In my last post, I shared with you the importance of reevaluating and refreshing how I do life day to day and my vision for the future. I shared with you some of the questions that I ask myself and questions that others find helpful revitalizing their vision. Therefore, the purpose of this post is to take those ideas and map out what you want using a vision board.
4 Ways to Plan and Map Out What You Want
Before you get started, set the environment. The following list can be done over time by yourself, on a personal retreat, as part of girl’s night with your close friends, or with a life coach. As part of this post I am going to share a little about my most recent vision boards to map out what I want.
1) Get Your Mind Working:
For those who haven’t moved through the thoughts and questions in my last post, I am going to do a little recap. There a few ways to get your mind dreaming and planning your vision for the future. Listed below are some questions to work through as you look at making changes to your everyday routine and goals to bring a new excitement and focus for the future. There are different options when working through these questions. Give this process time and respect to make it work to your full advantage.
There are different options for doing this. If you believe in God and His ability to guide you in this process, spend some time in prayer with Him first. Then tackle these questions or your own questions by getting out your favorite journal and spending some time by yourself writing out your desires. Or if writing isn’t your language take these questions and draw or color as you work through them or work through them by recording your thoughts on a verbal recording.
Just getting your thoughts out can bring a powerful self-discovery that helps you realize things you didn’t know before. Finally, utilize a close friend, family member, or your significant other to work through your thoughts or to get their feedback on after you get them down on paper to map out what you want. They may have even more ideas that will contribute to what you are trying to do.
You may be saying to yourself, whoa. This is intense and I’m not sure that I can do all of this. You may need to take this over several sessions. Take it at your own pace. If a question is all you can do at one time that’s fine. It’s best to take it at your own pace. And it’s way better to take it one question at a time then to abandon ship all together because you can’t devote time or energy to do it all at once. And don’t give up.
2) Map It Out:
So I am kind of a nerd about life coaching techniques. Originally, I was going to skip from the questions to a vision board. But I love mind/life mapping and it can help organize your thoughts, so we are going to take a little detour and do that first. Take the information that you have written down or talked to a clos
e someone about. Then get out a sheet of paper or two. There are also some mind mapping apps if you would rather use those than paper.
On the paper, draw a circle for each bigger area of your life. Then draw branches off of it to symbolize the different tasks or characteristics that fall under each area. Draw more circles off of the branches to symbolize subareas of life. Then write on the branches and in the circles to get all of your ideas down. These can be aspects of your life that are a part of it now or that you want to be a part of life in the future.
After you are done doing that, take a look at your map that you have drawn out. Are you missing anything that you want to be on there? Is there anything that is on your map, that you would like to take off? Or is there something on your map that you would like to take off but do not feel that you can? If the answer is yes to either of these questions, take off what you can and explore what you might have to change in your life to be able to take off the other thing(s) that you want to but don’t feel you have the option to. When you have your final version of your mind map, you are ready for the next step.
3) Make Your Vision Clear:
Now you are at a perfect jumping off point for the next step, which can be very fun. Looking at your map, think about and gather images, words, and trinkets to visually spell out what your desires are. There are many options for this. There are a number of tools to do this kind of vision board virtually through online scrapbooking or vision board websites like, Pinterest, Canva, PicMonkey, Dream It Alive, and others. Blogger and Professional Coach, Rosetta Thurman, also has a great post about making a virtual vision board if you are wanting more details about virtual boards.
The other option is to do a physical vision board on a scrapbook page, poster board, wall, or bulletin board. For this kind of vision board, you can gather: magazine pictures, printed off pictures, scrapbooking, dodads, words, symbols, etc. to make a clear picture of your desires that will help keep them at the forefront of your mind and excitedly take ahold of what your goals and desires are for the future.
Make this fun and visually something that you will love to put together and look at time and time again. This is meant to be a visual representation that you can keep out or go back to, to remind yourself of what you want and where you are headed. 
4)Make It Happen:
The final step is to put it into action! Congratulations!! You went through the work, and maybe sweat, to get your desires and thoughts down into a concrete vision board or boards. Share it! Choose someone to share this vision board(s) with. It is a beautiful and exciting thing you have created for the future. Schedule a special time to share this vision for the future that you have created. After you have shared your vision board with a special someone, ask them to hold you accountable to do what it says and shows. This is also part of what makes the vision board so powerful, not only are you seeing these concrete images day to day, but so are the people around you. All who see it know that this is what you stand for and want.
