Vision boards are essentially your dreams and goals which you can visually see on a board- Used as the primary reminder and motivation to attain your goals. As inspiring as this sounds, we should aspire to make one for our own. To arrive at this collection of pieces of our best life for the year, we should have plans and goals for the entire year, visualize, organize and find inspiring images to go on the board. Let's look at the steps I followed this year to get my vision board together.
Step 1: Finding the theme and goals for the year:
I am going to write a separate post on setting goals, but for this, I can give a brief overview of how I came up with the theme and goals for the year. I follow few process before sitting to create goals.
Wake up early: Before anyone at home is up and around. This is especially important because you need as minimal distractions as possible.
Do not look at your social media: Yet! Minimize distractions and that is the key to inward seeking of answers.
Do one mindfulness practice: Just focus on breathing for 5 minutes, if mind waves away, bring it back to breathing.
Sit in your productivity space: We all have one. If you haven't figured one out yet, scan your home and find a space that immediately lights up your mind.
Take a long sheet of paper (Chart or art paper): I prefer unusual size sheets to A4 especially because, I feel that they are meant for creative work and I feel unstoppable.
Brain dump: And go! Dump all that your brain is currently working through, write only keywords of every thought. Then begin thinking what you want out of life, dump.
Step 2: Sort out the ideas from the chart:
Now that the brain dump helped you get all the crude ideas, aspirations, actions, goals, dreams and wishes from every corner of your brain to the paper, its time to sort out and come up with goals in each section of life which I classify to be the following:-
Health, Career, Wealth, Travel, Family, Lifestyle, Hobbies, Knowledge, Love, Spiritual.
Come up with at least 3 dreams and goals for every section. Now if you wish, write the sections and condense these goals into a sentence or phrase, otherwise, just continue using the brain dump chart and colour code the goals of each section. This gives you a clearer picture of what you want to focus on. Now, find what each of the goals is aligned to- say, when you write meditation and yoga in health and enjoying the present moment in lifestyle, then you choose mindfulness as the theme for the year, I hope you get the idea. This can sometimes be obvious, sometimes not too direct. You should follow your instincts in this case.
Step 3: Collect the visual images for inspiration:
I love this step because of two reasons: Firstly for the clarity that you will have at this point about your goals for the year, secondly, you get to choose images on the internet that inspire you from within. I like to use Pinterest, but you can use Google images too. Find some motivational phrases and quotes too. I find using laptop or computer is better at this point because of the steps that are to follow. So, go to Pinterest and search the keyword of your interest, say healthy eating, and save the images that inspire you to make healthy eating your way of life. If waking up early is in your lifestyle section, choose images with a lady or a guy watching sunrise or an alarm clock! Anything that inspires you towards that goal, save them up. Continue doing this for all the dreams and goals for all the sections.
Step 4: Put them together:
I like to do 2 or 3 versions of putting together. I use a presentation app like powerpoint or keyword to combine the images. For physical version, I just add a few images on each slide and print them up using good quality paper if you wish. You can choose to get them printed on the photograph sheets if you fancy. Then choose your productivity space or the space where you get to see frequently, tape those images on it and boom! or there are fancy boards where you can clip those images or even a cardboard where you can pin them up. Decorate the space with some light work for added effect and to capture your attention. Put up those images in one slide to create a fancy digital version which you can use on desktop as screensaver!
Now, this whole work would be of no use if you don't create and stick to the plan that helps you achieve those goals! Let's make 2022, the best year yet for ourselves!
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