Vision Board: An Essential Tool to Achieve Your Dreams

Do you have a clear vision of where you're heading with your life, career, or business? Are things you've wanted to do, accomplish, start, master, acquire, or achieve? If you've struggled year after year in meeting your stated objectives, my guess is you've not done a vision board.

Getting Clear on Your Goals

If there’s one thing that keeps people stuck, it’s a lack of clarity.

• Want to quit your soul-sucking day job in favor of the freedom of self-employment, but you aren’t clear on the steps to take.
• Love to take an exotic vacation, but you aren’t sure where to go—or how to make it happen.
• You need to grow your business but aren’t even sure what that means.

The truth is, with ambiguous “goals” such as these, in five or ten years, you’ll still be stuck right where you’re at today.

But with a little clarity, you can achieve any goal you can conceive—and even some you haven't dared dream. The first step is to get a clear and definitive idea of what you want. While that sounds like an easy feat, it's one of the things few people master for various reasons.

I mean, how often do we really allow ourselves space and time to dream and to look beyond what we have to do or get done at the moment?

With all the noise and distractions from social media and Netflix, it may be hard to keep your focus on what's important to you or your aspirational goals. It requires you to train your brain to block out all of the extraneous crap that's constantly vying for your attention to focus on what you want and what's important to you.

How Vision Boards Work

Vision boards are a planning tool that allows you to clarify and concentrate on specific aspirations and goals. It allows you to unleash your creativity and remove any perceived limitations or barriers to your desired outcomes.

The use of images, quotes, and pictures represents what you want in your life and/or business. By just taking the time to create a vision board, you are, in fact, instructing the universe to close the gap between reality and your dreams. You're also instructing your unconscious mind to start focusing on what you've added to your board.

Oprah Winfrey, Katy Perry, Ellen DeGeneres, and Jim Carrey swear by visual goal setting. In particular, Jim Carrey wrote himself a 10 million dollar check dated 10 years in the future. Ten years after writing that check, he was offered a movie role that paid him $10 million. Now he didn't just sit at home for 10 years and wait for it. He achieved his goals by focusing on what you wanted and with a lot of hard work. 

The collection of images that represent your biggest goals and displaying those images in plain sight daily helps you say focused and engage in the habits necessary to achieve your goals. "Taking action" on what's on your board is the key to getting what you want. After all, 

The universe works with you, not for you.

Be sure to support your dreams by creating and executing an action plan to help you realize your dreams.

Why Make a Vision Board

Visioning operates at a deep subconscious level. At that level, your subconscious mind accepts everything as true and valid. Your vision board can penetrate your subconscious mind teaching it to accept what it sees as true. Vivid detail of what you want and how it looks and feels when you've achieved it helps the process. Therefore, every time you gaze at your vision board, your aspirations stay top of mind, and your subconscious goes to work to reinforce the vision.

I've been making vision boards since 2009 and have been both excited and amazed to see specific goals achieved each time. In 2011 my vision board focused on my career. I knew it was time for me to do something different because I wasn't happy.

I'd been a practicing attorney for years, but after receiving my Ph.D. I moved into the world of academia. After teaching for several years, I moved into executive administration, becoming an associate dean and director of academic programs. The success I achieved should have been joyful, but instead, I was miserable. My career path was prescribed, not based on a personal dream. I also knew this was not my life's work.

So, I created a board that focused on fun, travel, freedom, and significant work. That same year I switched careers that afforded me freedom, fun, and a trip to Panama City. The next year I created my board with a similar purpose and achieved a $15,000 bonus and a Paris trip. A year after that, I built a successful practice that allows me to do deep, meaningful work with my clients. In 2018 I visualized a 6-figure practice and speaking on a TEDx stage, and yep, in 2019, those things came true.  

Every year that I achieved my goals, my confidence grew in playing big and dreaming bigger. 

What I know for sure is that vision boards work.

Summary

Vision boards are living documents. With greater clarity on what you want for your life, you may find your dreams change or grow. You may need to remove or change things from your board to make room for bigger and better dreams.

However, don't forget that action steps are still required to get where you want to go. Indulge in the transformative process that comes with creating a vision board. When your "belief level" is raised, you'll move with greater confidence and productivity. You'll be less susceptible to limiting beliefs, fear, overwhelm, and doubt.

With your heart and mind focused daily on what you envision for your life, coupled with strategy, you'll achieve all you want for life and career.

Here's to visualizing your best life! Contact me if you need support.

Check out my segment on AM Northwest on creating a vision board the right way: 

xo,

Carol