This past weekend I did something that I have always wanted to do. My friend and I met at Starbucks with a stack of magazines, a glue stick and scissors to put together our 2013 vision boards.  I love looking at the finished product and I really think it is going to motivate me this year!

The one rule of creating a vision board is that everything you put on your board is positive.  The purpose of the board is that whatever you focus on increases your chances that it will happen in your life.  It’s called the Law of Attraction.  The Law of Attraction is the name given to the belief that “like attracts like” and that by focusing on positive or negative thoughts, one can bring about positive or negative results.  If you have ever seen the movie, The Secret, you have heard of this.  I think vision boards are so powerful because you are putting your goals on paper and when you write down your goals, you are 80% more likely to achieve them.  Vision boards add clarity to your goals because instead of just writing them down, you are looking at the image of it everyday.

Supplies You Need To Make a Vision Board

• Cardboard or poster board.  At first I thought my poster board was going to be way too big. But after I started gathering images, I was happy it was so big so it could fit all my visions for the year!
• Glue stick (tape can also work)
• Scissors
• Markers (if you want to write things on your vision board)
• Magazines or anything with a word, quote or image on it that you want to use (I actually cut up someone’s Christmas card because it had a perfect quote that I wanted on my board.  I figured it’s after christmas so that is OK, right?:)  Make sure you have lots of different magazines so that you have a variety of things you can post on your board.

The First Step of Creating a Vision Board

Before you start cutting up the magazines and gathering images and words, make sure you have an idea of what you want to focus on in your vision. For instance, I already know that I wanted to focus on work life balance in 2013.  So that was what I was focused on when I was pulling images and words from the magazines.  You should have your goals for the year out and ready to glance at while you are pulling images from the magazines.  Also, make sure you are in a quiet place and not rushed.  I did this with a friend so it was fun to talk about our goals and desires for the year together.  We also met at Starbucks so there weren’t many distractions and we had lots of caffeine to keep us going.

Start Cutting!

Once you know what you want to focus on, start cutting!  Don’t worry about putting all the images on the board until the very end.  This part took a lot longer than I thought it would take.  I thought the whole process would only take an hour but it actually took 2 hours just to gather all the images (note: my friend and I were also talking the whole time).  So make sure you set aside a chunk of time because you don’t want to be rushed!  Make sure you cut images that really mean something to you.  You can be picky and don’t feel like you need a lot of pictures or words.