How To Create Vision Boards
I have often been asked how to create vision boards that help reach goals. I will try to answer in this article.
The “vision board” (or “vision board”) is a visual representation (images, photos, text, quotes) of the future to which we aspire.
It increases your chances of getting where you want to go, by regularly sending the brain the idea that this is where you want to go.
The Visualization Board: a tool to advance towards the professional future we aspire to.
The “vision board” aims to materialize his goals, desires, and dreams, to keep them in mind and remind his mind to go in that direction.
This idea is based on the observation that, when we visualize something that we want, we are already beginning to put ourselves in the condition to obtain it.
By representing the future professional we aspire to on our visualization board, we, therefore, increase our chances of achieving it.
The vision board can be applied to all areas of life. However, as my goal is to help you be more fulfilled at work, I decided to orient the exercise around what you aspire to for your future professional life.
The Main Question on How to Create Vision Boards
Here is a good example of how to create vision boards.
The main question to be answered is: “What will my dream professional situation look like in a year?”.
You can choose another term if you prefer (two, three, five years…). Choose the deadline when you imagine a change from your current situation. This deadline should not be too far in time.
It must be close enough so that your actions today can have an observable impact on this future professional situation.
This is a painting (in principle, a large A3 sheet) on which we will visually illustrate (mainly with images) a future that inspires us and towards which we want to go.
If you want to see what a visualization board looks like, I made a selection on Pinterest. Click here to see the selection of visualization boards on Pinterest.
And take the opportunity to subscribe to my Pinterest account for more thematic boards.s🙂
How to create your Visualization Board: my method in 4 steps
In this article, I present to you my four-step method on how to create vision boards. I had made two attempts to create my own but was not satisfied with the result.
It didn’t look like me enough. Thinking about what had caused the problem, I imagined a method to overcome that.
Rather than rushing headlong into looking for images, photos, texts and quotes to create the painting, I think it is better to first think carefully about your vision of your future profession.
First to become aware of it, then to be precise enough, and finally for the table to be relevant and help to move in this direction.
If the vision is too blurry, the picture will be too blurry, and we risk not ultimately using it.
This method can be applied on the same day, but it takes around 1h30 for the preparation (steps 1 to 3) and 2 hours for the realization (step 4).
Step 1: Intuition
The goal of this first step is to play on your intuition, on what you are not necessarily aware of but which is there deep inside you.
This is your first step on how to create vision boards.
Materials: get magazines
To do this exercise, you will need to provide yourself with magazines or other support that contains various images.
If you don’t have magazines at home (which I did), you can ask your friends to give you some, pick them up in waiting rooms where they are offered, or buy used ones.
Once the magazines have been collected, make yourself comfortable (don’t hesitate to put on a nice little music, to serve yourself tea… because you should allow about thirty minutes for this step).
Leaf through magazines quietly and, as soon as an image seems to inspire you with something related to your future professional situation cut it out.
Don’t think too much about the “why”, let your intuition guide you. Cut out anything that inspires you.
Gives meaning to cropped images
Once the thirty minutes have elapsed, gather all the images on the same surface so that you can see them all. The goal now is to “rationalize” what you just did by intuition.
You can do this part of the exercise on your own, ideally out loud to hear yourself say things. Or you can request a friend and explain it to him.
For each cropped image, explain why you chose this image: what does it inspire you and what does it make you think of about your future professional situation?
So much for step 1. We don’t go further than that on intuition.
This first step is the one that is mostly proposed in personal development exercises to achieve your visualization board. However, while testing it,
I was frustrated that the images I found did not exactly represent my vision for the future. I had to deal with what was offered by magazines. That’s why I imagined other steps after this one.
Step 2: Visualization
The goal of this second step is to bring out the most important elements for you in this future professional situation. The format is supposed to allow us to “reconnect” to what we want deeply.
No hardware needed
No materials are needed this time, just you and five minutes for a “visualization” exercise. I take this step from a workshop by Charlotte Scapin of 1to100project.
This exercise allowed me to see clearly where I projected myself in my ideal professional situation. It was following this exercise that I decided to bring my big trip forward by two months and start my life as an international digital nomad in June 2018.
The visualization exercise
Allow five minutes for this exercise. If possible, set a stopwatch to five minutes so you don’t have to check the time while you exercise.
Sit on the edge of a chair with your back straight (not touching the backrest), hands on your thighs, and feet flat on the floor.
Take three deep breaths:
Inhale as much as possible through your nose for five seconds, starting with inflating your stomach and ending up in your lungs.
After five seconds of inhaling deeply, exhale all that air through your mouth five seconds.
- Take a two-second break
- Then the inspiration begins again.
- Do this cycle three times in total.
- After these three great inspirations, ask yourself this unique question: “Imagine yourself in your professional life at one / two / three / five years (depending on the chosen deadline). What do you see ?”.
Think about it until the stopwatch strikes.
When it rings, write down somewhere what you imagined yourself, where you projected yourself.
What you saw corresponds a priori to what is the most important for you since it came naturally to you by asking yourself the question.
To complete these elements and clarify what you are considering, I imagined step 3.
Step 3: Completion
The goal of step 3 is to obtain a more precise vision of the future professional to which you aspire.
To deepen what came out in the previous steps, I suggest you ask yourself six questions. For each, write your answers somewhere.
Question 1: What am I doing?
The first question you can ask yourself is: “In the ideal professional situation that I imagine in a year (depending on the chosen deadline), what am I doing?”. Understood as a job, activity, position…
Are you on the same types of tasks and missions as today? If not, how has it evolved? What changed?
Do you have only one activity or several? For example, have you added a side project or volunteer activity? Have you specified your field of action if you are freelance?
Or on the contrary, have you widened your field of intervention?
Question 2: What am I doing it for?
The second question you can ask yourself is: “In the ideal professional situation that I imagine in a year (depending on the deadline chosen), what am I contributing to?”
People who read this article also read: The 3 Best Coffee Shops to Work in Rio de Janeiro.o
Are you still in the same company? Have you changed your company but in the same sector? Have you changed sectors? Why is this sector important and interesting for you? What does it bring you?
What are you going to look for in this area? What cause are you contributing to?
What touches you about the mission of the company you see yourself working for? Or, what is your vision if you are independent?
Question 3: Under what conditions do I do it?
The third question you can ask yourself is: “In the ideal professional situation that I imagine in a year (depending on the chosen deadline), what does my work environment look like?”
Are you an employee or self-employed? What type of office do you work in? Is it a designer place with lots of services?
Or rather an alternative placement? Is it in France or abroad? Are you in your own offices or a shared space? Why? What attracts you to these different conditions?
Do you work full time on the activity that pays you or do you have a project that pays you and one that you do for fun, or for free to be accessible to those without a budget?
Do you work many hours a week or do you work less for a better personal life balance?
Question 4: Who do I do it with?
The fourth question you can ask yourself is: “In the ideal professional situation that I imagine in a year (depending on the deadline chosen), who am I working with?”
Are you in a team or solo? What values do you share with your team? What attitudes and rituals are there between you? What is the atmosphere like in this team?
Do you go out with your colleagues for a beer after work or do you have more formal relationships? How are you managed? How do you manage your team?
Question 5: What are my finances like?
The fifth question you can ask yourself is: “In the ideal professional situation that I imagine in a year (depending on the deadline chosen), what do my finances look like?”
People, who read this article also read: How to Find Your Values?
How much is your monthly income? Why this figure? How much do you need to feel good? Do you want to have a high salary so that you can afford beautiful things and go on vacation far away?
Or do you see yourself accepting a lower salary for a job that you like more to start a project, or to have fewer responsibilities and hours to do?
Question 6: Who am I?
The sixth and last question you can ask yourself is: “In the ideal professional situation that I imagine in a year (depending on the deadline chosen), which person have I become?”
Which three statements best describe you at this time? Have you become “an understanding and flexible manager”? Are you someone who “inspires” others? Are you conciliatory, proactive in federating, and able to communicate without getting upset …?
The answers to these questions are supposed to have given you a more precise vision of the future professional situation to which you aspire.
Now take a moment to reread everything you have written and the images you have chosen.
Look for inconsistencies to come up with a clear and consistent view of what you want.
Once you have it, the preparation phase ends and we will be able to move on to the painting phase.
Step 4: Collection
This fourth and final step is where we will finally materialize the vision of this future professional to which you aspire.
To avoid being constrained by the lack of space, I suggest that you start by looking for the content of your table.
And only then to choose the medium. Give yourself the freedom to wear whatever you want to wear.
However, be careful not to choose too many images as this may blur the clarity of your vision of your future. It is better to choose only one image/sentence per idea.
Make a list of what you are looking for
Finding images is a task that can be very time-consuming if you let yourself go and look for the perfect image.
To avoid spending a whole day on this, I recommend that you make a precise list of the elements you want to illustrate.
This list should contain:
- Images/photos/texts that illustrate the answers to questions 1 to 5 of step 3
- The 3 sentences that represent you (question 6 of step 3)
- A quote that reflects your state of mind or your vision of your future professional situation (you can write it yourself)
- Optional: a photo of you looking happy.
You can also add images that inspire you, even if they don’t represent a specific idea; or images that represent “sensations”
Collect images
You can use the images cut out from magazines if they suit you. Or you can go look for them on the Internet (Google Images, Pinterest, Unsplash, Pixabay…) and then print them.
Build the board with all this content
Gather all the images and texts that you want to appear on the board.
Now that you have all of this in your eyes, choose a suitable medium. You can simply tape A4 or A3 white sheets together to create a larger medium that will fit all your content.
If you want a nice, well-done painting, you can make a rough draft of what your painting will look like before doing it “for real”.
So you can try out different ways to represent ideas and distribute content.
Once you know what you want, you can start pasting the pictures and writing the texts. Don’t hesitate to personalize it even more by adding colour and small designs.
The goal is for you to be proud of the result, that it inspires you and makes you want to watch it every day.
But you can also go there “by feeling” and stick things as you see fit.
Hang up your painting in a place where you’ll see it often.
For the painting to have the desired effect, you need to look at it often (every day).
Hang it up in a place where you can’t help but lay your eyes on it: in front of your desk, next to your bedside table, in your toilet, on the kitchen fridge …
Now you know how to create vision boards.
The Visualization Board is not enough to achieve its goals
Let’s start by making a point: does your visualization board inspire you? Do you want to watch it? If so, it was successful, congratulations!
If not, you’ll probably have to rework it later. Because if you don’t like it, you won’t want to watch it and it will be useless.
When you can, then try to ask yourself why you don’t like him. Is something missing? Don’t you like the pictures that much?
Knowing how to create vision boards is a great first step. But it is not enough. It is a tool that allows you to stay on course (that of your professional aspirations), and to work in this direction overall.
But it does not indicate the path or the steps to take to get there. To succeed in going where we want to go, we must therefore add an “action plan” layer, with clear actions to move towards these aspirations.
I find the “small step” a good place to start. Ask yourself what is the “small step”, and what is the simplest action that you can take TODAY to move in this direction.
Something that hardly takes your effort and that you can do right away.
But it goes in the direction of the future professional situation to which you aspire despite everything.
Once you take this small step, you can decide on a second and so on.
Video – How To Create Vision Boards
I hope you enjoyed the article!
If you liked it, I would appreciate it if you could share it using one of the social sharing icons.
Also, leave me a comment and let me know what you think – I love talking to readers, so hopefully will talk to you in the comments below.
2 thoughts on “How to Create Vision Boards the Right Way”