Is it a powerful tool used to help realise your dreams as many people have passionately claimed, including the likes of Oprah? Or is it a complete waste of time? Time that could be better spent actually working towards your goals? Vision boards are a hot topic and one I’ve been on the fence about. But with my curiosity piqued, I knew there was no better way to make up my mind than to go ahead and create one.
What Is A Vision Board?
A vision board (or dream board) is a series of images, words and pictures put together on a board as a visual representation of your dreams and goals in life. These dreams can relate to any area of your life such as career, health, relationships, lifestyle and so on. A vision board is meant to help you achieve these things by being a source of inspiration and motivation.
How do you create a vision board?
I went online to search for the best way to go about creating a vision board. Here are some general guidelines that consistently came up:
Try to find a quiet time when you won’t be disturbed
Put on some relaxing music to help set the mood
While flipping through magazine pages find images and words that resonate with you.
Let your emotions guide you. How do the images and words make you feel? This is more important than getting bogged down by the literal meaning or getting sucked into an advertising campaign.
You’re not restricted to using images or words. You can use any item that evokes the feeling you’re looking for. It could be a note from someone, a ticket stub from an event you attended, a seashell from that trip you took. You get the point.
Once you have your words, images, keepsakes, place them on the board but don’t clutter your board. Keep some space between them.
You can’t really make any mistakes. There are no hard and fast rules. Just do what feels right for you.
It sounded easy enough to me, and to be honest, it sounded kind of fun! I waited until my kids were asleep. Then I played some chilled tunes and started to flip through the pages of some of my favourite magazines. I have a tendency to over analyse things so choosing images that spoke to me was a little harder than I thought it would be.
“Was the image a perfect representation of what I wanted?”
“Does it really elicit a particular emotion from me?”
“Does it matter that I can’t find an image of a seaside town in Italy, will this picture of a sandy Australian beach do the trick?”
“Am I now just choosing images because I’m running out of magazines to sift through?”
And so on.
Despite my mind chatter I put my scissors to work and cut out images and words based on the positive emotions they brought to mind. I couldn’t help but feel like a kid again working on a school art project.
Finally my vision board was complete. I stepped back, looked at it and felt pretty pleased with myself. It’s a nice visual representation of some of the goals I have for my professional and personal life and the way I want to feel.
“So...now what happens?”
How Does A Vision Board Work?
I went back online to find out how my board is actually supposed to work. Here I stumbled upon a real mix of opinions.
Some fans of vision boards claim that once your board is complete you let the universe or law of attraction take the reins and your vision will materialise. Others say that by glancing at your vision board throughout the day you’re doing mini visualisations which have been shown in studies to be a powerful force towards achieving your goals.
For others, a vision board is a complete waste of time or worse, a tool that can actually impede your ability to reach your goals. There are studies that have shown an action board is a better way to go. Instead of putting images of your end goals and dreams on your vision board, you’re more likely to reach your goal if you select images that show you doing the work to get there.
The Verdict?
It’s a little too early for me to tell if my vision board will be a help or a hindrance. But so far I’ve enjoyed the process of creating it. I’ve liked taking the fuzzy visions from my head and putting them in front of me in a more concrete way.
It’s forced me to ask myself “what do I really want and why?”
From this standpoint I’ve found the process of creating a vision board helpful in
terms of clarifying what it is I’m actually trying to achieve.
Now that I have my vision board, I’m placing it in my bedroom where I can see it. I don’t plan on sitting back and waiting for my dreams and goals to come to me via the universe or the law of attraction, nor do I think my vision board is a waste of time. I intend on using it as motivation to work towards the goals staring at me from my board. If these goals change, I’ll update my board.
In the end it’s up to you. You don’t have to create a vision board or action board or any board. It’s a tool that could help some people work towards their dreams. But the key here is that you still have to do the work. Besides, the fun is in the doing.
By Rachel Barac