Reach Your Goals This Year: Create A Vision Board

Now that 2024 is in the rearview mirror, it’s time to look ahead at what you want to accomplish. As with most New Year’s plans, your 2025 resolutions might be full of hopeful wishes, goals, and good intentions. Maybe yours have already fizzled out. It is May already. I can't even remember mine.

It's possible you’ve tried to journal, be accountable to a friend, or placed sticky notes all over your house as reminders for your goals, but nothing has worked. If you’ve had trouble in the past following through or figuring out where you want to be in the short or long term, there is hope on the horizon.

Creating a Vision Board might help you visualize and follow your goals to completion. It can also help you figure out who you are, what you enjoy, and what you want.

A vision board is exactly what it sounds like: a plan or vision of your future. Your interests, hopes, dreams, and goals are arranged on a board of your choosing. It’s a visual of what you hope to accomplish. Something you can physically create and look at daily to help motivate and keep you traveling in the direction you’d like to go.

A Vision Board is YOU

Think about who you are, what you value, and what motivates you. These are all things you will pin or glue to your board. Images of places, styles, designs taken from photographs or pinned to the board in colorful letters can bring your deepest hopes to life as you place them on a bulletin board or construction board in a visually motivating manner.

So, who are you? What do you enjoy? What do you really want?

If you don't know, the Vision Board can bring to light.

Before you get started, think about the theme or message you want the board to express every time you look at it? What is it about the board that identifies it as yours? Make it yours. Make it detail your personality, your dreams, your goals, your hopes and plans? Think about who you are and what would you like to accomplish?

Has this part of you been stifled for years?

Wake it up.

Begin to think about

· Your values

· Goals

· What is important to you

· Quotes you live by

· Scriptures or favorite poems

· Favorite photos or scenery

What quotes or dialogue do you live your life by?

Values can be personal or work related. They can be life values, character values, or religious values. Values are ways in which you live your life by. Each express who you are and they define your character. Values are ways of being that you deem important and vital in living your life.

Examples of values could be, loyalty, compassion, ambition, a strong faith, strong work ethic.

Values describe your truths.

Identify your values and write them down. They will keep you focused during decision-making.

Goals

Write down a list of short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals. Get everything down on paper that you would like to accomplish. Now relist these in order of importance and desire. Make sure your goals are doable, reachable, and realistic.

Spend a little time pondering what is important to you. This might be spending more time with family, having more quiet time writing, journaling, or gazing into a beautiful sunset. Maybe you’d like to exercise or bake more, learn to quilt or cross-stitch. Or you’d love to get back into attending church or join a book club.

In this section, don’t worry about what pleases your partner, your relatives, or your best friend. Stop and think about what is important to you and get it down on paper. You only get one life, so you need to figure this one out.

Quotes to Live By

We all have our favorite quotes or memes. They can be found daily on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. A simple web search can locate up thousands. Choose several of your favorites that help motivate and inspire you and outline who you are. These gems can be typed and printed from your computer in any font you’d like then glued to your board.

Scriptures or Favorite Poems

Is there a favorite scripture that gets you through the tough times? A scripture that pushes you forward and prevents you from stopping in your tracks? Find it or them and print it and cut it out.

Find your favorite poems or write one for the board. Poetry has a way of reaching deep within us and getting to the core of who we are. Poems are great for your vision board and can help point you in the direction you want to go. Use this inspiration to push you forward. There are more poetic choices than time on the internet. Find the one that fits you.

Photos or Scenery

Magazines may have images that describe what you can’t find words for. These landscapes or pictures, such as, a photo of flowers in a garden, a home, a field, a forest, a mountain, a family sitting by a fire. Choose one or many that fit your goals and values. Start cutting out photos and images that describe what is important to you. These can be glued to your vision board in any order you choose.

Getting Started

You’ve gotten quite a bit done by now. You've cut out pictures, printed your quotes and sayings, and packed everything in a small shoe box, and you’ve purchased your 50-cent construction board, or maybe you’ve gone all out and headed to Marshall’s or Ross for a cloth bulletin board. Even better, you’ve found some old material in a closet and made your own out of the bottom of a cardboard box. Wow! Now that’s really thinking out of the box.

Get some glue or pins and start creating your journey with short term goals at the beginning, mid-term a little farther in, and finally your long-term goals at the end. Maybe you would like to create a road or pathway on the board. You might want it to look like a giant collage. Whatever works for you in creating your motivational vision board is acceptable.

It’s yours, so feel free to be as creative as you would like.

Visualization

This board represents who you are and where you would like to go. Put this board where you can see it every day. If you’re really feeling it, take it to a frame shop, sign it, and have it framed. You might even find a large frame at a garage sale. Now hang it on the wall.

If you have no room on your wall, take a photo of your board and have it put on a mug or make a puzzle out of it. All this can be done quickly through online companies like Vistaprint and even local drug stores. Use the photo on your social media home page. Be creative in how you display your board. You don't need a lot of space.

Allow this Vision Board to speak to you. Let it call to you and draw you out of complacency and into action. Let your board be a friendly whisper that inspires you, not one that guilts you. You have created it. This board outlines who you are and where you want to go.

Life can be consuming and we can forget who we are, what we need, and where we want to go.

Let your Vision Board water you and help you grow and accomplish toward your goals.

I’d love to hear about how you accomplish your goals and what works to get you motivated and inspired. Check out my social media pages to comment.

May He grant you your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans! Psalm 20:4 (ESV).

Blessings,

Lori