Vision boarding and goal setting

The idea of a vision board will likely provoke one of three responses in you... 

1. How pointless, I’d never need one or make one. 

2. I don’t know what that is, but I might like making one if I knew the point of it. 

3. I love them, they’re an integral part of my goal setting rituals. 

A vision board is best described as a visual collection of images, words and phrases that capture your goals for a certain period of time. You can create one board per year, of you might choose to design them seasonally. Pick whatever works best for the flow of your life and goals. Despite how frequently you choose to design them their goal remains the same, to serve as a daily visual reminder of the life you’re moving towards. 

Despite how you feel about them, they can have an enormously positive effect on visualizing and achieving your ambitions. We’re going to move through the processes of creating a vision board that serves you and inspires you each day to move a little bit closer to your big ambitions. 

Before we can create a vision board... we need a vision. Below are some questions I want you to answer before moving forward. These only require brief responses but are designed to help you envision yourself in 12 months time. What is your life like? How do you feel? What do you do each day? Who do you spend your time with? 

YOUR WORDS FOR 2024 

Make a list of 10 words that capture how you want to feel over the coming 12 months. Try to avoid thinking only about how you want to feel in March next year, but how you want to feel from tomorrow until March next year. Of this list of 10, narrow it down to your top five words. Again, narrow it down to your top 3. These will be your words for the year. 

Examples: calm, joyful, productive, disciplined, clean, organised, focused, growth, simplicity, connected, intentional, change, refreshed, belonging, present, peaceful, creative, adventurous. 

YOUR AMBITIONS FOR 2024 

Let’s talk about your ambitions. If you already have a master list of things you want to achieve over the course of your life, feel free to pull from that for this step. If you’re a little more like me and, do not, then we’ll create them now. Make a list of 10 things you want to achieve this year. These are going to be your ambitions.  A quick note on ambitions and goals. A goal is defined as “an aim or purpose.” An ambition is defined as “a strong wish to achieve something.” The difference? To put it simply, ambitions come first and then goals follow on afterwards. Ambition is the desire and motivation to continuously achieve increasingly difficult goals. I choose to define them independently of each other to help keep the big picture in view. Without the understanding of ambitions, we can get lost in making a list of 100 goals. Some big, some small. Some broad, some specific. Within this framework we’re going to list 10 big ambitions for the year, and then break them down into smaller goals. 

Examples: learn to speak a different language, go on a three day hike, create a meditation practice, stick to a budget, organise my house, cook more meals at home. 

BREAK THEM DOWN 

For each ambition you’ve listed, break it down into 3-5 smaller goals. Try not to make it more then 5. You’ll have the chance to go deeper when it come to actually completing those goals, but we want to avoid it looking overwhelming when written down.  

Examples: 

Learn to speak a different language: Research languages and decide which one I'll learn and how (app or course), download the app/sign up for the course, break up the course into weekly tasks. 

Go on a three day hike: Research hikes I could do and choose one, book my travel (flights if needed), book my accommodation, book any passes I need to complete the hike, map out a training schedule into weekly workouts/walks. 

Create a meditation practice: Meditate for 3 minutes a day in March, meditate for 5 minutes a day in April, meditate for 7 minutes a day in May, meditate for 20 minutes a day in June etc. 

Stick to a budget: List my financial goals, create a budget that will help me achieve them, write a list of reasons why I want to stick to this budget to refer back to, create daily and weekly tasks to keep myself on track. 

ALIGN THEM 

Now for each ambition, you’re going to write a word that describes how achieving this ambition will make you feel. This exercises is simply to then compare those words with your words for the year. Do they align? If they do, you’re on the right track. If they don’t, then you have perhaps chose goals that don’t align with how you want to feel in for the coming year, or you’ve maybe chosen words for the year that don’t align with what you actually want to achieve. If they don’t align, take some time to think about which one is more true of you and what you’re hoping for, then adjust those that no longer align. 

FINALISE THEM 

Finalise everything you wrote down. List your words for the year, you ambitions and the goals that will get you there. This will be your reference point while you create your vision board. 

GATHER THE VISUALS 

Now to the fun part, actually designing your vision board! You can either do this on a piece of foam board where you print all your images and cut and glue them yourself. If this doesn’t sound overly fun to you, then you can simply organise your photos on an A4 document in Canva, and then print your finished board. 

Looking through your ambitions, find 3-4 images that represent each one on Pinterest (or wherever you find you inspiration). It’s important to look for images that capture the feeling you’re hoping to achieve, if it’s all based on aesthetics you’re at risk of only having a life that looks different to others, but doesn’t feel different to you. Once you have all these together, you can start arranging them on your board. The final step is to add your words for the year. 

RITUALS 

Now you’ve got your vision board, a fun extra step you can do is to design some daily, weekly or monthly rituals to help you achieve your goals. This part is often what makes the most difference. When you start to practice these rituals, you will be starting to live the life you’re hoping for. By committing to these, you’re not just wishing for something new, you’re changing your lifestyle. 

Examples: daily budget review, 5 minutes of Duolingo each morning, 3x 60 minutes walks each week, 3 minutes of meditation each morning. 

Visions boards aren’t magic. They don’t hold a special power that gives you everything you list on them. They act as a creative process that first helps us realise our goals and then helps us keep them at the top of our mind each day, motivating us to develop a lifestyle that will see those goals come to life. 

Get creating, but most importantly, get changing your day to day routines and you’ll see the magic of your ambitions come to life. Nothing changes if nothing changes.