What’s a vision board for?

My most important tool for reminding me of my goals and keeping me motivated to achieve them is my vision board. Vision boards might be the most underappreciated tool for getting clarity and maintaining motivation.

A vision board is a visualization tool that helps you get clear on your goals and dreams. It’s simply a collection of images and words that represent what you want so that you can clearly see where you’re going and what it looks like when you arrive.

By making something that is physical, large, and in your space, you’ll actually see it. If you make it and present it somewhere visible, you’ll see it. And it’ll do it’s job because it’ll force you to think about what you want.

How do I decide what goes on my vision board?

Spend some time thinking about your life, your goals, your dreams, and think about images that embody the things you want to accomplish in the next 12 months. You can envision anything—personal development, career objectives, financial goals. Don’t limit yourself looking at what others are doing in their vision boards. The purpose of this is to visualize things that make you happy and hopeful for your future.

Your board can be any size and made up of anything you like. A vision board is a bulletin board or corkboard with magazine cutouts, photos, drawings, mementos and other materials related to things you hope to achieve in the future. There are no rules here.

Your vision board can be made up of anything you want — cutouts from magazines, photos from your phone, or any images online. You don’t need a dedicated bulletin board either; any corkboard will do. The goal is just to have something that’s easy to update and look at whenever you need inspiration.

Once you’ve chosen all the images, arrange them how you see fit on your vision board or in a collage.

Once you’ve chosen all the images, arrange them how you see fit on your vision board or in a collage. If it helps, try to organize your images into categories that make sense based on what you want to accomplish: career goals, relationship goals, family goals, travel goals and financial goals are some common examples. Your goal is to create an inspiring, eye-catching and cohesive design. The arrangement of the images should reflect what matters most to you and be visually interesting.

Don’t forget to add words in the form of quotes or maybe even just words like “love” or “family” if they’re central to what you want to achieve.

You can also make a digital version of your vision board. If you’re more comfortable editing an image on the computer than cutting out pictures and pasting them, make your own digital collage.

Make it big! Hang it somewhere where you’ll see it every day. (I have mine near my desk because I’m usually sitting down for a good part of the day. It makes sense for me to place my vision board there.)

We’re just humans, and sometimes we don’t feel motivated. When those moments come, you can look at your vision board and be reminded of why you’re doing it.

Vision board example

My vision board is a combination of visions for my lifestyle and a few goals.

Mine includes:

• A reminder that together everyone achieves more. I love working with my family as a team.
• Creative cooking and learning to make new foods.
• I enjoy adventures and exploring with my family.
• Eating great healthy food
• Making money and working hard at turning my talents into cash
• Teaching my boys (e.g. learning to play piano)
• Exercise including the ambitious (and unlikely goal) of completing muscle-ups
• Woodworking is my favourite hobby
• Being proud and encouraging my sons to one day be great men with my lovely partner

Steps to make a vision board

1. On a piece of paper think about 9 key goal you want. Sounds hard? Start with the key personal topics, and think about what your life will look like in each of these areas:
   1. Personal
   2. Health
   3. Love
   4. Family
   5. Career
   6. Wealth
   7. Spirituality
   8. Hobbies
2. Go online and search for images that match up with your goals. I recommend selecting two images for each of your 9 goals. (Note: image quality is key – files should be about 4MB and at least 1024×1024 pixels. Consider unsplash.com or pexels.com.)
3. Save these files and get them printed as 4×6 inch photos.
4. Staple/tape/glue all 9 to a large piece of paper/corkboard/whiteboard
5. Present it somewhere visible. That’s the whole point!

Remember, just because it’s important to you now doesn’t mean it’s important forever. Switch it up! Swap an image with your alternative version, or replace a vision entirely.  Just make sure it’s relevant and motivating!

Enjoy your vision board!