MAKING A VISION BOARD THAT WORKS: by Ella Mueller
“When the why is clear, the how is easy.”
As it turns out, vision boarding isn’t just cutting pretty pictures out of magazines and collaging them together. Get this… there should be actual planning and intention behind your vision board for you to actually start seeing real change in your life.
The Dream Big Darling Vision Boarding Workshop helped me realize that building systems in my everyday life, not just setting goals, is what will actually help me to achieve my goals.
For years, I have been cutting out photos and quotes that I found inspiring. I thought that doing this and putting them up on my door where I would see them every day would be enough. I believed that whenever I would see it, I would be filled with motivation and instantly get to work. However, it turns out that the human mind is a fickle thing and is very resistant to change, especially when it feels like a big step without a plan. As months would pass, the images on the back of my door would turn from a source of inspiration into something rather infuriating and annoying. I felt guilty that I hadn’t managed to achieve all these goals or even make small steps towards them. I was convinced that the magic of vision boarding simply did not work for me.
So, when Amanda Wittstrom-Higgins, the founder and president of Dream Big Darling, invited me to sign up for her vision boarding workshop, I was a bit hesitant to try something that hadn’t worked for me in the past. In spite of this, I had always enjoyed finding the inspiring pictures and putting them together, so I thought that maybe with a little guidance from some powerful women, something incredible could come from a workshop like this. Plus, it was free, so I really had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Ella Mueller, Dream Big Darling Intern Spring 2022
After signing up, I received an email with all the information I would need for the workshop and a few questions at the bottom to help prepare me for the vision board making. As I began to answer them, I realized I had never asked myself these seemingly obvious questions, even something as simple as “What is it that you want in life, and why would having this change your life?” It was only after answering these questions that I realized that I wasn’t a lazy or unmotivated person, I just didn’t have any direction or systems set in place to help guide me towards what I wanted.
Amanda started the workshop by saying, “So often we are dreaming for other people, for our jobs, our families, and our kids. We don’t spend enough time dreaming and planning out a vision for our own future, which is far and away the most important one in our lives.” It was such an incredible feeling to hear this and realize that I was surrounded by other likeminded women who were also working on self-improvement. Suddenly all that worry about not being able to vision board properly went out the window.
Having done a little research beforehand on the guest speakers, I was very excited to hear Cha McCoy and Jayne Portnoy explain their unique perspectives when it comes to creating their own vision boards.
Cha McCoy, a traveling sommelier, public speaker, and so much more, approaches vision boards from a very visual perspective. Instead of creating her boards on a piece of paper or on the wall, she uses journals and planners. Her love of vision boarding stems from her passion for magazines and the inspiration they have brought her. But in a society where things “trend in today and trend out tomorrow,” it is easy to lose that inspiring material among all the other content we consume on our phones and in everyday life. She found that vision boarding allowed her to take the pieces from these magazines that she found inspirational and compile them together in a place that she was able to continually come back to. As a writer who grew up buying an incriminating amount of notebooks and journals, this new outlook on vision boarding appealed to me. Being able to put the images and ideas I found into a notebook made the whole process feel a little more personal.
One of my biggest struggles was that it was easy to get lost in the magazines and just start ripping out pretty pictures. Cha explained that when she is picking out photos for her vision boards, she first makes sure to select magazines that fit into the areas of her life that she wants to focus on. She gave examples of eight areas: business and career, family and friends, romance, personal development, finance, entertainment/recreation, spiritual, and health and fitness. Breaking it down into sections of life like this made it easier to distinguish the photos I should be using from the ones I just enjoyed looking at.
Jayne Portnoy is, among other things, a motivational speaker and the founder of JPConsulting and the Pen 2 Paper Project. She started off by congratulating everyone who signed up and stressed the importance of being able to carve out time for yourself.
When creating her vision boards, she tends to approach them from a more spiritual side. She resets every month on the full moon, and a big part of her reset process is her quadrant system. On a piece of paper, she draws two lines that make four boxes on the page. The quadrants on the left side represent the left side of the brain and all the nurturing, gentle, lunar aspects of us. On this side, she writes down her accomplishments and what she wants to leave behind. The right side represents the action side of the brain, so this is where she writes down her goals and action plan.
She explained that she compares vision boarding to creating a map for your life. “You wouldn’t get in the car to go somewhere without a map” (or your phone, since we live in the 21st century). You may know your destination (your goal), but without a proper map (the steps to get closer to your goal), it is easy to get lost and maybe not even make it to your destination (accomplishing your goal). The key is getting really specific about what you want and how you can get there. The more specific you are, the clearer the path becomes. It’s important to identify bite-sized steps that are easy to accomplish in the short term instead of thinking about the overwhelming big picture. “It’s not about planning out the next six years of your life, but rather monitoring where you are going so you keep getting there more efficiently and effectively.”
One of the biggest things I took away from this workshop is that the people you surround yourself with and your community have a huge impact on your future. People can be a weight, or they can be a source of power. Setting boundaries with these people in order to accomplish goals should never be something that you feel guilty about. There will be seasons in your life where you focus more on work and less on going out with friends, and that’s completely okay. Surround yourself with people who will support you even when working toward your dreams might mean not being with them.
As someone who had never signed up for a workshop before, I am thankful that Dream Big Darling’s Vision Boarding Workshop was my first. I’m excited to see how I can apply these tools I have learned to help push me towards my goals. After listening to these powerful women talk about their goals, as well as sharing my own, I finally feel like I am holding myself accountable. I personally know that I will be checking in with myself more and will keep holding myself accountable now that I have a clear picture of what I want. I am forever grateful to Dream Big Darling, Amanda, Cha, and Jayne for helping me to slow down enough to ask myself the simple questions.
“When the why is clear, the how is easy.”