Vision Boards: Dream Big, Play with Pictures, and Watch your Life Change

Nora Dunn — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 07:37:02 +0000

As referenced to in a few previous articles here and here, you have the ability to change your life in amazing ways by opening up your creative juices and dreaming on a grand scale.

A fun way to do this exercise (and something that the whole family can do) is to create a vision board. Here's how:

Get a large piece of cardboard (the bigger the better, but try to make it at least three times bigger than a letter-sized piece of paper) - one for each family member doing this exercise.
Collect all the old magazines you can find. Ask friends for magazines they no longer want, ask the doctor's office for their old ones, and stockpile your own subscriptions. If you can, try to amass a variety of different magazines, and the more pictures they have, the better.
Go through the magazines and cut out pictures of places you want to go to, things you want to have, and images you want to make reality. You can also cut out words that are inspirational, or that represent further things you want to do or be in life. Just cut out anything that speaks to you on any level, even if you can't define it.
Start pasting it all together! Create a collage on the cardboard of your pictures and inspirations. If you can't find pictures but know what you want, then draw it. Be as creative as you like…it isn't homework that the teacher is going to grade you on.
Once complete, leave your vision board in a prominent place where you can look at it. Maybe you want it above your bathroom mirror to admire while you're getting ready in the morning. Maybe beside your bed so you can wake up and go to sleep with those visions in your mind. Maybe the fridge is the perfect place to remind yourself of your goals and dreams.

I did this a few years ago myself, and not only was it just plain fun to do, but I've had a few startling realizations since then. When I created the board, I lived a very urban rich lifestyle. Interestingly none of my pictures were particularly material in nature; I didn't have a big house, fast car, or dollar bills in my vision board. I had a tent on the side of a remote waterfall in the mountains, a fit woman running through a lava field (a North Face running shoe ad), and a pen and paper as three of my prominent images.

Amazingly, the tent image became a reality when I sold everything and moved to the Rocky Mountains last year. The lava field image materialized when I found myself unexpectedly living in Hawaii for six months (where I currently am). And to complete that picture, I have lost weight and become considerably more fit since creating the vision board, and I even have the North Face running shoes (they were a gift). As for the pen and paper, they actually materialized for me as a laptop computer instead, as I travel the world and write for a living.

All this was "dreamed up" while I lived a very different life in a very different place. I had no expectations of that vision board ever becoming a reality; it was really just something fun to do.

But in ways I could never have imagined, envisioning my future with pictures was actually an exercise in creating it.

This article is from Nora Dunn of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread: