The other night, some friends invited us over to their home for a vision board party of four. After dinner, we sat around the table, drinking wine and cutting out images from magazines, then placing them on our 2020 vision board.
What a great way to set your intention for the new year, right?
You would think and Oprah lover like me would have done a vision board before, but I never considered it. So what’s different now? It’s the dawn of a new decade. Time to make things happen, to rev up the personal growth journey, to discover something new, turn over another stone.
So that’s just what I intend to do. Face the new decade hoping to grow personally, spiritually, and professionally. And my vision board will help me focus on that.
What is a vision board?
If you’ve been living under a rock or have never heard of Oprah, here’s the gist: Vision boards are a collection of what you want in your life: what you want to achieve, experience, have, feel, etc.
It could be personal goals like to get fitter or eat healthier or have a better relationship with your partner or your family. It could also be career-oriented, like getting a better job or setting out on your own.
This is the intention behind this post: I want you to kick off the new decade by discovering what you want your life to look and then setting out to pursue it. And by sharing my goals, I want to help you find and achieve yours.
Why I think you should make a vision board
The truth is that our desires — like ourselves — have a shelf life. We carry them with us for a while, think about them occasionally, tuck them away. We tell ourselves that tomorrow or next month or next year we will make time for this, or have enough time for that. As if merely by owning the desire, we will bring it into existence.
And then.
You blink.
And the clock has run out on your desires.
It’s too late.
The things I want for my life are attainable. I know that on a deep level. And so are yours. But we have to act on them or they will remain in our heads.
Our dreams are waiting to be manifested. It doesn’t matter whether we’re 25 or 55, we all have dreams and desires for our lives — it’s the human condition. We desire invisibly, yearning for something more or something different or something we haven’t yet accomplished. Or we want to pivot and start fresh but lack the focus to start. All the while, our dreams, our desires, and our wants and our needs remain inside our heads clamoring for attention. They get pushed deeper as the demands of our daily lives maneuver their way to the surface, like a swimmer coming up for air.
So we have to get our desires out of the depths, give them air, let them breathe. We put them on full display, on a board, or a journal, or screensaver; somewhere where they can no longer be overlooked. When we see our goals staring us in the face every day, we have no choice but to acknowledge them. They become real. If you ignore them now that they are in plain sight, well… that’s on you.
And that’s the point. At least that’s what I think, hope.
Keep your eye on the prize.
Here’s how I will make it work for me. I placed my vision board on the windowsill behind my desk. Every time my eyes stray away from my computer screen, they will fall on my vision board. It is literally blocking my view to the outside. I don’t care. Because every time I see the words I have posted on my board, like “stronger, leaner, happier,” and I haven’t worked out, it will motivate me to get my butt off the chair and go get stronger and leaner so I can be happier (because that makes me happy).
Whenever I see the word “Peace” that I have also put up there, I will take a moment, close my eyes and breathe. Hopefully — and I’m pretty certain it will happen — I will remember to focus on my breathing and take regular time outs during the day to do just that,
I will do something similar with everything single thing on my board. It’s like the board will keep me accountable.
Not only are vision boards a good visualization tool, but it is one of the most important tools in the Law of Attraction. This is something I intend to explore further in 2020. If you would like for me to share my journey with this, let me know. Somehow (I don’t know how) your subconscious picks up on your desires and, again, somehow-I-don’t-know-how, manifest them.
I’m still a law of Attraction Newbie, so I don’t exactly how it works.
But.
2020 and all that.
So if you want to join me in manifesting our best life this year, here are some tips.