life changing tool that it was meant to be.
My first exposure to vision boards was from Jack Canfield’s book, Chicken Soup For the Soul. I slurped up the positivity in those books like they were the soul food I’d been needing my whole life. As a young adult I struggled with depression. I wasn’t raised to have a positive mindset. I was raised in a family that subscribed to the everything is half empty theory. We were a family of complainers, everything was someone else’s fault and the most destructive message we got was to not set our expectations to high, so you wouldn’t get disappointed when things didn’t go your way. When I found Jack Canfield’s books I found a treasure trove of positivity and stories about people taking action to improve their lives. I dove into the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, like it was a life preserver and it was that desire to take control of my happiness that changed my life in so many powerful ways.
In the original Book, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Jack Canfield tells a story about how he had seen his dream home but he couldn’t afford it at the time. Instead of giving up on his dream home, he took a picture of it and he put it on a board so that he could look at it everyday until the day he moved into that home of his dreams. It took years and was financed by the success of his very popular and positive writing. For some reason that story of Canfield’s vision stood out for me. I remember that story because of the vision board and how it helped him carry his dream into fruition. It was also within that story that I found the first key to having success with your vision board. The first key to vision board success is to always put it somewhere that you can see it. Jack put his vision board In a place where he could see it daily. I do the same with my new vision boards because the only time I didn’t realize the majority of my vision board goals was when I put it in a closet. I was too embarrassed to let someone else see my dreams for my future and I wasn’t owning my dreams. I was leaving those dreams in the dark to be forgotten and forgotten they were. I know sometimes our dreams can feel too big to own but it’s the work of owning your goals, dreams and desires that make them true. Your goals won’t burden you with their weight if you aren’t ready to own them. One of the most powerful coaching breakthroughs that I’ve seen with clients is when they start to own the largeness of their goals and dreams. It’s always life changing.
Years after I read the story of Jack Canfield’s vision board, It entered my life again, after I moved into my first dream apartment. It was my first solo apartment, no roommates, I could finally live 100% the way I wanted to and only clean my own dishes. The apartment was in a large house called, “The Castle Arms”, because it had a round tower that went up three floors. The tower had windows on all sides and it was where my bedroom was on the second floor. I slept so well surrounded by all those windows, the amazing cross breeze from the windows that surrounded my bed was one of my favorite things about my new apartment. I could also hear an amazing singer practicing opera scales. Her her beautiful voice would waft in through my window. I followed the sound of her voice across the street and she became one of my favorite people and a lifelong friend.
About a month into living at the Castle Arms, I realized that the reason this apartment felt like a dream was because I’d actually been there years earlier. I visited with a friend who knew someone who lived In the very apartment that I now lived in. When I walked in, I said, “ Wow, This is my dream apartment”. This brings me to the second key to successfully bringing your vision board to life. The second key to making your vision board goals a reality is to speak your goals out loud. Not only is your brain listening when you speak your goal into reality but also speaking your intentions out loud gives them more power towards becoming reality and when you share your dreams with others you are inviting them into your vision to co-create and help you make your vision a reality.
The third key to making your vision board more than a fun craft project is to, take action. Part of what makes a vision board such a powerful tool is because when you create a visual reference, your brain has a physical representation of what it is looking for and what it will need to create your goals. This visual reference is called a scan image and your brain will be working consciously and unconsciously to find, gather and create the pieces of the puzzle to make real in your life the goals, aspirations and inspirations of your vision. The more action you take towards finding the pieces of your goal the more likely and quicker you will see your dreams come to fruition.
So the first key to creating vision board success is to put your vision board somewhere that you will see it everyday, multiple times a day is even better. I like to write parts of my vision board goals on my bathroom mirror, the years that I’ve transferred goals onto my mirror have always been the most empowered goal realizing years. Next, share your dreams and ideas with anyone and everyone you have a conversation with, not just people who you think will support you. You never know what someone else is willing and able to contribute towards your hopes and dreams. Lastly, take action to find the pieces of your dream, even if those pieces seem out of order, grab a hold of them and accept them as the gifts that they are. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard someone complain that they are getting what they asked for but it’s not in the order that they thought it would come. If it’s coming into your life, grab it. Yes it may be coming together in unexpected ways but it’s here to help you create your dream year and your dream life.
I will be hosting a vision board workshop this month on Saturday January 18th to help you create the most powerful vision for 2025. Please feel free to bring children that can work independently as I think vision boarding and goal setting is a great habit for children to start as well. Use link for details
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2025-vision-board-goal-setting-workshop-tickets-1133307255509?aff=oddtdtcreator