Create Your Vision Board

We are going to take a break from the big business strategies, and have some fun with mindset.

Don’t get me wrong, just because I say it’s fun, doesn't mean it’s not important.  

A Success Mindset is even more important than strategy, but I think spending time envisioning your future is more fun than spreadsheets any day!  

Your visons won't work without a plan, and your plan won't work without a vision so the two really do go hand in hand.

What is a success mindset?  For me a success mindset is a combination of factors.  

1  Get the right mindset - Growth mindset:

One of the key components of a success mindset is having a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset.  

A fixed mindset is believing that your personality, intelligence, creativity or skill set can not improve or change. The growth mindset, alternately thrives on challenges and sees failure as on opportunity to improve rather than confirmation of poor performance.  With a growth mindset, you believe that you can become better with time and practice.

For example, someone with a fixed mindset might believe they are just good at doing something or not, whereas a growth mindset would believe that they can learn anything they don't know.

Someone with a fixed mindset may say to themselves “I will never be successful because I don't have the skills or assets”.  Someone with a growth mindset would say to themselves “ I WILL be successful, and I can acquire the skills and assets I need to make it happen.”

I had a call with my coach the other day and she asked me what single mindset trait would I give credit to for being able to lift myself up from those tough days of a new business and finding myself homeless with a newborn and a six year old -  to a million dollar business.  And I realized it was 100% from growth mindset.  

I didn't know everything I needed to know or have the resources I needed, but I KNEW I could figure it out, I would learn what I needed to learn, find the resources I needed to find and reach the goal eventually.  Now don't get me wrong, we all have times when we say to ourselves – no way – I can’t do this.  

When I was falling asleep at the wheel on the way to dropping the kids off because I had been up all night working on my business and feeding my son, I definitely thought there was no way I could continue sometimes.  But overall, my mindset was that I COULD and WOULD figure out how to drag us out of that hole.

So having a growth mindset is a big part of a success mindset.

But a success mindset also means being proactive, positive, determined, and goal oriented.

2. Cast the vision:

Casting the vision is a fun and powerful exercise.  Today you are going to dig down and figure out what you want your future to look like, what your ideal business and relationships look like, and what you are working towards. 

What if I told you that the process of deciding what you want in life, would help you actually get what you want in life? 

The simple process of creating a clear vision for your future, is the very tool that will create that future out of nothingness? Pretty cool right?

So here’s the secret, the tool that mega successes like Tony Robbins, Oprah, and Sara Blakely, the founder of SPANX, have used for decades. It’s free, it’s fun and it works.

In order to bring your perfect life into being, you first need to know what that perfect life looks like. How does it look, what do you do each day, where do you live, who are you surrounded by? Sit down with pen and paper and really delve into the finer details.


In your vision you have a great house? Okay that’s a start, but you can dig a bit deeper. 

• What’s the property like? 
• Do you have a large treed yard, or a pool? 
• Is it nestled in the mountains or does it open onto a Caribbean beach? 
• Is your new home modern and sleek with lots of glass and white walls, or more traditional brick construction, with white shutters and flower boxes? 
• What do you see when you walk through the front door? 
• How does it smell? 

Walk through your future home in your mind and work out all the finest details, so you can actually picture yourself walking through the door. Have you started to really see it in your head?

But don’t stop there. There's more to a life than just your home. 

What charities or causes do you support in the future, and what do you do for them? Who do you love, what do you do each day? 

I’ll go through a few ideas to get you started on your own list, in just a minute

So, once we’ve built a pretty picture of what you’d like your life to be, how does that get you closer to making it happen? 

Good question. And that’s the really cool part.

Your brain doesn’t like discrepancies between what you visualize and what is your reality. Your mind wants to bring those two worlds closer together, and reconcile the differences. 

By aggressively and persistently creating your new mental reality, your mind will actually open up to new possibilities that you may not have otherwise seen. You will see opportunities you didn’t see before, make choices that you may not have made before, and take chances that you would have backed away from, without this new alternate reality in your head.

It’s a well documented, and studied phenomenon, and the science behind it is fascinating. For a great read into the process Jack Canfield’s Success Principles is a must read.

Ready to get started?

Here’s a list to get you going. But don’t stop here. Any part of your ideal future is fair game.

Imagine your home. The style, location, view, lighting, furnishings. Find images that match your mental image.
Design your relationships. Who is in your life? Is it a better relationship with someone you know now, or is it someone you have yet to meet? How do they treat you? What do you do together?
What fills your days? Are you retired? Running a fortune 500 company? Fundraising for a favorite cause? Having the time to be home with your children?
Goals - do you want to meet Oprah? Visit the moon? Clean up our oceans? No goal is too big. 

Visualize that goal being met. Put that picture of you and Oprah on your board. Imagine diving in the clean oceans after your solution has been used. Then add pictures of pristine dive sites. The more specific the goal the better.

PRO TIP – Don’t just imagine the fun stuff – think about the not so fun stuff that is part of your reaching those goals.  SO if your goal is to run a marathon – don't just imagine crossing the finish line and receiving a medal – imagine those last few miles when you are exhausted and it’s raining and you have blisters on your feet and you think you can’t go on.  Because the more you visualize the hard stuff that you will encounter on the way to your goal and you see yourself pushing through it and conquering it, the less difficult it will be when you hit those barriers in reality.

Seek Images that resonate with YOU

Choose images that really speak to you.  If your goal is to have time freedom for example, choosing a clock may seem like the obvious image, but does a clock make you feel the way you would feel if you had time freedom?  For me a clock says, I am busy, watch the time, don't be late.  

So perhaps in this situation, a better choice for an image to represent time freedom would be an image of someone getting up late from a cozy bed, or watching their kids play soccer in the afternoon.  Those images might draw the vision better for you than just a symbol that doesn't create the same feeling.

Print out images and write key words, and then compile them in a place you can refer to them at least once a day. You can put them in a frame, on a clipboard, glue them on a canvas or stick them up with magnets. Some people even like to keep them in a notebook or binder.

Include Motivational Quotes and “I AM” Affirmations 

Once you can visualize it, you need to believe it. Inspirational quotes and “I AM” affirmations can help with this. We’re going to talk about that next, so incorporate those in actual text form and have them represented in some of the images that you choose use.  Aligning your verbal affirmation with your visual stimuli is incredibly powerful.

Put it Where You Can See it

Your vision board should serve as a constant reminder of what you’re working towards. You need to spend time with your vision board or vision book, and visualize that ideal future every morning and evening if possible. Even 5 minutes of focusing on the details will have an impact.

Hang it in an area you pass every day—the fridge, by the mirror in the bathroom, on the wall next to your bed. You can even take a photo of it and save it on your phone as your wallpaper. 

Then, once you have placed it where you can see it, be intentional about taking the time to look at it. Read the affirmations out loud, and take the time to visualize yourself already in the pictures and feeling how you want to feel in those moments. Visualization is key to your success. 

And most importantly, don’t imagine your new reality as an “I wish” or “I hope”. It's critical that you walk through it in your mind, as though it is real and true and inevitable.

Imagining your reality into being? Can it get better than that? 

Yes, it actually can, because the side effect of these virtual visits to your future, is increased self-esteem and positivity.

You read that right. Just by imagining your ideal reality, you will feel buoyed emotionally in your current reality.

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