How to use Vision Boards: Get Your Clients Focused & Excited! (UPDATED with 7 Top Tips) | by Emma-Louise

People at Vision Board Workshop

The end of a year - or early in a new one - is a great time for people to get focused on what they want from the year ahead and their lives.

A Vision Board is a way of teaching our mind to focus on the things that are important to us. Vision Boards can also be a great way to connect with our subconscious wants, desires and needs - and make them conscious!

Why Create a Vision Board?

A Vision Board helps people:

  • Clarify who they are, what they want or where they're going
  • Get their new year off to a flying start
  • Tap into their inner wisdom and inner knowing
  • Create some focus or refocus themselves
  • Simply get to know themselves better!

A Client's Vision Board from one of my Vision Board Workshops

What is a Vision Board?

A Vision Board is simply a collective name for a wide variety of inspirational maps (a collage) that we create from pictures.

The map can be WHO we want to be or HOW we want our lives to be but it’s a visual representation of our goals and dreams—a powerful way to make our aspirations more tangible and attainable.

How I believe Vision Boards work

Our minds can only hold about 7 pieces of information at any one time. And yet there are millions of pieces of information available to us at every moment (think about everything you can see/hear/feel for starters).

So, to ensure we don't get overwhelmed, our mind learns to filter information and to only show you pieces of information it thinks is RELEVANT. That's why when we get a new car we suddenly notice little red cars everywhere - just like ours.

THIS is one of the key ways that Vision Boards work. The very act of CREATING the vision board tells our mind what's important to us. So it may just draw your attention to something you might not otherwise have noticed in your life.

How to create a Vision Board

Simply get your clients to cut out and collect pictures, words, quotes that inspire them or that catch their eye. THEY MUST NOT ANALYSE! If it grabs them, tear it out!

Then ask them to paste and organize these images, words, quotes etc onto a big piece of paper, giving  it a title and date.

How much time should we allow to create a Vision Board?

This will depend on the individual however:

  • If someone is doing a vision board by themselves - I would say to allow around 1 1/2 hours.
  • When I run a Vision Boarding Workshop I allow around 2 1/2 hours in total. This allows for introductions, getting settled in and a little reflection/closing at the end.
  • Finally, it can also be fun for your client to get a group of friends together and make an evening of it - then they should probably allow 2-3 hours to include chatting and sharing etc.

What supplies do you need to create a Vision Board?

  • A piece of bristol board or cardboard
  • Scissors
  • Glue
  • A supply of inspirational magazines to cut out pictures from. Some great magazines to use include Oprah magazine, home magazines, travel magazines, personal development magazines and National Geographic.
  • Coloured pens (optional) - helpful to add or highlight any personal phrases and notes to the board.

7 Top Tips for Creating a Powerful Vision Board

  1. The Vision Board MUST HAVE PICTURES – even if they are just line drawings and stick men/women.
  2. While they look for pictures, they should allow their minds to run free and dream. INCLUDE ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING that appeals or speaks to them!
  3. When creating a Vision Board, HOW THEY FEEL is more important that what they think!
  4. Include PERSONAL AFFIRMATIONS or inspiring quotes to nurture and cherish themselves.
  5. Use COLOUR! Coloured felt-tip pens, colour post-it notes, colour pictures, make it VIBRANT and exciting.
  6. Encourage them to look for the UNFAMILIAR – to get outside their 'normal' box…
  7. Finally, remind them this is not about creating an artistic masterpiece but creating something that visually INSPIRES and EXCITES them!

What happens after creating a Vision Board?

You've finished? Well, there are two main schools of thought out there as to what to do next and I have had clients who have had great success with both methods.

1)  FORGET about the Vision Board

Just put the Vision Board in a closet. You'll find it in 5 years and things will magically have happened.

The idea here is that we remove any attachment to the vision and don't FORCE things or try too hard. After all, when we put something somewhere obvious, we tend to stop seeing it after a while anyway...

2)  Put the Vision Board somewhere you'll SEE IT EVERY DAY

This way our Vision Board will remind, inspire and focus us. This is my preferred option!

If we do this, it's important that every once in a while, we sit down and REALLY LOOK AT IT: review it, allow yourself to feel it and get excited by it. Just before we go to sleep is a great time to do this as it allows our mind to work on and absorb the contents overnight.

Wrap-up

Vision boards are a great pre-cursor to goal-setting, and help frame the mind in possibility. They are inspiring and fun to create - and help us connect to our sub-conscious desires!

Running a Vision Board workshop is a great way to start the year. We can even run it as a webinar and have everyone creating their vision board individually! TIP: For a webinar, email everyone in plenty of time so they know the supplies they will need!

Then whatever people decide to do with their Vision Boards afterwards, the vision has been created. Who knows where that will take them?

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. Gloria Steinem

If you liked this article about Visioning and Vision Boards, you may also like:

And finally, if you're running a workshop, be sure to ask for feedback AND for permission to stay in touch with your attendees! Read about how to use our Free Workshop Feedback Form to do this here >>

Emma-Louise Elsey Headshot

Contributing Author:

Emma-Louise Elsey has been coaching since 2003 and is the Founder of The Coaching Tools Company and Fierce Kindness.com. She's passionate about coaching and personal development. Originally a project and relationship manager for Fortune 500 companies she combined her love of coaching, creativity and systems to create over 100 brandable coaching tools, forms and exercises including 30+ completely free coaching tools. She now serves coaches and the coaching world through her exclusive newsletter for coaches, Coaches Helping Coaches Facebook Group and many other great tools for coaches, plus resources and ideas for your coaching toolbox. The Coaching Tools Company is an official ICF Business Solutions Partner.

Learn more about Emma-Louise & see all their articles here >>

17 Comments

  1. Wendy Buckingham

    Vision Boards are wonderful, but you have to trust them!

    I once created a vision board with a random old advertisement for an apartment I had cut out of a newspaper. (One of my goals was to buy my dream apartment).

    Quite accidentally I found the apartment I was looking at was the one I had cut out some months ago, and it had come back onto the market. And it was perfect!

    But then I let my mother sew the seeds of doubt and talk me out of it because it had too many stairs. Years later, I still regret not trusting my vision board to deliver my goal.

    Reply
    • elelsey

      Hi Wendy, what a great (sad!) story. It sounds like you have learned lots from it! It's so true that we need to trust ourselves - and our intuition. And Vision Boards are such a great way to tap into our intuition... Warmly, EL

      Reply
  2. Bjørg-Elin

    Hi!

    Thanks for sharing. Quick question: How much time does People need to work With this? Of course it will be individual, but it would be useful with a hint:)
    Thanks, BE

    Reply
    • Emma-Louise

      Hi Bjorg,

      I have just updated the article to include some information on how much time to allow! So great question. Here is what I said:

      How much time to allow: This will depend on your client, but when I run a Vision Boarding Workshop I usually allow around 2 hours (this allows for introductions, getting settled in and a little reflection/closing at the end). If someone is doing a vision board by themselves - I would say to allow 1-1 1/2 hours. Finally, it can also be fun for your client to get a group of friends together and make an evening of it - then they should
      probably allow 2-3 hours for chatting etc.

      I hope that helps! Warmly, Emma-Louise

      Reply
  3. Michelle Johnson

    Very helpful in explaining the purpose of a Vision Board!!!
    Thank You!

    Reply
  4. Michelle Johnson

    This article was very insightful! I always understood the purpose of a VB, but now I feel I can explain what it is with eloquence!

    Thank You!!!

    Reply
    • Emma-Louise

      Dear Michelle, thank-you for taking the time to comment! I'm so glad you found the article helpful 🙂 Warmly, Emma-Louise

      Reply
  5. Lori

    Where do you get content for the vision boards when doing a group meeting. Love this idea!
    Do you charge them and if so how much?

    Reply
    • Emma-Louise

      Hi Lori, I have a stack of saved Oprah Magazines. Home and Garden magazines are great - as are National Geographics! Women's magazines can have a little too much focus on fashion and appearance, but the headlines can be good to use for word portions. So I would keep these to a minimum. People can also bring their own magazines... I hope this helps. Warmly, Emma-Louise

      Reply
  6. John Kilian

    It is always great to come across new and creative ways to use existing tools to get my clients moving forward.

    Thank for an awesome article.

    Reply
  7. Sheryl Spangler

    Great article and appropriate for the new year! One question -- what is a good fee range to charge for a vision board workshop? I would include all supplies.

    Reply
    • Emma-Louise

      Hi Sheryl,

      Thank-you and good question. It all depends on what YOU want to achieve. You could make it free for maximum exposure and to get people to sign-up for your newsletter (manually at your workshop for example), you could do it by donation to charity (which I am doing next week). You could charge solely enough to cover your costs - eg. $10 a person (do you have room hire to consider? tea/coffee/snacks etc?). You could charge $25 to cover costs and your time (assuming you get 8-10 people for example). Or more, if you wanted. But as it's something people can do for themselves, and whilst you will definitely bring something to the table, it's not like you preparing and running a time management or life balance workshop where there's more education for them and content prep for you. So whilst you could charge $30-50 a person, I think then people would expect more. More organization, good food etc.

      Finally, it also depends on your audience. What would they think is reasonable? How much disposable income do they have?

      I hope that helps! Warmly, Emma-Louise

      Reply
  8. Martin Richardson

    In this time of CoVid have you transformed this into a virtual format to do over Zoom or similar?

    Reply

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