Intro
Ever since “The Secret” came out, there has been a lot of hype around vision boards. I see videos from many influencers arguing the merits of creating one for yourself and how it will impact your life. For a time, I wrote it off as relative nonsense. However, I’ve since changed my views and decided to try it for myself. I did a bunch of research but didn’t come across a single place where all of my questions were answered. This article is my attempt to create a compendium of answers for those who come after in search of how to take on this task. Up first: what is a vision board?
So…what is a Vision Board?
In a nutshell, a vision board is a collection of pictures (usually in the form of a collage) that represent the ideal life a person wants to attain. The pictures can be used to create inspiration and motivation to work towards that life. They can be pictures of anything: material things, places you want to visit, people that inspire you, the dream job, quotes, or things that evoke feelings that you want. The vision board is then set in a place that’s frequently and easily visible to the user. It’s meant to “keep your eye on the prize”, so to speak.
Types of Vision Boards
For this experiment, there are two types of vision boards: vision boards and dream boards. Vision boards are usually created with the idea that you want to achieve the life represented by the board in the short term. Most of the videos and blogs that I read on the subject mentioned that they create one yearly and set the goals on the board for things that they want to achieve within that time frame. An example would be getting the “dream job”. That might be a promotion for you or a move to a new company. Your picture would be a depiction of you (or a person representing you) performing the job. And once you can imagine it, you can achieve it! More on that later.
A dream board is a depiction of your all-time ideal life. It answers the question, “If you could be doing anything right now, what would that be?” Would you be a dentist working in your own practice instead of being under the thumb of a larger conglomerate? Or a partner at Goldman Sachs making multi-million-dollar investment deals? Maybe you’d have a house on the lake and a large boat at your own private dock. Usually, these are meant to be longer-term goals, focused a few years out.
Why I Chose to Create a Vision Board
Around August of 2022, I started feeling like I was ready for a change. I was overworked, and even though I was paid well, I couldn’t quite recover from the long hours I was working. I started researching and trying a few different things. I settled on dropshipping, but that quickly let me down due to a lack of easy scalability. I wasn’t trying to work a second job; I was trying to make some passive income. But that’s a story for another day.
Next, I tried blogging, but I couldn’t really settle on a niche. My initial plan was to just start a blog and write about stuff I liked until I found something that stuck with both my readers and I. However, most of the videos I watched about starting a blog said that I needed to pick a niche that I enjoy and can provide some contribution. But I couldn’t think of anything to contribute for quite a while. However, when I finally figured out what my contribution was, I got to work.
In June 2023, 6 months after I started my project, I was getting frustrated as blogging was very difficult. I was running into roadblock, after roadblock, after roadblock. And clearing each of those roadblocks was not only delaying the completion of my project; it was also tiring. I needed some motivation (and maybe some discipline) from somewhere.
I’m not sure what prompted my search about vision boards. I think I saw something somewhere about manifesting an ideal life and that vision boards were a part of that. But once I understood what they did (at least in theory), I dove off the deep end. Over the course of a couple of weeks, I watched quite a few videos on the subject, along with some videos on manifestation. Part of my reason for watching so many videos was I wanted a how-to video that showed me a step-by-step on how to create a vision board. I didn’t get one, but I was able to glean enough information from everything I saw to complete my first one. Here’s my history in case you want to dive in too.
Why Vision Boards Work
According to the videos I watched, a vision board is designed to help you manifest your dream life into reality. It does this by keeping your mind focused on the things you want and aligning your current reality with the reality you want. By imagining yourself in these “visions”, you start to mold your life into the images placed on your board. You manifest your dream job because you’re aligning yourself with that reality. It’s a difficult theory to assimilate (especially the way I explained it), but here is a video that may help you understand.
For me, I have a more practical understanding. Vision boards can work by reprogramming our brains to focus on the goals on our vision board all the time. You imagine yourself in these visions and you want them and the life they bring. You want the feelings they stir in you. And since you want them, and they’re always in the back of your mind, you start making decisions that move you towards them.
A practical example of this is weight loss. Let’s say you put your dream body on your vision board. You even go out of your way to photoshop your face on what you feel is the ideal body. Always in the back of your mind is this ideal – this goal – you want to achieve. Subconsciously, you start making better decisions that lead you towards that body. On the days you want to stay home instead of going to the gym, the thought of your ideal body comes to mind. You see the vision board and the feeling that comes with it, and you make the decision to go anyway. Those decisions are the footsteps that lead you to the destination of the vision on your board. To your ideal life.
What about a less tangible goal, like better relationships? Say you want to have a better relationship with your child. Maybe without this vision board, and this goal, certain actions would make you upset, even angry. They might have you raise your voice or punish your child quickly without assessing the situation further. However, with the vision of what you want staring at you frequently every day, you subconsciously start to make different decisions regarding that interaction. Maybe those decisions start to calm you before raging emotions appear. You remember the feeling of what it would be like to have an ideal relationship with your child. So, you start to be calmer and approach negative situations more rationally. Little by little, those interactions have an impact until, suddenly, you realize that the bond with your child has grown, and the child is a little easier to handle. Life is better now.
I’m sure there are other ways that vision boards help manifest the reality you want to live. This is just the way I understand and believe it works. Part 2 will go in-depth on how to create your perfect vision board.