Vision Boards Do Work - Here's How To Make it Happen
Today we will be taking a deep dive into what exactly is a vision board and I’ll be sharing how mine has helped me achieve my goals over the last few years. Vision Boards do work, if you put the work in and I want to show you how to make it happen.
As a positive mindset and self care coach for over three years, I have been helping people get unstuck, shift their mindset, get clear on their goals and take inspired action to live the life they desire. I’ve helped over 160 people build their own vision boards, but I’ve also been using vision boards myself for over five years now, to help me live a balanced and inspired life on my own terms.
I lived a corporate life for 13 years, high pressure, high stress, high caffeine, long hours, late nights and not much time for me and self care. I’ve always been driven but I’ve also always jumped from one thing to the next. I like to call it “shiny object syndrome” so using a tool like a vision board made me realise that I could get more clarity on my goals, how I wanted to live my life and above all else I had the tools to make it happen.
What is a vision board?
Today I’m going to talk through my interpretation of what a vision board is and how it has helped me to achieve my goals and ultimately I am going to be sharing with you the concept of taking inspired action.
When we are looking at vision and goals, and creating a vision board. What we're trying to create is the feeling we wish to experience. And if we can create that feeling in the present moment, then our future becomes a place we're already at rather than a place to reach.
A vision board can be in either a physical or a digital format. This is something that is going to capture all of your goals. It's going to encompass how you feel about yourself when you've achieved them. And this is about getting some clarity on those goals, what they look like, how you'll feel once you've achieved them, and being able to put them in one place that you can look at every single day you can get excited about.
I’m a physical vision board person through and through but I share in my online course The Vision Board Course a great section on digital resources and how a vision board can be digital using an online generator like The Big Dream™ or through using Canva Templates like the one the amazing Audrey Wolf has created.
A vision board is a tool to help you create a vision, set yourself goals and work through what you need to do to take action to achieve them and live the life you desire. It’s not just a glossy magazine set of images stuck on a board that you don’t give much consideration to. My online course The Vision Board Course takes you through the five stages of how to create the ultimate vision board but also start to achieve your goals. There is work to do my friend but it is worth it.
I found that using a vision board was a great way to get some clarity on my goals. As I said before, I have a little bit of what I like to call “shiny object syndrome”, I will go from one course to next, I want to be learning THE next thing, as one of my intrinsic values is growth, and so I always want to be doing just that, growing. However, having a vision board that clearly shows me my goals, showing me my next step and showing me what I want to achieve. I can hold myself back, I can keep myself a little bit more focused and I can take inspired action to achieve those goals.
So for me having a vision board helps me maintain a bit of momentum, and action, because sometimes when the going gets tough, you're having a bad day, a bad week or a bad month, you just need a bit of a reset. I look at my vision board, and it brings me back. It grounds me it centres me and it brings me back to what I want to achieve. And this is both on a personal level, and in my business and in life in general.
A vision board can also help to keep you grounded and it reminds you about what all the hard work is about and why you’re doing it, and it helps you to take inspired action to help achieve your goals. So, the images that you have on your vision board, they don't have to be the explicit thing, it's not the holiday you want to take, it's not the car. It's not the house that you want to have in the south of France. It's about finding images that resonate with you, that light you up every single time that you look at them and make you feel that you've achieved the goal that you're after. So it's very much about raising your target energy, and it's about making sure that you're tapping into the frequency of what you want to be achieving.
Let me give you an example of this. I have on a vision board from a couple of years ago, a shiny beautiful bronze drinks trolley. See the image on the left 👇. Now it's not that I want that exact drinks trolley in my life. Actually, I’m not really a drinks trolley kind of person, but for me what that symbolised at a time when we had just moved house, was that it really encapsulated an important feeling for me.
What I wanted to be was “the hostess with the mostest”, so I wanted to bring people together, I wanted to be able to offer them a drink from my imaginary drinks trolley, and I wanted to be able to have that space in our new home to entertain and be a host and step into the feeling I had around that idea. Even now I'm getting excited about that. So it's not necessarily the specific image you choose to use but more about the feeling you want to achieve when you reach your goals.
Now on the flip side, you can be really specific about your goals and what that looks like if you can find the right images. That’s where getting digital with your vision board can help because you can scour the internet to find “the right” image. I can give you an example of when I have been that specific on my vision board.
I have a picture of some French shutters on the same style of square bay window that we have in our front room, see the image above on the right ☝️. And that was the look I wanted for our new home and the look we now have - yay! I just wanted to have the shutters in the front room, plain and simple, there on the board. This was about reminding me why we were saving up money to spend on our home and also the fact that we had such a list of all that we needed to achieve with the house that this gave me focus on one goal at a time.
How do you take inspired action?
It’s all well and good sticking amazing images on your vision board that fit with your goals and ideas for how you want to live your life but sticking it on the vision board isn't enough. It’s about taking inspired action and this is very much about tapping in and tuning in to the right energy to really get things done. To take action in a positive light way and feel like you're achieving your goals.
You can't just take action on your growing to-do list and go through the motions to achieve your goals. Yes, you can achieve your goals, but actually are you creating that bigger vision of what you want to be doing and feeling like, and achieving in life or are you just things off your list? Taking inspired action is about doing things that are coming from more of a gut instinct. It's about getting inspired first, raising your energy, and then taking action from a place of alignment.
So the reason that we use vision boards is more about raising our target energy getting into the right space, being in a place where we feel we can achieve those goals, and that helps us take inspired action rather than just action. When you do something because you feel a strong inner urge to do it, that's inspired action, you have this gut instinct, and it’s more than just having a goals list and working away through it, having a vision board gets you into alignment with your goals.
This is about using the vision board as a tool to help you visualise your desires and your goals on a daily basis. And it's also about feeling grateful for everything you already have in your current reality. And one of the steps that I use to creating a vision board is I assess where I am right now in my current reality, I then do a lot of work on getting clear on my goals, knowing what my successes have been in the past and take this learning to get clear on my vision moving forward.
Inspired action is tapping in and tuning in to the right energy to really get things done
To take action in a positive light way and really feel like you're achieving your goals Inspired action is doing things that are more of a gut instinct
It's about getting inspired first raising your energy, and then taking action from a place of alignment
"Vision, without action, is merely a dream. Action, without vision, just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world"
- Joel Arthur Barker
Let’s look at a final example of what I have shared on my vision board and how it has lead me to achieve my goals…
Now, let's talk about podcasts because this is one of my favourite things to come from my vision board. On my 2020 vision board, I put podcasts on there, specifically just two and in reality, I was a guest on seven podcasts. For 2021 I put eight podcasts on my vision board and to date I’ve already recorded nine.
This is all the result of taking inspired action, keeping a focus on that goal, having conversations and connecting with people and actually, other people have connected me to the most amazing people to run their own podcasts. I am in alignment with achieving this goal, I’ve put it out there, I've told people, these are my goals, and they're helping me achieve them. I'm having a sense of accountability because I'm telling people and I show people my vision board quite a lot, so they know it's on there. This is truly inspired action.
The Vision Board Course
So, if you've been excited about all the possibilities that having a vision board can give you, and lead to, and help you create, then I want to help you create your vision board. I want to help you get clarity on your goals, help you get clear on your vision and help you take inspired action to achieve those goals.
That’s why I launched the online vision board course called the Vision Board Course:
A five-module lifetime access course
Inspiring videos to explain each module with powerful questions to help you get clarity
With more than 10 worksheets to inspire, encourage and help you get clear on your goals
Lots of bonus content including digital resources and a 67-minute masterclass on how to Manifest Your Vision
Plus much more
If you want to find out more head to The Vision Board Course by clicking the button below
Don’t just listen to me listen to Brenna, Jennifer and Audrey….
