How to Use a Vision Board
Whether you’re a creative, a professional in the corporate world, or simply a visual person, vision boards are an excellent tool to help jumpstart an idea or take a concept and make it a reality. Vision boards can be physical or digital (Pinterest, Canva, and various collage apps are great resources to create a vision board). However you choose to make yours, the idea is the same—a collection or collage of photos, images, quotes, etc. intended to inspire or motivate a person toward achieving their goals. With this in mind, here are some ways that a vision board can benefit you:
Creatives:
Whether you’re a painter, illustrator, photographer, writer or designer, creatives and the creative arts thrive on inspiration and visualization. Vision boards are a great way to cull inspiration into one place for easy viewing.
Curate Inspiration: A creative can collect images, photographs, and artwork that resonate with whatever project they’re working on or simply to get ideas flowing. For example, you can create a certain mood or emotion with specific colors or images. If you are a writer, you can also find photos of people who resemble your characters or settings, which can help a writer visualize a scene.
Designers can also find inspiration photos of particular materials, spaces, colors, decor etc. that inspire them. The possibilities are endless.
Organize Your Ideas: By organizing your vision boards into projects or themes, it keeps your ideas and inspiration easily accessible, allowing for greater focus on creating.
Include Quotes or Words: Words can be just as powerful as images. By using quotes, snippets of poetry or inspirational writing, and even affirmations can help motivate and fuel your creativity.
Corporate:
Vision boards aren’t just for artistic pursuits. They can also be valuable in a corporate setting.
Team Work: A vision board, when done as a collaboration, can help align employees with each other and a greater purpose. It can unite people around a common goal or specific project, allowing them to see what they’re working toward.
Innovation: Vision boards, when done individually, can also help stoke ideas and get people thinking outside the box. They can help stimulate creativity and explore new ideas.
Communication: A shared vision board can also increase communication by allowing a place for people to express thoughts and ideas visually. Whether it’s to motivate, inspire, correct, or gather opinions, vision boards are a great way for employees to express themselves.
Everyone:
Whether you fall into the above categories or not, everyone has dreams and aspirations. A vision board is a great tool to help you get there.
Clarify: A vision board can help you nail down exactly what your dreams really are. Try making vision boards for different areas of your life: career, relationships, health, etc. Try to hone into what really speaks to you whether through photos, quotes, affirmations, or other media.
Personal Development: In addition to honing in on what you want to achieve, vision boards can help you visualize who you want to become. Reflect on how reaching your above goals will contribute to your overall happiness and well-being. Try to visualize the kind of person you want to become, then fashion the vision board around that idea.
Action Plan: One might mistake the creation of the vision board as the work itself. While visualization is a crucial, necessary step, if it stops there, then it’s stopped short. As Vance Havner said, “The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps—we must step up the stairs.” By including an action plan into your vision board, you can help make those dreams become realities. Break down your goals into actionable steps. Imagine yourself doing those things. You can also use your vision board to track your progress. A planner is a great place to keep a tangible vision board. Using Blank pages, Story Board, or even Half Lined pages, you can print or cut images, quotes, etc. and fit them into a place that provides daily motivation, and where you can also easily track goals and schedule in time to achieve them.
Hopefully incorporating a vision board can help hone in and achieve your goals, whether as a creative, professional, or dreamer.