Seeing Is Believing

Can You See It?

This year, in addition to writing my goals on paper, I felt the need to see them in a bigger context, so I decided to create a vision board. I now have a colorful board hanging on a wall in my office that illustrates how I imagine my coaching business will evolve. In another room, I have a second vision board depicting some of the elements that bring me the most joy in my personal life and how I see those expanding.

Since posting the boards, I’ve noticed that I feel lighter as I approach the work before me. Seeing the “big picture” in front of me every day motivates me to take bolder steps and also makes the many smaller tasks fall into place more naturally. When I glance at the boards and realize that something is starting to come to fruition, it’s a pretty nice feeling. What does your vision look like?

How To Create A Vision Board

Don’t worry; artistic talent is not a requirement for creating your board! Here are some tips:

Begin by clipping words, phrases, and pictures that appeal to you from magazines, newspapers, catalogs, etc. Don’t think too hard about how they fit into your vision. If you are attracted to the word or image, go ahead and clip it. Do this over the course of a few days or weeks.
Buy a large foam core poster board; you’ll need more space than you think. I bought the largest size I could find (30’ by 40’) in a package of three and wound up using all of them.
Start to layout your clippings on the board. You can do this collage-style or in whatever pattern or grouping you want. It’s here that you’ll notice if something is missing that you’d like to have included. Check to see if you’ve covered all the areas of your life (e.g., your career/business, your home, personal finance, relationships/family, hobbies, passions, other dreams, etc.). For an item that is missing, you can write it down on a post-it note and add it to the board as a temporary placeholder while you look for that picture.
You don’t need to cover every detail of your dreams or goals, as they will evolve over time. You just need enough so that your vision moves you. Some of you may remember the story I told about moving to Arizona and being delighted to discover a lemon tree in the backyard. That bright yellow lemon had previously been a vibrant detail of a vision in the back of my mind… One day I’ll have a lemon tree in my home.
Once you feel like you have enough, go ahead and glue everything to the board. Voilà!
Variations include:
1. Using a bulletin board instead of gluing pictures to poster
2. Gluing your images to the pages of a sketchbook or within a journal
3. Creating an electronic vision board.¹