Vision board part II: To get the life you need

Martha Beck writes that your vision has to come from your non-social self and not culture. She says this is easy: find pictures that trigger emotion, that make you feel “wowed”, or make you feel any positive emotion: calm, in control, focussed, positive. You don’t even have to know why the photo of two bright houses on a cliff above a crystal clear ocean makes you feel so inspired, because that is the beauty of a vision board. It makes you realize what you need as you go along.

Image courtesy of Artur Staszewski 

Many people tell their vision board stories with words like “I totally forgot about that picture of the houses on the cliff until I was looking for a place to stay and had to choose between a house surrounded by nature and one close to work and I knew the answer”. Beck says that after you have assembled these images that inspire you, you must get rid of them. A great way to make a vision board is digitally, but do not search for specific images, like typing “love” or “money” into a search engine. Instead, find websites that inspire you and take those images or even short phrases and put them all together in a collage. Then look at it, feel how they make you feel, and delete them. Forget about them.

It is the process of finding things that truly inspire you and putting them all together that will change your life, not looking the board itself. Beck says they “will stick in your subconscious mind and steer your choices toward making the vision real”. You won’t know right away why these images inspire you, but when a situation arises that gives you the opportunity to realize your true desire, you will feel that same feeling and know that this is what you’ve been waiting for. This is a powerful tool to steer the focus of your life away from material possessions and society’s idea of success and to find what you really need.

The first approach to visual boards is for short term goals, like getting out of debt and meeting monthly debt commitments, while the second one can take any amount of time to change your life, but it will give you a subconscious motivation to realize your dreams and to not be side tracked by diamond rings, mansions and sports cars.