What is a Vision Board?

A vision board is a craft project – a collage that includes pictures and words that reflect your life goals. The board can address your life in general or one or more specific areas you choose.

A vision board shows what you’re seeking in life. It prompts you to consider what you want. Before starting your board, ask yourself what your goals are. What do you want your life to be like?

Preparing to Construct Your Vision Board

Follow these preparation steps:

1. Gather supplies. Use a large square or rectangle of poster board or foam core board as the base of your vision board.

• You’ll need colored ink markers, magazines with plenty of words in headlines and pictures, scissors, and glue.

2. Ponder what you’ll include in your board. Decide the life area(s) you wish to address: all aspects, such as prosperity, relationships, family, sports, health, school, jobs, and careers or just 1-2 of your most-sought-after goals.

• You’ll use pictures and words about the things you desire, the place(s) you want to live, and anything else representative of the lifestyle you seek.

3. Plan time to start work on your vision board. Schedule a day and time to make your board when you’ll be uninterrupted. Allow yourself 3-4 hours. You might not complete it in one sitting. That’s okay. It’ll take some time to browse through magazines and select images to clip and use.

Vision Board Day!

It’s time to get started.

1. Reflect on your most important goals. Set a timer for 20 minutes and clarify to yourself what you want in life.

• Right now, what’s important to you? What do you want to pursue? It’s okay if you’re not sure. But give yourself time to think about it. When you emotionally connect with your goals, you’re more likely to achieve them.

2. Find the pictures you want to use. Browse through magazines and clip images that reflect your goals and dreams. Then, without gluing, arrange and re-arrange the pictures on the poster board until you love how it looks.

• Leave a space somewhere on the poster board to place a favorite picture of you.
• Once you have a pleasing arrangement, affix your collage with glue.

3. Include words to express goals and desires. Write words that connect you with the pictures. Express your thoughts and emotions using markers. You might choose to clip words from magazines (larger print is best) and glue them on your vision board.

4. Glue on a picture of yourself that you like and voila, you’ve just created your vision board!
5. Recognize it’s a process. You might start out making your vision board about your career and discover you’re really more interested in deepening friendships or making money from a job you’ve never tried. That’s okay; switch gears on this board or even construct another board later.
6. Display your vision board. Hang it in your den, bedroom, or somewhere you’ll see it every day. Stop and look at it, touch it, and say out loud, “I’m working for that!” Let yourself get excited about the prospect of achieving your goals.

Making a vision board keeps you oriented toward your life desires. Construct a new board later as you reach current goals and add new ones. Motivate yourself to attain your goals and dreams through making your own vision board.

 photo credit: RON SOMBILON MEDIA, ART and PHOTOGRAPHY

Vision boards are also known as goal maps, goal boards and treasure maps, and the concepts behind them have been used for generations. Still, they’re gathering renewed interest as people realize how powerful they can be in bringing dreams to life.

Use these basic guidelines to create this tool for yourself:

1. A vision board begins with a foundation. This may be a poster board, foam board, tri-fold board, or cork board. Use what works best for you. Choose a foundation that speaks to you, one that you feel you can easily and effectively build upon.
2. A vision board includes imagery. You can clip pictures out of books, magazines, or the newspaper. If you prefer, you can draw the images yourself. What matters here is that images are present, because your vision board needs to be visual in nature. Seeing pictures of your priorities, dreams, and goals will help you focus on them.

Allow yourself to experiment with different mediums while creating the images for your vision board. Find photographs, sketches, clip art and other images; then draw any subjects for which you couldn’t find an appropriate piece of art.

4. A vision board includes writing. Writing isn’t mandatory, but it can play a role in identifying the key pieces of information. You want to make sure that you can look at your vision board at any point in the future and know exactly what you intended by each picture, word or thought included on it.

Your goal map is limited only by the extent of your personal creativity. It may be simple and strategic or it may be a highly detailed work of art. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide what best suits your needs.

The general elements in an effective and motivating vision board are:

1. Visual. Your subconscious tends to work in terms of images and pictures, and so your vision board should be as visual as you can possibly make it. Supplement the images with phrases and words as needed.
2. Emotional. Every image on your goal map should evoke some type of positive emotional response out of you. Seeing it should fuel your motivation to achieve your dreams.
3. Strategic. This tool should be placed strategically in a location where you receive maximum exposure to it. Seeing your vision board as often as possible will help you stay focused on your goals and dreams.
4. Personal. Your vision board needs to emit positive energy. If you think that you’ll be criticized or forced to justify yourself for your vision board, then keep it in a private location so nobody else can bother it or you.

Beyond these basic guidelines, let this tool be whatever you want to make of it. Ultimately, it’s yours to design, develop and utilize as you see fit. You can add to it and change it over time as your goals and focuses change.

photo credit: Ron Sombilon Gallery

Having visual reminders of your goals, dreams, and aspirations helps keep you focused on what’s important to you.

Throughout life’s daily crises, stresses, and distractions, visual reminders can help you remember the big picture. They can help you overcome challenges and move forward each day toward achieving the life you truly desire.
Knowing that you’re always moving forward brings a confident, peaceful feeling. You’re sure that, no matter what life brings your way, you will achieve the success you crave. This feeling is an awesome motivator to keep you going even when the chips are down, and visuals can help you get it.

Try these ways to use visuals as a means of achieving the goals in your life:

1. Post-it note reminders. This simple method puts your goals and motivators at the forefront. Buy colorful sticky notes and fun colored pens and commit your goals to paper. Stick these notes in the places where they matter most so you can see them and think about them often.

• Place notes on your bathroom mirror, your headboard, the refrigerator door, on your favorite coffee mug or right on the bottom of your computer monitor. Any place that you’re likely to glance throughout the day is a good destination for a motivating, goal-setting note.

• Make your notes specific, “I want to eat right this week to lose 2 lbs by the 1st,” or broad but motivating, “Today will be a productive and motivating day. You can do it!” These sticky notes will encourage productivity throughout the day with simple, basic visuals.

2. Note cards. Buy a stack of white note cards and commit a goal or aspiration to each one. Decorate them, write notes on them, and otherwise customize
them to suit your needs. Keep them in your pocket, purse or brief case and refer to them daily as a means of motivating yourself to achieve your goals and dreams.

• When you refer to the same note cards on a daily basis, a habit forms. It is said that 21 days of repeating a task will ingrain it in you. Check your note cards daily until it becomes a habit, and it will become a vital tool in helping you achieve your goals.

3. Visual mind maps. This tool will help you organize your goals in a highly visual way. Create a mind map on a large sheet of poster board. Designate an area for each long-term goal, and add an image and a small amount of text. Create a cloud of medium and long-term goals around each long-term goal, with lines connecting them to the long-term focus.

• Use images, colors, words, and other meaningful visuals to decorate your poster. Draw your own graphics, clip pictures from magazines, or download images from the internet to create a colorful – and visually appealing – goal-oriented mind map.

• Put time and effort into the creation of your visual mind map, and then put it in a place where you’ll see it daily. This visual will help you keep your short, medium, and long term goals in mind and will consistently remind you of what you want to be focusing on.

Visual reminders of your goals are extremely beneficial in helping you achieve your dreams and aspirations. These reminders are easy to see on a daily basis, helping you recall your most important goals early on and throughout the day. If there are specific goals you want to focus on, visual reminders are a great way to help you achieve them. ?

photo credit: SharonaGott , tracyshaun

Visualization is an important success element in your goal achievement efforts. A very powerful way to apply visualization is by creating a so called “Vision Board”, also known as a “Dream Board”. It is one of the most powerful ways to put the Law of Attraction to work for you. A Vision Board is a collage of pictures of the goals and dreams you want to attract in your life. Important is to really use the exact image of what you want to attract, as whatever you show on your Board will become part of your reality! So if you want a specific kind of car, make sure it is exactly the type, model and color you desire.

A very basic and fun way of creating a Vision Board is by taking a big piece of carton, scissors, glue and tons of magazines. Go through the magazines and search for images of your dreams, or search for the right images on the internet. Cut out the images and glue them on your cardboard. For more power, add affirmations such as “I love driving my new Porsche” or “I spend lots of quality time with my family”. This reinforces what you desire. Hang your cardboard on a spot where you will see it on a very regular basis, such as at your desk or in the kitchen. Look at it daily, and really FEEL as if you have already achieved the things on your Board. It is precisely this FEELING that will help you to attract your vision into your life. Therefore, make sure to look at your Board as often as possible with focused intent. You will be happily surprised to see the things on your Vision Board show up in your life -sooner or later- providing you keep putting your intention on them and you stay positive and inspired.

By looking at your Vision Board on a consistent (daily) basis, you will manifest the life you truly desire and absolutely deserve!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Linda_Boertjens

photo credit: WiseWellWoman

Instead of observing a problem that you want changed, imagine the situation or condition as you want it to be. The concept is simple and, fortunately, so is the method. Anyone can do it, anywhere, at any time, and for any duration – with incredible results. Creative visualization is one of the most powerful methods there are for effecting the changes you desire.

In a very real way your fantasies are your realities – good ones and bad ones, for better and worse. What you imagine is what will be. If you build it, they will come. Fortunately, it’s never too late to imagine something new, even if presently embroiled in circumstances previously imagined.

The process of creative visualization is simple, and it doesn’t require any esoteric knowledge or complicated accoutrements. If you can find a quiet place to do it, all the better; if you can’t don’t worry about it. Do it on the bus, if you want. If you can arrange to be uninterrupted while you do it, great; if not, it isn’t a problem. You can do it with your eyes closed or open. You can do it sitting, standing, laying down, or out jogging.

All you do is create a visual picture of what you want (NOT what you don’t want). Create a visual picture of the condition, circumstance, or situation as you desire it to be (NOT how it currently, undesirably, is). For best results, once you have a clear mental picture of the ideal you’re creating, be sure to place yourself in the image (if you’re not already). Interact with the elements of this ideal reality you’re visualization into existence.

And that brings us to a trick for boosting the impact of your efforts: creative visualization is made exponentially more effective when coupled with positive emotions. That is to say, once you’ve begun visualizing the way you want something to be – whether it’s your physical condition or your life situations – next allow yourself to start feeling the emotions associated with these desired states.

Feel what it’s like to have what you want as though you already had it now – perfect health, that relationship you’ve always wanted, that new car or Tahitian holiday, that better job, the return of something lost or missing, the resolution of a squabble – whatever it is, feel the emotions you know you’ll have when that possibility, whatever it is, becomes your reality.

The creative visualization is the way to make your request for a particular reality to unfold; the positive emotions you feel about that reality are the way you get yourself in alignment with it occurring for you, the way you allow what you’ve visualized into your present reality.

It’s a three-step process:

1. Visualize your desire, and be sure to include yourself in it;
2. Feel how it feels to have that desired reality here and now;
3. Repeat as desired.

Abraham-Hicks, co-authors of “Ask And It Is Given”, and facilitators of the “Art of Allowing” workshop affirm that if you can focus on a single visual image for 17 seconds straight, you’ve effectively put your request out into the Universe – like giving your lunch order to the waitress at the diner. They further affirm that all it takes is 68 seconds of uninterrupted focus on your desire to get yourself into vibrational alignment with allowing it to happen.