Want To Have Your Best Year Ever? Then you need a Vision Board.

Most people don't even know what they really want. It's just "more" or "to be happier" but they don't know what that might look like. For one person it might mean a big, beautiful home. For someone else, a huge home (or even just a home) wouldn't be a dream but a nightmare: They would prefer to be a digital nomad with total freedom, living for a time wherever their fancy takes them and leaving on a whim when new adventure beckons.

Vision boards allow you to turn dreams into reality, but you must know what your dreams are before you can manifest them. You need to take them out of the realms of dreams and turn them into reality by being specific.

Step One: Why you need a Dream board

Talk to any group of successful people, and inevitably you’ll find that at least one-third or more attribute the start of their success to the early creation of vision boards and visualization.

Vision boards help people focus and target by giving concrete form to their ambitions and dreams.

You may have even tried creating vision boards yourself—even if you don’t realize you’ve done so. (If you’ve ever created a desktop background on your PC from a photo of your dream house, the area you’d love to live in, or the car you plan to acquire one day, you’ve created a modified version of the vision board, with much the same intent and purpose as people who create them deliberately.)

The best and most effective vision boards take your ideas from the “Dreamtime” and bring them into reality by helping you stay on course with a focused plan of action. 

Who uses a vision board? Top celebrities know the power of using them to achieve their goals.

Katy Perry started one when she was nine years old: It featured all her musical hero’s and over them all, she prominently displayed her name, a huge #1, and the specific award she wanted to win. Other celebrities like Steve Harvey, Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Winfrey, and Beyonce all use vision boards.

And a 2016 TD Bank survey found that one in five small business owners used some sort of vision board when starting their business.

Tara Swart, a neuroscientist, medical doctor, and executive coach said “You would be surprised how many high-powered executives secretly have action or vision boards at home or saved on their computers.”

Step two: the real-world importance of visualization

There is true, real-world importance to visualization, so take the time to do it properly.

Creating a vision board is making physical and making visual all those beautiful things that are singing to your spirit.

But what is it you should envision? Why do you want it? How do you know you are asking for the right thing?

First, make sure your vision board items check off these four boxes:

• The “right things” are always specific.

If your goal is fuzzy (e.g. “to be wealthy”; “to have a big house”) then it’s not yet a real goal. Fuzziness and generalization are what keep your dream firmly in the future; in the realms of “one day” (as in “one day I’ll win the lottery”).

A fuzzy goal is just a wish.

• It’s not something dependent on external forces or “luck”

When you set a goal like, “I want to win the Powerball”, you don’t have any way of making that happen, no matter how much or how intensely you visualize it.

Winning the Powerball is not a goal: It’s a wish.

Goals are outcomes from actions you can affect and affect yourself—such as doubling your earnings in six months, moving to a specific school district by the end of the year; or taking a vacation in Aruba next winter.

• You can quantify your vision board goals with What, When, Why, How, and How Much

The more specific you are with your dream goal, the better you can plan—and the more accurately you can include the right ingredients in your vision board to make it happen. It’s okay to start out with a fuzzy goal such as “I want a big house in the country”.

But then keep brainstorming until you end up with specific representations of items or answers. (How much do you want to make by next year? What dollar figure? What breed of horse do you see yourself riding in the dressage competition?)

• Build-in flexibility for the Universe to do its work

Being specific yet flexible is a fine balancing act, but as you put thought into your vision board, you will find your own unique balance.

By all means find a photo of your dream house, if that’s the style of house you like. Saying to the Universe (and yourself; and anyone else you trust) “I want a house exactly like that” or “in that style” is a good start.

But be both specific, yet flexible. That way, you won’t close the door on your actual dream because you are over-focused on one specific house. (“Oh no! Lot #6 on Mountainview Estates is sold! My future house is gone. Vision boards suck!”)

The biggest mistake you can make is not being specific with your dream or goal.

Step three:  How it works—and vision board mistakes

We live in the age of overwhelm and distraction so having a vision board that we can stare at every day helps keep us focused on the essentials—the things that really matter to us.

But there are some mistakes you can make even if you do create a vision board: Ones that will sabotage you as effectively as negative voices in your past.

First, make sure your Big Goal is visually in the most prominent position—at the top of your board or in the center (like Katy Perry’s).

It also helps if you make your Ultimate Goal the largest item on the board.

Why is this important? Well, we send ourselves subliminal messages with visual elements. If we physically minimize these elements, we’re telling ourselves that we don’t really believe it will happen; or (literally) “it’s not that important”.

Making your main goal prominent and/or large—making it really stand out—also helps with keeping the end result in focus.

Every time you look at that board, it should also evoke certain feelings, such as:

• Inspiration
• Optimism
• Excitement
• Pleasure
• Fun

Pay attention to how items on the board make you feel. If there’s anything on your board that makes you feel negativity, paralysis, or hopelessness, that’s a big Red Alert that you need to either remove that object or question why it is making you feel that way. (Perhaps you need to dial it back to a level you can believe?)

For example, you might look at the photo of the big house you selected and discover that it either provokes no internal reaction at all in you, or it incites a dull feeling of despair and hopelessness.

The message there? That you haven’t got that item quite right yet. No matter what you tell yourself, your subconscious knows that you’re only choosing that boat because your husband keeps saying that’s what HE wants … when what YOU actually want is a red Kevlar-and-cedar Porter 14’ canoe that you can take out on the river early in the morning before the rest of your household is even awake.

Fix: He can make his own vision board! Get rid of the boat and put your little red canoe in!

(There is no room for “should” items on your vision boards!)

Step Four: The importance of mindset work

And if you realize that the reason you feel despair when you look at the photo of that beautiful horse farm is that you don’t feel you deserve it?

Then you have some mindset work to do. You need to clear away darker areas in your subconscious. Think of it as mental decluttering, and declutter outdated beliefs, patterns, and self-limitations.

Use physical decluttering and dealing with digital hoarding as concrete, physical ways to banish these bad habits or patterns.

As you banish each thought or drop each item into the box you’ve designated for donations (or garbage), say to yourself—preferably aloud: “I am letting go of ___________ to make room for ________________________”.

Literally, replace the negative with your new positive!

Things like deserve levels usually have to do with our pasts: Negative voices from toxic people when you were at an impressionable age or in a vulnerable state. Authority figures like parents and bosses figure high on this list; equally common—are emotionally abusive spouses or partners.

But hey—your vision board project has helped you identify where you still have hidden areas of insecurity. That’s a great start in overcoming or even just banishing those thoughts.

There are other types of mindset work that you can do. In fact, looking at your finished vision board can play an especially important role: It can remind you (daily) to actually take time and DO mindset work—including the positives, such as gratitude--daily!

How to create the proper mindset for successful goal-setting and visualization:

You need to clear any blocks first before you get to the positive stuff. This is the step that most people miss!

Issues you might work on include:

• What do you fear about succeeding with your vision board goal?
• What obstacles do you anticipate?
• What can you do to realistically increase your “deserve level” to a spot you are comfortable with and can believe in?
• How can you help yourself lose the “someday” syndrome that keeps you procrastinating or paralyzed?

And it’s equally important to focus on positive mindset work—exercises and rituals that are going to help you manifest your dream.

These include:

• Take at least twenty minutes every day to stop and count all the blessings in your life
• Repeating affirmations you have placed on your vision board (preferably aloud!)
• Reading a chapter of your current mindset or self-improvement book
• Checking in with your accountability group
• Deciding what you will do that day to increase your mental well-being—and writing it as one of your priorities on your To-Do list
• Looking in the mirror and repeating positive self-messages
• Smiling at yourself in the mirror
• Saying aloud a resolution or mantra
• Meditating on positive things
• Spiritual praise or gratitude

Most important: Don’t take your vision board for granted. Really look at each item on it, every day, and repeat specific positive self-statements. (Example: “Today I am taking steps to ensure that I move into my perfect office this October”.)

And notice we are not making “someday” statements: It’s not “I will move into my perfect office in October”, it’s “I am taking steps TODAY to ensure that I move into my perfect office this October”.

Vision boards work in every area of your life, so make more than one—in fact, make one every time you feel inspired to make one: A board for your business, a board for your lifestyle. One for your brand. One for your favorite hobby. One for a specific project; and so forth.

The more you use vision boards as real-time tools for targeting and inspiration, the better you’ll get at reaching your goals

We live in the age of overwhelm and distraction. Use your vision board to help you take action DAILY toward your dream and your goal.

And remember, you’ve got this!