Transform Your Life with Vision Boards: An Evidence-Based Guide
Are you ready to transform your life by aligning your attention and actions with your dreams? Vision boarding is a powerful tool that can help you manifest your desired reality. This article provides an evidence-based approach to vision boarding, grounded in cognitive neuroscience, to help you create a life you love.
What is a Vision Board?
A vision board is a collection of images and words that represent your goals and dreams. By looking at it regularly, you can harness the power of your brain to focus on what's important and take action towards achieving your aspirations.
Who Needs a Vision Board?
If you're already effortlessly achieving your goals and creating the life you desire, a vision board might not be necessary. However, if you're on a personal growth journey and seeking strategies to implement your dreams, a vision board can be an extremely powerful tool.
The Neuroscience Behind Vision Boards
Vision boards work by leveraging the principles of cognitive neuroscience, specifically the reticular activating system (RAS), selective attention, and value tagging.
- Reticular Activating System (RAS): This part of the brain filters the millions of bits of information we receive every second, allowing us to focus on what's important.
- Selective Attention: Our brain's ability to focus on specific stimuli while filtering out irrelevant information.
- Value Tagging: A process where our brain assigns importance to information based on emotional significance or relevance to our goals.
By creating a vision board, we value tag our goals and dreams, making it more likely that our RAS will elevate relevant opportunities and information to our conscious awareness. This, in turn, empowers us to take action and make our dreams a reality.
The Power of Visuals
Humans are visual creatures. Seeing visual images of our goals is a much more powerful way of emotionally activating those goals and intensely value tagging what you're trying to align your actions towards. Studies have shown that visually focusing on goals helps generate powerful emotions that drive us to pursue and achieve them.
The Five-Step Vision Boarding Process
This five-step process will guide you in creating a powerful and effective vision board.
Step 1: Dream and Visualize
Visualize your dream life in 3 years, paying attention to how it feels, how it looks, and the person you've become. This taps into episodic future thinking, which counteracts the tendency to prioritize immediate gratification over long-term benefits. Consider using the Wheel of Life framework (health, relationships, career, personal growth) to think about your life holistically.
Step 2: Collect Images
Search for images that represent elements of your dream life. Use platforms like Pinterest to find inspiration and suggestions. Include imagery that reflects both the outcome and the process required to get there. Look for images that evoke an emotional response in you.
Step 3: Dump and Copy
Copy and paste all the images you find into a blank document, such as Google Slides or Canva. This allows you to easily rearrange and edit the images.
Step 4: Refine
Go through all the images and eliminate any that are repetitive or no longer resonate. Edit and personalize images to make them more magnetic and personal.
Step 5: Coalesce
Arrange your final set of images into their final form. Choose the format and aspect ratio for your vision board. Place related images near each other.
Common Vision Boarding Traps and Pitfalls
Avoid these common mistakes when creating your vision board:
- Focusing solely on material outcomes: Ensure your vision board includes aspects that will genuinely bring richness to your life, not just material goods.
- Limiting beliefs: Don't let limiting beliefs prevent you from putting your dreams on your vision board.
- Getting attached to timelines: A vision board is a bigger picture approach, not a concrete plan with strict deadlines.
- Only including the outcome: Include images of the journey and the work in progress towards your dreams.
Using Your Vision Board Effectively
To maximize the impact of your vision board, follow these steps:
- Look at your vision board daily: Spend at least a minute per day looking at your vision board to activate your value tagging and subconscious mind.
- Use it as a wallpaper: Set your vision board as the wallpaper on your phone, tablet, and laptop.
- Combine with goal setting: Integrate your vision board with written goal setting and action planning.
By consistently engaging with your vision board, you can align your attention, actions, and subconscious mind to manifest your dreams and create the life you truly desire.