Part 1: My First Attempt at a Vision Board

VISUALISE YOUR GOALS 

If you have heard of the book the Secret or any read anything on personal development or seen Oprah or read Jillian Michaels you will have come across Vision Boards.  It's all about visualising your goals.

Which means getting clear on what you want to achieve.  And focus is just what I need right now! Perfect timing for revisiting & updating my vision board.  So this will be a two part post - first on how I got started and second on how my board looks now.

GETTING STARTED ON MY VISION

I had kind of feared vision boards because they always looked a bit messy.  I didn't like the examples I saw of poster boards with crinkled up magazines stuck on.  Handmade, childish & not 'perfect' just didn't appeal to me.  Plus a lot of the time I find it hard to make something as I see it in my due to my lack of artist talent.

So about a coming up on 3 years ago I tried a digital vision board.  It felt like this would be a better fit for me.

When visioning you think about the end result.  This is comes up in lots of planning, goal setting & personal development so I could work with that.

Instead of listing your goals - just words on the page, you want to see that end result, you want to feel like you've already achieved that goal & you are displaying it proudly.  

Get focus on the details of where you want to go, what you want to do, how you will feel when your goal is achieved.  

I found this a bit difficult in the beginning.  I was used to writing goals but not so much how they made me feel or what they would look like in my mind or on paper/screen.  Trying to get pictures, images or sounds that embodied my goal took a bit of time to get my head round.

At that time my goals were

1. To sell our flat & move into a homely house
2. I want enough money to reduce the stress on my hubby (I was off work sick & money was a massive worry for my Mr B)
3. I wanted to eat healthy & exercise more (particularly dancing)
4. I wanted to lose weight and feel better about myself

Then I had read that you should include everything you truly wanted to.  Even material things.  I read that people had used vision boards for travelling, acquiring dream homes, growing their savings account, getting fast cars or even finding love.  So I though why not add a bit of fun to my goals.

• Get a new car - BMW X3 to be precise
• Go on holidays - to Paris, New York, & DisneyWorld Florida
• Meet Dita Von Teese (yes I may have got a bit carried away!)

MY DIGITAL VISION BOARD

I looked at apps & different movie programmes but it all ended up getting a bit complicated.  This is definitely something I recognise I do - over think things & make it more complex than it needs to be! 

I decided to stick to a slide presentation that could be run as a movie on a loop on my phone & on my computer.

I plucked lots of photos from the internet - google images was my friend.  I wasn't showing the movie to anyone else so I figured I wasn't breaking any laws (hope that is the case!)

I put them all in a folder & got iPhoto to make them into a slide show.

It lasted 46 seconds.  And the idea was to watch it twice a day.  Sadly this never happened.

Please excuse the crudeness & quality of it.  It was pictures that for me gave me the feelings of achieving my goals I didn't care about the quality more the meaning behind them.

DID IT WORK?

• We did sell our flat

Was it helped by my board or would it have always happened when it was supposed to happen?

• Money did improve

Was that because I did something to put that into action or that me & my hubby are hard working people who will always take care of this bills?

• I did lose weight & try dancing (Ceroc - partner dancing like the picture)

For this one I felt like I was definitely driving this one forward.  Looking for dance classes near by, weight loss groups & walking more with Bailey.  Was that the board that kept me focused?

• My mood did improve & I did feel better about myself

I think this goes hand in hand with moving, money improving, getting back to work, losing some weight & generally liking myself a little more.

Do I have a BMW X3?                         NO

Have I met Dita Von Teese?                 NO

Been to Florida, NYC or Paris?           NO

                                                             Go to NYC at New Year

                                                             Planning Paris next year for my birthday

Maybe somethings take longer to achieve than others, maybe I didn't focus enough on the board, maybe I truly didn't believe I could achieve some of these things?  Who knows!

I did find the whole experience gave me clarity and focus so that's probably why I've decided to update my vision and look forward to sharing it with you soon in Part 2

Have you ever made a vision board?

Do you have images or a vision of what achieving your goals looks like?