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Ever considered that the right crafts project could change your life? A vision board offers a cut-and-paste (actually, cut-and-pin) approach to manifestation, one that helps bring your greatest desires into your physical reality.
What Is a Vision Board?
As the name implies, a vision board is a collage that represents your greatest visions, imaginings, and goals. It includes meaningful images from magazines or your iPhone, illustrations, resonant quotes or words, and more that evoke the same emotion as the state you seek.
It can take whatever form works for you, from a pinned cork board to a collage that you position on your fridge or mirror. What’s more essential than the actual format is that the images attached to it go beyond the literal and tangible representation of your desire and include elements that spark aspiration and the feeling within you that you want to experience.
How Vision Boards Change the Way You Think
While creating a vision board is a fun and pretty process, it also comes with some welcome psychological benefits. Using tools such as a vision board can effectively change the way your mind works, and thus the way you show up in the world. According to psychiatrist and executive coach Anna Yusim, PhD, engaging with aspirational imagery helps stimulate your goal-oriented thinking while establishing clarity and purpose.
“By creating a deliberate, visually compelling representation of your goals and dreams, you essentially activate neural pathways of possibility and potential,” Yusim explains. Basically, that pretty collage is a link between your current situation and the life of your dreams.
This shift in thinking is bolstered by a phenomenon known as “visual goal activation,” whereby we mentally visualize a desired goal, which then subconsciously primes the part of the brain known as the reticular activating system (RAS) to help you achieve it.
“The RAS acts as your brain’s metaphorical sensory filter, deciding which sensory information is important enough to bring to conscious awareness (and which to tune out as irrelevant stimuli) in order to actualize your desired intent,” she says. Consider your RAS an interior designer who ensures the home of your mind stays in line with your agreed-upon aesthetic.
Additionally, according to Yusim, engaging with your vision board regularly (read: looking at it or meditating on it every day) can serve as a form of psychological conditioning, priming your subconscious to achieve your goals. Consistent exposure to your vision board can also prompt you to take actions and make decisions that align with your vision.
Why Vision Boards Are Also About Action
An important note: Manifestation is more than mental. Your participation—along with your vulnerability and willingness to fail—is required to bring your visions into reality.
“True mastery emerges not from perfect visualization, but from imperfect, persistent action,” says Yusim. “The most profound revolution occurs not in the mind’s eye, but through the hands that dare to create, reshape, and transcend.”
Once you finish your vision board, position it in a place of prominence. This is less a celebration of the art itself than it is of your power to shape your life as you see fit.
