With 2022 making its debut, we again find ourselves in the time where we choose our New Year’s resolutions. Whether it’s eating healthier, or getting more organized, unfortunately many of us often forget about them by the end of January. While setting resolutions, or goals, is a great practice, it is easy to get upset at ourselves when we fail to reach them. For 2022, we challenge you to not think about “New Year, New Me”, but instead think about “New Year, New Outlook”. Let’s try something different, and instead of setting very specific New Year’s resolutions, let’s set a new vision for how we want our 2022 to go! This may seem like a hard task, but we have a very simple (and fun!) tool that will empower you and your year: vision boards.
What is a vision board?
So, what is a Vision board and how does it work you ask? They are a goal manifesting collage that transforms your dreams into actions through inspiring words and pictures. By creating a physical collage of your vision you manifest these thoughts into your reality. Once completed, vision boards work best when you keep them in a place where you see it on a daily basis. We have done vision boarding exercises with our teens in our Youth Wellness Council and they love thinking about the visions of their future and expressing them in a visual form!
Now Vision boards depend on the “Law of Attraction” – you want to attract what you truly want. That means seeing it, feeling it and knowing it. You must embody your visions. When we work with our youth council we guide them on the steps to creating a vision board that will bring them their best results. We guide them to first define their goals, then find their inspiration, we advise to really map out the board before finalizing and bringing that vision board to life. See below for 4 easy steps for creating and using a vision board!
Step 1 – Define Your Goals
Think about the things that are important to you. What about family, relationships, health, fitness, finances, hobbies, or anything else that plays a major role in your life. We often use the components of the wellness wheel to help spur ideas. The wellness wheel incorporates all of the different elements of wellness, including emotional, social and intellectual wellness among others. View the wellness wheel below and keep these areas of wellness in mind when defining your goals.
We tell the youth council students that the “sky is the limit”. Imagine what you want in these areas…for example do you want to take yoga (spiritual wellness) or do you want to be a yoga instructor (occupational wellness)? Stay open to all possibilities. It can be about manifesting positivity (emotional wellness), connecting to nature (environmental wellness), travel (environmental wellness), love in your life (social wellness). Take a few minutes to brainstorm this and jot your ideas down.
Step 2 – Find Inspiration
Find your inspiration through words or images that represent your goals. Search the internet, look in magazines, catalogs, fabric, crafts, look for anything that resonates with you or inspires you. Be intentional with the pictures and images you select for your board. If you want to envision more travel in your future, select images of places you wish to travel, or if you are looking to land a dream job, select images related to that profession.
Step 3 – Map Out Your Board
You are first going to want to determine if your going to create a physical collage but cutting and gluing images to a physical paper, or if you are going to create your board on a computer. If you choose to create a physical collage, map out where you are going to put things on your board before making any cuts or applying any glue. Make sure that your board is arranges to your satisfaction before gluing things down. Also, make sure you have what you need to get it there. Do you need scissors, glue, markers, crafts materials, cardboard or poster board?
If you are going to create your board on a computer, select a software program or website that allows you to easily upload, resize and otherwise manipulate images so that you can make your board look exactly how you want it to. We recommended the use of the graphic design site Canva.com for our youth council members to use. It is free, easy to learn and allows users to create beautiful looking vision boards!