How To Create A Vision Board That Actually Works

I used to do vision boards just like everyone else did. I’d download a few aesthetic photos from Pinterest, slap them into a Canva template with inspirational phrases, set it as my iPhone wallpaper and wait for “everything I put on my vision board to happen that year.” Except it never did happen. I started getting frustrated with the process after a while and almost wrote off vision boards entirely until I had an epiphany.

In order for vision boards to work, you have to interact with them!

Every time I set my vision board as my wallpaper, I noticed that after a while I would still forget about it all the time. I wouldn’t even be looking at whatever my wallpaper was because I was so focused on the notifications that were coming in. Vision boards are a tool to help inspire a certain energy within you. They’re meant to help you connect to the vibration of what you desire, they’re supposed to evoke feelings within you. That can’t happen if you completely forget about them and aren’t being intentional with how you use them.

There’s a lot more to it than throwing together a Canva template, setting it and forgetting it. There’s a lot more to it than gluing a few photos to a poster board and hanging it on your wall. The moment I had this realization, I developed a whole, intentional, ritual around creating my vision boards and ever since I started doing them this way — everything work out for me every time.

Before We Begin

It’s important to note that this whole process requires you to conjure and invest real feeling into it. The more feeling you invest, the more powerful this process will be because emotions are simply energy in motion. People say ‘your word is your wand,’ but it’s really ‘the feelings your words create within you are your wand.’ Consistently feeling negative emotions will create more things that inspire negative emotions, but with a little self awareness, we can use this fact to our advantage. When creating your vision board it is crucial to be feeling positive, empowered and inspirational feelings. I get it, life happens, and sometimes when you want to sit down and create your vision board you’re feeling blah or frustrated or unmotivated.

Before I ever sit down to do a vision board, I make time to set the vibe and create an environment and energy that encourages the positive emotions I’m trying to create.

How to Set the Vibe

• Take a shower to rinse off all the stresses and pressures from the day. This can really help to reset your emotional landscape after a long day.
• Dress in your favorite comfy clothes that feel good on your skin and allow for a wide range of movement. Make sure the clothes keep you at a comfortable temperature.
• Make a yummy drink like tea or coffee or cacao and watch a motivational video to direct your attention into the realm of inspiration, creativity, and determination.
• Turn on some motivational/inspirational/hype music of your choice and have a dance party with yourself! Getting your heart rate going for just a few minutes will release endorphins to help create positive emotions. Many ancient tribes used dancing and singing to set the vibe for ancient rituals and ceremonies. In my own use of this tactic, I’ve found that it’s incredibly effective!

I choose to do all of these things to set the vibe, but you aren’t required to! I like doing it this way because it gives me time to prioritize myself. It’s designed to help me feel good, which is exactly how we want to feel going into creating our vision boards.

Get Clear

This will always be my Step Number One when it comes to Manifesting anything. If you’re not clear on what you want, how are you supposed to give your energy the direction to bring it to you?

I do the clarity thing a little differently than most people do. My focus isn’t to get clear on what I want, exactly. My focus is to get clear on who I want to be and how I want to feel. (Remember: Feeling is the most important part of this process. Deciding how you want to feel right at the start will make the whole thing a lot easier!)

The reason my focus lies with who I want to be and how I want to feel is simple: there are a lot of paths to your destination. If my goal was to become a CEO of a multimillion dollar company, I could take the route that includes long nights, a lot of sacrifice, mountains of stress and anxiety and frustration or I can choose to manifest a way that will feel easy, fun and exciting to me. I, personally, would choose to go the route of ease. If my goal is to start getting healthy, that means that the person I’ll become is someone who gets active, eats foods to support her body, and prioritizes doing what is best for her health. Defining who I want to be gives me multiple action steps to take towards the experiences I want in life and starts me off in an energy of empowerment instead of overwhelm.

Add Specific and Intentional Photos

I like to do my vision board on Pinterest because it’s easier for me to interact with it on a regular basis. I know there will be things that pop up throughout the year that I will want to add to my vision board and maybe things that I even want to subtract. Pinterest allows me to do that which keeps the energy of my vision board fresh and aligned all year long and not just the month that you did it in!

Tips for Adding Photos

• Be specific and intentional with the photos you’re adding. Each one of the photos should correspond with something you defined in step one. Avoid adding photos that are just simply aesthetic as they’ll clog up your board and won’t really add anything in terms of energy to your vision board.
• Add a few empowering quotes here and there so that when you’re scrolling or looking over your vision board, there’s little check points to remind you that even if your manifestations feel so far out of reach, that it is entirely possible and even attainable for you.
• Add first person POV photos if you can, so that the photo almost mirrors what you would be seeing if you were actually experiencing it.
• Add photos of yourself doing these things if you have them to give even more of an umpf. You want to create an environment full of visual stimulation that will make you feel like no matter what anyone else says, you can absolutely do and create the things you’re manifesting.
• Add a variety of things you’d like the achieve. Make sure some things are easier to achieve and then add some that take a little more time and energy to achieve. It’s always nice to add photos of Bali, your first million dollars, your dream car, your dream mansion, etc. to your vision board but if those are the only things on there, after a while it’s going to make you feel like you can’t manifest anything, when really these are all just manifestations that take a little more elbow grease to pull into reality. This year, I added pictures of artisan sourdough bread to my vision board because I thought it would be fun to try and make it. That manifested within 3 days of the New Year starting!

Feel the Feels

After you’ve added a good handful of photos to your vision board, spend some time looking at each photo and allowing yourself to feel the feelings you would feel if you were in that photo right now.

• Feel the excitement that you would feel after hitting your first million dollars in your business
• Feel the thrill you running through your veins after driving your dream car home for the first time
• Feel the pride that would come after turning bread into ART! (seriously it’s so cool)
• Feel the relief you would experience after being able to quit your stressful 9-5 and focus on the life you actually want to live
• Feel the amazement after hearing your song on the radio for the first time

Spend time feeling the feelings you want to feel.

Regularly Interact with Your Vision Board

Like I said at the beginning, in order for your vision board to work you have to interact with it! If you’re not there to feel the feelings the vision board is supposed to create, then what is the point?

The best way to do this is by scheduling it into your calendar. Put it in one of your daily routines or schedule one day a week where you connect to it. Do what works for you, but make it a priority to interact with your vision board on a regular basis. This will help keep the things you want at the forefront of your mind and will keep you looking forward instead of backward. It will allow you to feel the feelings you’re wanting to manifest now (because who wants to wait however long it takes for things to fully manifest anyway?) It will help inspire creative solutions to achieve those things while also keeping you connected to your Big Picture, which will continuously give you a motivational kick in the pants to keep going, even when it gets hard.

From my experience, that last part is the most important benefit of doing vision boards like this.

All in all, as you walk away from this article, this is the only thing I hope you learned: Feelings are the key component. As long as you are creating the feelings you want to feel, you can’t really do wrong. So go get creative and make something that will inspire you to become everything you have ever wanted to be.

XOXO

The Daydream Bitch