creating a living vision board
During this week’s Make Light Show episode, I invited listeners to make a vision board, after having taken inventory of the good that they enjoyed over the past year, and have gotten clear on what they want to create more of in the coming year (or decade). So in sort of a physician-heal-thyself moment, I decided to make my own vision board for 2020, as I have for about 10 years now. And I thought I’d share my process with you today.
Before I continue, however, let me be clear about a few things: first, I am not one who believes in magic. Also, as of this writing, I've never read nor seen The Secret. I've heard that vision boards are examples of the Law of Attraction, a theory which states that if you think positively, positive things will automatically happen -- and I suppose that's possible. But there are people with a far greater understanding of the metaphysical than I have who could talk more intelligently about such topics with you.
Despite this, in my completely unlearned opinion, here's what I think:
I think the creation of vision boards requires a certain amount of focus and concentration -- it's not usually something that is done in 30 seconds or a couple of minutes, it takes a bit of time. And I think the process of creating a vision board can be completely meditative. And I believe that when you focus on something in a tangible, hands-on way, your subconscious has to be engaged.
And I believe that when you focus and concentrate on a meditative way on what you want for yourself, while engaging your subconscious, you both subconsciously and consciously begin to work toward those goals.
Please note that I said "work toward those goals" -- I don't think the Universe automatically starts giving you things just because you want them. But I do believe that having goals, combined with a belief in yourself and determined hard work absolutely brings success, even if the success isn't exactly how you envisioned it at the beginning. And to be honest, I believe it has more to do with things like physics (in sort of an each-action-has-an-equal-and-opposite-reaction way), than to do with "magic."
Anyway, here’s how I made my vision board this year.
First, I gathered as many of my favourite old magazines as I could -- magazines I didn’t mind cutting up or ripping apart. If you make your own vision board, you might want to include catalogues from favourite retailers, cards you've received in the past, anything that has lots of photography or other images that you love. If you don't have any magazines, you might want to check your local library to see if they have any old issues they're looking to get rid of, raid your friends' magazine or catalogue stash, or check out Pinterest, and print out some of your favourite images from there.
It would also be good to get as many different types of magazines as you can -- images that relate to your hobbies, or travel, or fashion, or business, or whatever. The most important thing is to surround yourself with mags that you love and/or whose images inspire you.
Then, with the question "what do I want for myself for this coming year?" in the back of my mind, I turned each page of the magazines, looked at all the photographs, images, and headlines -- each and every one of them, including the ads! -- and I tore out my favourites.
Here's the catch: as you look at the images, don't be literal -- this is not an intellectual exercise, it's an emotional one. For example, if the image is a picture of a Porsche, you should choose it because of how the image makes you feel (e.g., empowered, exhilarated, wealthy ...), not only because hey-why-not-owning-a-Porsche-might-be-cool.
Make sense?
Once you have all your images and words, it's time to make your vision board. Here's the thing about vision boards: at their very basic, they're just boards that have inspirational messages on them -- nothing more is required. There's no right or wrong way to arrange your images, it doesn't matter if you glue your images to an actual piece of poster board, or a manila folder or journal opened flat, or even a stretched canvas. You can glue them in straight lines or haphazardly, whatever. It's entirely up to you.
In the past, I’ve used a stretched canvas for my vision board, but this year, I did something different. I was talking to my friend Addye the other day, and she happened to share a vision board she’d done years ago — on a bulletin board. I don’t know why I hadn’t considered using a bulletin board before, but this year, it felt like a brilliant move. I decided to use one that I happened to have already owned, to create a living vision board — one that I can add to and edit over the coming months. A phrase that I’m playing with as a sort of mantra for 2020 is experiment boldly — and I chose my images and words from my magazines to embody what this phrase means to me, and simply pinned them to the bulletin board. And the beauty of it is that over the year, as I find more images and words that inspire me, I’ll simply continue adding to the board.
After your vision board is complete, as far as what one does with one, there are two schools of thought:
The first philosophy is that a vision board should be prominently placed where you can see it every day. The theory is that by placing it in plain sight, the messages that are on the vision board will be visible enough for your eyes to transmit them directly to your subconscious brain, where they will subliminally work their magic.
The second philosophy is the opposite: you're supposed to forget about your vision board altogether. In this case, the theory is that all the message transmission to your subconscious happened when you were hard at work making the board. The theory also states that usually, when the magic happens, the person who made the vision board says to himself, "Dude, I totally forgot that was on my vision board," and therefore, the reasoning goes, it's the forgetting that does the magic.
Honestly, I’ve done both, and I can’t necessarily say which one works best for me. This year, because I plan on adding to it periodically, I’ve hung it in a corner of my home office, where I can see it from my desk every day. Ultimately however, here’s my advice: after all this work you do to put it together, I'd hate to see you lose it. I'd place it somewhere where you can get to it easily and look at it. For some of you, you might love what you've created, and don't care if other people see it too, so you'll hang it somewhere prominent. For others, the vision board might feel very private, so maybe you hang it in the back of your closet, behind all your hanging clothes, so no one can see it, but you can separate your clothes and look at it whenever you want. For still others, if your vision board is more static in nature, you might keep it in your file cabinet at work, to pull out whenever you need to look at it (this works particularly well if you used that manila folder). Whatever works for you.
The upshot is that creating a vision board is a lovely way to wrap up the year, and cultivate a bit of peace and meditation before heading into a new one. I’d love to know: do you guys do vision board? Do you have another ritual for ending a year and beginning a new one? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
It’s all about rhythm.