The best way to achieve your goals is to keep them top of mind, so you’re always looking for ways to move yourself closer to them – and a vision board is the perfect tool to help you do that.
By putting a vision board somewhere you can see it every day, you will prompt yourself to visualize your ideal life on a regular basis. And that’s important because visualization activates the creative powers of your subconscious mind and programs your brain to notice available resources that were always there but escaped your notice. Through the Law of Attraction, visualization also magnetizes and attracts to you the people, resources, and opportunities you need to achieve your goal.
By adding a visualization practice to your daily routine, you will naturally become more motivated to reach your goals. You’ll start to notice you are unexpectedly doing things that move you closer to your ideal life. Suddenly, you find yourself volunteering to take on more responsibility at work, speaking out at staff meetings, asking more directly for what you want, and taking more risks in your personal and professional life – and experiencing bigger pay-offs.
It’s pretty cool stuff!
So, how do you create a vision board to help you with your visualization practice?
Here’s my simple six step process:
1) Create a list of goals you’d like to achieve in the next year
In order to visualize your goals, first you need to know what they are. @JackCanfield (Click to Tweet!)
Spend some time getting clear on exactly what you want your ideal life to look like, and what you need to accomplish in the next twelve months to launch you closer to your goals.
Chapter 2: “Be Clear Why You’re Here,” and Chapter 3: “Decide What You Want,” in my best-selling book, The Success Principles, can help you with this process.
2) Collect a bundle of old magazines with beautiful pictures
If you’re not a magazine reader or currently don’t have any magazines at home, ask your friends to give you any they no longer want. You should also be able to pick some up for just a dollar or two per magazine at your local thrift store. Or you could check out your local recycling depot. Ours has a “free stuff” corner where you can pick up all the magazines you could ever want at zero cost. Maybe yours does, too?
3) Find pictures that represent your goals and inspire you
Schedule a couple hours one evening or weekend to go through the magazines and cut out pictures that represent your goals and speak to your heart in some meaningful way. Fun tip: The last time my staff and I made vision boards at my office, we turned up the radio and had a little musical party going on as we cut out our images, which made it a very vibrant, fun setting to visualize our goals!
When looking for images in the magazines, look for those that immediately make you say, “Yes! That is what I want in my life!” They don’t have to be physical objects or literal interpretations of what you want in your life. Instead, focus on how the images make you FEEL.
For example, if you’d like to move to a home with waterfront property, don’t worry if you can’t find a picture of your perfect “dream home.” Perhaps a picture of an idyllic ocean sunset will be enough to inspire you. Or if you’d like to attract a new romantic partner into your life, instead of hunting for a picture of a man or woman who meets your physical ideal, find a picture that represents love to you – an image of two people holding hands, or even a picture of a heart, for example.
4) Make a collage out of your photos
Once you have collected enough photos, it’s time to make your vision board! Go to your local craft or dollar store and buy a large piece of construction or poster paper. A corkboard or large piece of paper would work as well. Then glue, tack, or tape your pictures to the paper or corkboard in an arrangement that is visually pleasing to you.
5) Add motivational “affirmation words” that represent how you want to FEEL
Your vision of your ideal life shouldn’t be focused on “stuff” so much as on how you want to FEEL. For this reason, I like to add words to my vision board that describe how I want to feel on a daily basis – such as: “joyful,” “abundant,” “powerful,” “fearless,” “loved,” “strong,” “healthy,” “loving,” and “financially free.”
Take some time to create a list of words that describe how YOU want to feel. You can either search for these words in your magazines or write them yourself. Then add them to your vision board in a visually attractive way.
6) Take a few moments to contemplate your vision board every day
To get the full benefit from your vision board, it’s important for you to place it somewhere you can see it every day. I recommend you take a few minutes to look over your vision board at least once or twice a day. I like to review my vision board right before I do a guided visualization, so my goals are top of mind as I train my mind to attract what I truly want into my life. I also like to review it every night before I go to sleep, in order to prompt my sub-conscious mind to come up with new ideas while I’m sleeping on how to achieve my goals. That way, I wake up in the morning bursting with motivation to succeed – and am far more likely to notice and act on opportunities that will bring me closer to my goals.
As the beloved originator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series, Jack Canfield fostered the emergence of inspirational anthologies as a genre—and watched it grow to a billion dollar market. As the driving force behind the development and delivery of over 100 million books sold through the Chicken Soup for the Soul® franchise, Jack Canfield is uniquely qualified to talk about success. Jack is America’s #1 Success Coach and wrote the life-changing book The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be and speaks around the world on this subject. Follow Jack at www.jackcanfield.com and sign up for his free resources today!
Chicken Soup for the Soul 20th Anniversary Edition NOW AVAILABLE:
Image courtesy of Joanna Kosinska.
