Create a Vision Board For Goals that Matter
Creating the life of your dreams requires you to take your goals one step at a time and to put in the work every day to get yourself to where you want to go.
The reason that most of us do not accomplish our goals is because we get lost along the way. We forget that accomplishing the goal takes making baby steps every single day, and we start to think that the baby steps aren’t making much of an impact. Especially when even the smallest steps are challenging, we start to lose sight of the end goal and decide that maybe the goal is not worth pursuing after all.
We often set goals when we are feeling very strong-willed and motivated. We are sick and tired of our current situation and are ready to make big changes. We can see exactly what we want to make happen. Imagine in this state that you are standing on top of a mountain made of motivation and you can see yourself successfully accomplishing your goal on top of a nearby mountain made of success. The mountain tops do not seem all that far apart, but then it is time to get to work. You have to hike down the mountain that you are standing on so that you can then hike over to and up the other mountain to reach success. As you hike down the mountain, through the trees, and up the other mountain, you can no longer see yourself successfully reaching your goal. As you trudge through the mud and trees, you may feel like the work you are doing is useless, and you start to wonder if your success is even still there at the top of that mountain. It is easy to get distracted and be tempted to head down other paths that appear to be easier when your goal does not appear to be within reach anymore.
The vision board is your map to your goal! It keeps the end goal in full view the entire time you are working and reminds you that every step is getting you closer to successfully reaching your goal. Having the map to look at constantly throughout your journey is what helps you stay on the right path.
Let’s get started! Create a vision board to set goals that matter.
First, put down the scissors and start with your eyes closed. Ask yourself what it is that you want most for your life. Make a list of things that come to mind. Do not hold back or be afraid to dream big here.
If you have trouble getting started, choose a point in time and vision your ideal life at that point. Picture yourself one-, five-, ten- and twenty-years from now. Including a variety of timelines will help you encompass a variety of goals on your vision board.
You want your vision to include timeframes far enough out that changing your life doesn’t feel totally overwhelming or impossible but is also not so far off that the work you do today seems irrelevant. You will use your vision board to create short-term goals – checkpoints on your map towards success.
Include visions for all areas of your life.
Living your ideal life is going to come from accomplishing a variety of goals. Considering the various areas of your life when you are creating your vision board will help you to keep from focusing on just one goal and sacrificing other important areas of your life. When creating your vision board, you will want to imagine what you want in life in terms of health, wealth, relationships, day-to-day life, faith and mindset.
Health and Fitness
When setting a vision for your health goals, be careful not to focus just on what you think fitness is supposed to look like. Optimal health and wellness looks different on everyone. Start with the feelings that describe optimal health for you. Some of the words that come to my mind are energetic, confident, rested, focused, strong, and comfortable.
Next, set measurable goals that you think will lead to these feelings.
It is helpful to use goals with numbers just to give us something to track and progress towards, but we need to be careful about identifying goal weights and sizes. Being as thin or as small as possible should not be the goal here. We also need to be careful about comparing ourselves to others because every body is different, and a healthy weight or size on one person is not necessarily a healthy weight or size on another person. Also, just because you think someone looks attractive, that doesn’t mean that they are healthy or happy or that they feel any of the healthful feelings that you are after. Focus on your health as opposed to how you look. All of the amazing feelings of energy and confidence will follow.
Think back to times in your life that you have felt good or that you have liked the way that you looked and use that as a guideline for determining your numbers. You could also simply choose a doable yet exciting goal and just go for it, you can always raise the bar once you have hit that goal.
Ability goals can also be great ways to measure health progress. If you work towards the ability to do 100 push-ups, squat your body weight, or run three miles in less than 30 minutes, you will see and feel physical results without ever setting a size or weight goal.
And lastly, choose images that represent those feelings and results for you and use fun fonts to include the words and goals that are most inspiring to you in your collage. Collect these images and words in a PowerPoint file. Do not worry about how your vision board looks at this point – you are still just brainstorming!
Wealth and Income
If you currently have debt, your first goal should be debt freedom. Envision yourself making the very last payment to your credit card, student loans, vehicle loan, and mortgage and think about how you will celebrate.
Then, ask yourself, “How will I spend my money when I do not have to make those payments every month?” What would debt freedom give you the ability to do? Jot down the words that describe how you would feel and what you would do when you are not tied down by debt. The things that come to my mind are “quit my job,” “time freedom,” “generosity,” and “investing in my family’s future.”
The other side of the wealth vision is where your money will come from. Winning the lottery should not be part of your vision board. Think about how work and income fit into your ideal life. What is your dream job - do you have dreams of quitting your current job for something more enjoyable or fulfilling? Do you want to start your own business? Is there any educational or training programs that you will need to complete on the road to your ideal job?
Next, set some measurable goals for your income. What is your ideal income and what will this level of income allow you to do?
Add inspiring words and images to your PowerPoint document that represent your wealth and income goals.
Mom Life
This probably is not the first time that you have thought about what you want for your life in terms of fitness and money. Those goals seem to be on our minds constantly. While they play a huge role in our lives and are great goals to work towards, the really important parts of life are made up of the small, day-to-day routines and the people that you are surrounded by. Envision the specifics of living out your ideal life.
Which relationships in your life are most important?
How do you spend time with those people?
What do you do to help those around you?
How does coming home to your ideal home make you feel?
What words would you use to describe your ideal home?
How do you want to spend your days?
Add some words and images to your vision board collection to include daily life in your vision.
Mindset
Our mindset is also not an area that we tend to focus on when setting goals for our lives, but how we think and feel is a major determinant of the level of our success. Without faith and a strong mindset, it is difficult to accomplish our goals, and sacrificing our mindset for the sake of accomplishing our goals, defeats the purpose of accomplishing the goal in the first place. Ask yourself the following questions to ensure that your vision includes the mindset that will allow you to actually enjoy living your ideal life.
What is God’s presence in your life?
How do you picture yourself feeling while you are living your ideal life?
Are there thoughts or emotions that you feel now that you want to learn to manage or cope with?
How do you spend time in your ideal days to include strengthening your faith and sense of peace and gratitude?
Include words and inspiring images from your answers to these questions to your vision board collection.
Add a filter to focus on what really matters.
At this point, you should have a pretty extensive collection of images and words to include in your vision board collage. Take a break and make sure that we are including the things that really matter to you before we put together the actual vision board. Clear your mind of everything that we have talked about up to this point and ask yourself this simple question: What is most important in my life? Write down up to five things.
Now, look through the images and words that you have collected for your vision board. Are those five things present? If not, ask yourself why, and go back through the vision board categories and filter your goals to emphasize a focus on these things that mean the most to you.
Put it all together.
Now that you have a collection of words and images that represent what you want in life, choose a medium for creating your vision board. I like PowerPoint because I can easily pull images from the internet, move images and words around in my collage, print the completed vision board, make changes, and reprint as needed. I love that finding images is easy, there is no mess to clean up, and I can easily make changes as I go.
There are other apps you can use to make pretty collages, such as Canva and PicMonkey. PowerPoint is just something that I’m used to – I did not want to spend a ton of time on the mechanics of creating the collage, but if that is the exciting part that keeps you going, go for it!
If you are more hands-on and artistic, you could also use a poster board to cut and paste words and images to.
Feel free to choose any method that sounds most fun and helpful for you!
Use your vision board daily to remind yourself what you are working towards.
Break your big-picture vision down into attainable goals with deadlines. For example, if one of your vision board items is debt freedom, think about what order you will pay off debts in, when you want them paid off by, and set five-year, one-year, monthly, weekly, and daily goals that you’ll need to accomplish on your way to debt freedom.
Look at your vision board every day to remind yourself of what you are working towards and the path that you are on to get there.
Let’s do this! Use the Get In Touch button to send me any questions as you create your own vision board. Also, be sure to join the For More of What Matters Community group in Facebook for daily tips and inspiration as you work towards your goals with other hardworking mommas!
