Vision Boards – What They Are, Why They Work, And How To Make And Use One

Let’s start with what a vision board (aka dream board) is.

Put simply, it’s a collage that represents how you envision the life you want to have.

The idea is that you place this board somewhere you will see it every single day, such as your study, office, bedroom, hallway, landing, even your bathroom if you want.

This way, it acts as a constant reminder of where you should be directing your energy, so you can achieve all of the goals on your board.

Do Vision Boards Actually Work?

This is a fair question, since the concept seems at first glance to be a bit “woo”.

The principles behind vision boards are not new – even Napoleon Hill, author of “Think And Grow Rich” in the 1930s, utilized them.

Athletes representing all sorts of sports and disciplines (e.g. Billie Jean King, Jack Nicklaus, Michael Phelps, Muhammad Ali, Novak Djokovic, and Tiger Woods) have been using visualization techniques for years – and vision boards are just one way of employing the power of visualization. Do you think they would still be using visualization to this day if it didn’t work?

And for a bit of light relief, check out this video on the subject, featuring Jim Carrey:

Why Do Vision Boards Work?

There is actually plenty of science that explains why visualization can be so effective, and it begins with the recent discovery that the acts of remembering and imagining both use some of the same core connections and networks in our brain.

This suggests that our brains can’t always tell the difference between reality (i.e. actual memories of things we’ve seen or done) and unreality (i.e. things we are merely imagining).

This is borne out by one experiment that showed people who went to the gym and people who merely imagined going to the gym both experienced an increase in muscle strength. To be fair, those who only exercised “mentally” had about half the growth of those who actually went to the gym and did their work-outs for real, but it’s still fascinating that the simple act of visualizing something can cause physical changes in your body.

And this is why many athletes visualize – not to avoid doing the work, of course, but to supplement it, which increases their chances of success.

Needless to say, visualization works for other people too, not just sports people, in both their personal and business lives.

At the heart of visualization lies something called the reticular activating system (RAS, for short).

It sounds complicated, but in essence, it’s a set of filters that help our brains distinguish between what’s important to us and what’s not – because if we didn’t have such a system in place, we’d soon become overwhelmed by all of the sensory inputs our bodies constantly receive.

This is why a mother, for example, will wake up when she detects even the faintest noise from her baby, but will sleep through all sorts of other noises (e.g. traffic going past the house, barking dogs).

Visualization makes use of the RAS by telling it what is important to you – i.e. the things you are visualizing, such as what’s on your vision board.

And once your RAS understands that those items are what you deem important, it will make sure you don’t miss anything on that list.

Why Should You Create Your Own Vision Board?

Here are a few good reasons why it’s a valuable activity:

1. Creating one forces you think carefully about what you truly want in life.
2. By focusing on what you want, you will be more easily able to ignore and rid yourself of all the clutter that we all face in our daily lives these days that does not move you toward your goals.
3. A vision board is a constant reminder of your goals.
4. Seeing your goals tangibly represented on your board will provide a more emotional motivation than just seeing the words written on a list.
5. Creating a vision board is fun.

What Should Be Represented On Your Vision Board?

Most people start by thinking of all the possessions they wish they had, such as a fancy car, a large house, or maybe a boat, but that is only one type of item that you should be putting on your board.

What is at least as important, if not more so, are:

1. How you want to feel.
2. What sort of person you want to be.
3. Which principles you choose to live your life by.
4. Any goals not covered by the above.

Remember the saying, “Money can’t buy happiness”?

There’s no point putting a whole bunch of material things on your vision board if you don’t also include something that reminds you that you want to be happy too. 🙂

What Should You Put On Your Vision Board?

Once you’ve given some thought to what your goals are (i.e. in terms of emotions, possessions, profession / occupation, finances, family, hobbies), it’s time to collate the visual representations of those.

Here are some of the things you can use on your board:

1. Photographs you’ve taken (e.g. of a house you loved that you once saw on vacation)
2. Cuttings from magazines (e.g. photos of things you aspire to owning or people you want to be more like).
3. Images from the Internet (e.g. Google Images, Unsplash.com).
4. Specific words (e.g. love, happiness, integrity).
5. Affirmations (e.g. “I am successful”).
6. Quotations that inspire you (e.g. “What you do today can improve all your tomorrows”).
7. Photographs of you doing something you want to master (e.g. playing a musical instrument, painting).
8. Colours – because certain colours do have psychological effects on our brains (e.g. orange and/or yellow are associated with happiness, while you might want to use some green if you are planning on starting a family, since green is associated with fertility).
9. Symbols that represent something important to you (e.g. for reasons I cannot yet explain, I have always been drawn to the Egyptian ankh, which symbolizes life or, sometimes, new life).
10. Scents – such as perfumes or essential oils, because aromas can be very powerful triggers (e.g. talcum powder is apparently associated with security and safety).
11. Hand-drawn sketches you (or somebody in your family) created.
12. And lastly, a headshot or full-body photo of yourself, to help you see yourself associated with everything else that’s on the board.

How To Construct Your Vision Board

OK, now you know what you want represented on your vision board, and you’ve collated the visual representations of those desires, so now it’s time to actually build your board.

Here are some of the materials you may need:

• A board (e.g. cork).
• Scissors.
• Glue.
• Pins / tacks.
• Tape.
• Markers / highlighters.
• Stickers.
• A colour printer (if you have sourced some of your images off the Internet).

Most of the above you will find at any good craft store, or you can find them online, of course.

Once you have your materials, you can start the construction part of this project.

In essence, you need to take all of the items you collated from the previous section and add them to your board, using whatever method you want to affix them (e.g. tape, pins).

Unleash your inner creativity and do whatever you like that you think will work for you – remember, this is YOUR vision board, so it really doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks.

Vision Board Construction Hints And Tips

If the previous section seemed a bit open-ended and woolly, here are a few tips to help guide you in creating your first vision board:

1. Don’t be tempted to add too many items to your board. If you do, it will be more difficult to focus on what you really want.
2. Try to make the overall layout make sense, and leave enough white space around items.
3. Don’t forget you can draw arrows to connect various items, if you think they are related to each other.
4. You can make the entire background a single colour that represents what you want the most, or you could use different colours for different parts of the board, to indicate different areas or your life.
5. You can personalize it further by adding various embellishments (e.g. stickers, ribbons, or even attach a small MP3 player that features one or more songs you find particularly inspirational).
6. Be bold!

Vision Board Usage Hints And Tips

OK, now you’ve built your vision board, what do you do with it and how do you use it for maximum benefit?

1. Place it somewhere where you will see it multiple times a day, since the more you see it, the more effective it will be. Maybe put one in the bathroom / restroom so you can focus on that rather than watching cat videos on your phone. 🙂
2. Consider taking a high-quality photo of your vision board and having copies made, so you can look at your vision board in more than one place (e.g. a poster-sized one for your study or office, and a smaller one for by your bedside).
3. Review your vision board as soon after getting up in the morning as you can, to help motivate and focus you during the day.
4. Review your vision board last thing before bedtime, because the thoughts you have during those last 45 minutes are the ones that will replay themselves over and over while you sleep.
5. When you review your vision board (daily, remember), imagine that you have already achieved the goals and how that makes you feel.
6. Once you have achieved any of the goals on your vision board, do not remove them – they are reminders that you have achieved one or more items that are important to you, and that there is no reason why you cannot achieve the remaining goals.
7. Ideally, you should build a new vision board each year, because you may change, or, at least, refine, your goals. As in the previous point though, make sure you still include the reminders of goals you’ve already achieved.
8. Keep an archive of all of your previous vision boards – this is like a journal that tracks how your goals, and you, have changed over time.
9. Consider making more than one vision board, such as one for your personal life, and a different one for your business life.
10. You can also create a family vision board, so the entire family’s goals and ambitions are represented.
11. Although generally regarded as being less effective, you can also create digital vision boards (e.g. to use on your computer or other electronic device as a background wallpaper, browser home page, or screensaver). Or, of course, if you took a photo of your board, as suggested above, then you already have a digital image of it, so just use that.

Vision Boards And The Law Of Attraction

I cannot talk about vision boards without also mentioning the Law Of Attraction (LOA).

At one level, the LOA is simply defined as “you receive what you focus on”, and that is entirely consistent with the concept of vision boards and why they work.

Others will define it as “like attracts like” or “the attractive, magnetic power of the Universe that draws similar energies together”.

And I have to say that this is taking it too far for me.

I have no problem understanding why we receive what we focus on – I see visualization as a motivator that helps us focus on what’s important to us and to not focus on what’s not important to us, and if we focus our attention on something, we are more likely to achieve it.

But universal laws and energy and magnetism are things I see no evidence for.

It’s not that I’m saying this form of the Law Of Attraction doesn’t exist – I’m only saying that I do not yet see enough evidence for it to believe it’s real (in the same way that I’m neither religious nor spiritual, nor see anything that supports the concept of karma).

My views may be atypical in this area, so make of this what you will.

Manifesting, as it’s sometimes known, is not a new concept – I remember reading a book by Al Koran called “Bring Out The Magic In Your Mind” over 40 years ago, and that was all about what these days would be called the LOA, and the fact that it’s had a resurgence of interest over the past decade or so (largely thanks to “The Secret”) would suggest that there is something to the power and efficacy of visualization.

And Lastly – A Sample Vision Board

Here is a sample vision board.

In my opinion, it’s not the best example, but images or photos of them that I’m allowed to use are few and far between, probably because these are highly personal creations that most people would rather not share with the whole world:

© Some rights reserved by SOMBILON STUDIOS – www.SOMBILON.com

Conclusion

I find the whole subject of visualization fascinating, both in terms of the science that explains it, and the way people are using it to great effect.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this site, I suffer from aphantasia (i.e. the inability to create mental images), as do about 3% of all people, so using these techniques is somewhat more difficult (but not impossible) for me and those like me to use.

But since the vast majority of people apparently don’t have this limitation, I would suggest that creating your own vision board is definitely worth a try.

Even if you don’t go as far as actually constructing the board itself, the exercise of working out what you truly want out of life (including what sort of person you want to be, and which principles you want to live your life by) is valuable, and that information should be recorded somewhere, rather than being discarded.

There is one more reason a vision board can be useful, and that’s if you suffer from aphantasia. Since this condition, which affects up to 5% of people (including myself), means you cannot create mental imagery, then the usual advice of visualizing what you want to manifest doesn’t work. However, creating a vision board can be useful because it allows you to physically see what it is that you want in life.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Jack Canfield (co-author of “Chicken Soup For The Soul”): “Your brain will work tirelessly to achieve the statements you give your subconscious mind. And when those statements are the affirmations and images of your goals, you are destined to achieve them!”

Additional Resources

These are suggestions for those who wish to delve deeper into any of the above:

1. Bring Out The Magic In Your Mind
2. Free Online Vision Board Creator
3. Law Of Attraction Book
4. Mind Movies
5. The Secret
6. Think And Grow Rich