Transcripts
1. Introduction: We can now create what we cannot see. We all have goals and desires for our lives, but sometimes it's hard to take those first steps to make it happen. We need a vision. We need to envision what our lives could be. A vision board is a powerful tool to be able to do this. I'm Jamie Smith and welcome to my class, inspiration to reality, how to reach your goals with vision boards. I'm going to walk you through a step-by-step process in making a vision board that really works. Here's a little bit about me. I'm an artist and I also run an online community called THRIVE Art Studio. Vision boards are more than pretty collages or DIY decor because what I have found is that taking the time to put your dreams into words and images is just the beginning of making them a reality. They are also not perfect interest boards of a perfect life. Instead, think of them as maps, maps that we are using to reach our goals that we create with intention, thought, and care. I believe vision boards are all about how we want to feel in our lives. I'm going to show you how to create a board that has all of this feeling to help you reach your goals. This class is designed for anyone who wants to get clear on where you are now and where you want to go. The class includes writing exercises to get you ready and open to creating a vision for yourself and get clear on what you want in your life. In this class, we will get focused on what you want. We'll look at different areas of your life to see where you are now, in order to make goals for the future. We're going to write down phrases, words, and mantras to keep us inspired. We're going to learn how to collect images for our vision board, as well as organizing these images and eventually gluing them down into our finished board. What I have learned over the last years is that when you're reaching your goals, you have to start somewhere. Together, let's start where we are and let's start now.
2. Class Orientation: Our class project is to make our very own vision board. I'm going to take you through each step to make this powerful visual tool. Once you've done your vision board, you're going to take a picture of it and upload it in the projects and resource section below. This class is designed for anyone who has focused on creating the life they truly want. Sometimes it's hard to be motivated to sit down and actually make space for yourself to ask yourself, what do you want? Here is your step-by-step process to make this time for yourself. I'm so excited for you. Often people make vision boards at the beginning of the new year, but you can make one at anytime. I have made them at all different times of the year and I find each of them extremely useful. We are going to do a series of writing exercises in this course. I have made templates for you in the PDF inspiration to reality. This is in your resource section below. You can print it off or you can type write into the PDF and of course you're welcome to journal along during the writing exercises in each lesson. For making your vision board, you're going to need Bristol board for the backing. You can use any size you want. I recommend just folding a big poster board in half and it's about 14 inches by 16 inches. You're also going to need magazines to cut up. You are welcome though to use online images and print them off or even create a digital collage if you'd rather stay on the digital online. If you're using magazine, you'll need scissors and glue as well. Again, after you finish your board, what I'm so excited about is to see it. Please post it in the resource and project section below. I also believe that it takes community to be able to reach our goals. We need people. Why not start here? After you've posted your board up on the project section, make sure you go on and comment or like a fellow students board, because we really want to support each other. It takes a village to make these things happen. Why not start here? Vision boards, I'm very passionate about them. I have done them now year over year, I'm seeing huge result. I am so excited to lead you through this process. I will see you in the first lesson to get started.
3. What Is A Vision Board?: Vision boarding has become very trendy right now. I know it can feel a little silly to think of pictures on a board would make any difference in our lives. It seems like we're making a collage, but in fact, a vision board is actually a tool for daily visualizations. Visualization is said to be one of the most powerful tools we can use to make changes in our lives. If we put our vision boards in a place where we can see them each day and think about our goals and be reminded day after day of what we really want, we're going to get closer to getting those things. Over time, we start to create opportunities to get what we want and say yes to the things that we truly desire. For example, think about seeing a new car in a commercial. As you're watching it you're thinking, well, I would look really good in this new car. The commercial ends, you are later thinking about it. You're thinking about how you would look really nice in this new ride. Over the next week, I bet you would see this car driving around you all the time while you're out and about. This may seem like a coincidence, but in reality, this car was always there and always around you. But before the commercial, you had no attachment to it. You did not want one, so you did not notice it. You did not see it because you did not want it. That makes sense why there's a lot of car commercials. Vision boards are not magic. They just allow us to see what is already around us. For our vision boards, we want to make sure we are including images that we truly value and want, because when we're out in the world, we're going to attract those things. We need to make sure that we take it seriously. We make sure that we're getting exactly what we want. For many of us, this might include physical things like a new car or a summer cabin, and those are great to have. But I also want our boards to be attracting how we want to feel in our lives, the energy we want to attract to us every day. I believe the experience of our lives is the most important part. It is not the things we have or we don't have. It is our day-to-day experience living in this wonderful world. Although a vision board may just seem like a pretty collage, it is actually a powerful tool for visualizations which are going to attract the things that you want. Our job is just to make sure that we are making a board that inspires action. We do this by getting very clear on what is important to us. In the next lesson, we are going to start our first writing exercise. This is where we're going to dive into some of these big questions, and I can't wait to get started with you over there.
4. What Do You Want?: What do you want? That is a hard question. When I made my first vision board, I looked through a magazine of pretty pictures of things and I thought, what do I want? I found this so overwhelming, I ended up with a vision board that looked like a perfect Pinterest board. The whole experience ended up making me feel like I was more behind in life than when I started making the board. I found that this question of what do you want was too big, it was too huge and it paralyzed me. Everything I came up with, my inner self would say really, you think you can get that? You think you can do that, be that? Deserve that? My ego, it was keeping me safe but in the end it ended up shutting me down. I made goals that didn't have a lot of purpose, weren't that big like I should paint my room teal this year. Now over the years, I have tweaked my approach. I start my vision board by thinking of someone else. I believe in life we get what we give. For this lesson, it's called give to get and you're going to need a pen and paper, you can also download the PDF in the resource section and I have a template ready to go for you. Part 1 of this exercise, you're going to think about someone in your life that you love. We are going to focus on them instead of ourselves. We're going to focus on what we want for them instead of us for now. Let's do a short visualization together. The first thing you're going to do is get comfortable and close your eyes. Now, think of this person, this person that you deeply love in your life, picture their face, see them. I love them, I love you. Think about that, they are so special. What do you wish for them? What do you want their lives to be full of? When they wake up in the morning, how do you want them to feel? When they go to bed at night, what do you want them to think about? How do you want them to feel? Who do you want them surrounded by in their life? Who supports them and encourages them? What does their home look like? Their workplace look like? What environment do you wish for them? What is around them in their life? Special objects, gifts, shows of gratitude, awards? What is around them in their space? What brings them joy in their lives? What do they truly deserve? What does their future hold for them? What do you see coming their way? What do they deserve in their lives? What do you deeply wish for them? What do you hope for them? What do they deserve? Open your eyes. I want you to write down everything you just thought about, it can be quick word, stream of consciousness, any ideas that came to mind, write down all the wishes that you have for this amazing person in your life. Once you've done that, part 2 of this exercise is to look at this list you wrote out for them. I bet you dreamt big for them, I bet you were so generous about all the things that they deserve. It's so much easier to do this for someone else than to do for ourselves. I want you to look at this list that you made for someone else and circle anything that you would also like in your life. Could be physical items or it could be just the feelings that you also crave in your own life. Depending on the person you picked, you might have a very different needs, wants, desires than this person, a very different life. But at the heart of it, we're all looking for feelings of connection, love, and safety. Go through and circle any key words that would connect to your own life. Later, we're going to use this in brainstorming as we think about what we want for our vision boards. We're all warmed up, in the next lesson we're going to get clear on where we are now and then think about where we are headed. See you there.
5. How Smooth Is Your Ride?: In the last lesson, we saw how easy it is to dream big for other people. Before we can start dreaming big for ourselves and setting goals, we need to look at where we are now. Like I mentioned in the last lesson, when I did my first vision board, I ended up with a bunch of images of things that I thought would make me happier. In the end, I was not connected to any of these. A big part was because I did not take the time to look at where I truly was at the time of making my board so when I put things on the board, some of them were so far away from where I was actually at, I felt like a failure before the year even started, I really don't want you to feel this way. We're going to do a short exercise together to get clear on where we are now because we cannot change what we cannot see so let's get clear together. You can use a pen and paper and you can also go and download the PDF and do the exercise called Wheel of Life it's all there for you. This is a diagram that is used a lot in coaching and it's super effective because it divides our life into important categories, career, money, health, family and friends, romance, personal growth, fun, and recreation. You're welcome to create your own categories for your own life. This is a general template and I want to make sure it's useful so think about what is important to you in your life. For each category of the wheel, there are 10 lines that go through each slice. You're going to give yourself a score from one to 10 on how satisfied you are in each of the categories, 10 being the most satisfied. The word satisfied is very important because this is very personal. No one can tell you how satisfied you are so for example, you may have saved $1,000 this year, which is amazing. You've never had a savings account and this is really exciting, so in that category, under money, you would give yourself a nine or 10. But you have a friend who has a $1,000,000 in the bank, but they had decided that they aren't satisfied until they have $5 million in the bank so, in that wheel section, they would put two even with all that money in the bank. How satisfied we are, has very little to do with numbers or things it's usually about progress. Typically, we feel the most satisfied in areas that we are truly participating in and giving attention to. Each of us has different wants and desires and this affects how satisfied we are on a daily level. For this exercise, you're going to go through each category and give yourself a score out of 10 on how satisfied you are in each. Draw a line across each slice and the number you picked and once you have completed each section, it creates a new wheel. The question is, how smooth is your ride? The first time I did this, I was starting my first business, I hired a business coach, I thought she's going to help me take this to the next level, I was so excited. When I did this work with her, I was on such a bumpy ride. I had no balance, I had no flow, I was only focused on my career and therefore it was a mess and struggling as a human. My health was a mess, I had lost touch with a lot of people that were really good for me and I realized that if my business was to fail, I would literally have nothing. I needed to smooth out my wheel it was really important. At the time it was really hard to face this fact. I was really embarrassed that I was on such a bumpy ride and I had created this for myself. But by seeing it on paper, I was able to slowly work on things that would bring my numbers up, level them out, smooth out my ride. If you're looking at your wheel and you're feeling a little down or a little low, don't judge yourself, this is just the beginning of change. We cannot create what we cannot see. In the next lesson, we're going to use this wheel to prioritize what needs to be focused on. We are going to smooth out our ride.
6. Setting Goals With Feeling: In the last lesson, we did the wheel of life template. In this lesson, we are going to decide on what areas of the wheel that we want to focus on because what we focus on grows. I am so proud of you for taking the time in the last lesson to really reflect. The most important thing is to not get overwhelmed, especially if you're feeling like you're not that satisfied in most areas of your life. I have actually been there. In reality, our lives are never perfect. We're never going to have a wheel, a 10 out of 10 status. We're not going to have a perfect Pinterest board vision board because we're human and we always change and grow and want more things. It is the magic of life in our experience. I have done a vision board now for five years, and what I love the most is actually seeing the areas that I was dissatisfied with, the areas that I wanted to grow, and when you take this time to do the self-reflection piece, the boards really encapsulate where you are right now, which is amazing to see year after year, especially as growth and things change and you get what you want, which is really exciting. For this lesson, we are going to pick three categories out of our wheel of life exercise to focus on. You can journal along or download the PDF with the template provided. First thing you're going to do is pick a category. This category is going to be the one that you feel really good about. You want to keep focusing on this because you're proud of how you are thriving in this area. Write down two things that you are going to continue doing to keep this area of your life feeling good. The next thing you're going to do is pick two categories of the wheel where you would like to improve your number. You want to be more satisfied in this area. These categories, you are going to think of two goals that you could do to make yourself more satisfied. If you're not sure how to go about this, ask yourself, what would this area of your life look like or feel like if it was a 10 out of 10? For example, my category of health, I actually put four out of 10 because I know I'm the healthiest when I'm working out five times a week and I'm eating home-cooked meals, that is really not happening. So I need to make sure that I am focused on this area to make sure I'm the most satisfied here. I would write down as my two goals, five workouts a week and home-cooked meals. Later, when I'm ready to collect images for my vision board, I could find someone who's running and put that image on my board or I could actually find the number 5, and I could put that in to represent and symbolize my five workouts a week. So having these goals written down really helps us in finding these images that we're going to be super connected to when we're making our board. We want to make sure that we are celebrating the parts that are going well in our lives, as well as setting goals to make our lives more satisfactory as we go through our days. In the next lesson, we're going to focus on motivational words for our boards and get them going. See you there.
7. Find Your Words: When people talk about vision boards, it can almost sound ridiculous, like they have magical powers that grant wishes and make entrepreneurial dreams come true. Again, it may seem like this, but as we talked about the power of vision board is that it holds a visual reminder for you to go out and attract what you want in your life. They hold power because they give you space to get clear and focused on what you truly want. Again, we cannot create what we cannot see. We also need our boards to encourage us. They need to motivate us daily, for our future self to say keep going. I think it's really important to include positive and motivating words on our boards. In this lesson, we're going to fill in some blanks on prompts. This is going to help us create a list of words or phrases that we can collect images later for our boards. I have made you a template in the PDF, but you can also join along with me, of course. Don't overthink about the answers. You just need to write down any word or phrase that comes to mind. You do not need full sentences, all you need to do is fill in the end of these sentences. I am grateful for, I dream about, I cannot wait for the day that I, I wish for, the color of joy is, I am, I want, I value, I love, I believe in, Mantras I use, the future is. Amazing work. We now have a list of words and phrases that we can pull from as we start to collect our images. In the next lesson, we're going to start collecting these visuals to bring our vision to life.
8. Collecting Your Visuals: Have you ever started a vision board in the past and just never finished it or maybe you did finish it but then it slid under your bed to never be thought of again? Well, this board is going to be different, I promise. Over the years I have found the key to success and making a powerful vision board is sitting down and doing the work. You've already done the hardest part in the last lessons. Now is the fun part. It's the art part. Yay. We're going to set a timer. We're going to collect our visuals. If you're using magazines, you want to sit down for 30 minutes and rip pages out. You're going to make a stack of images. Put on some fun music and tear pages that you love. They're going to be things that you flip through and you think, I never thought about this. Do I want this? Rip them out just in case you might use them. You want to have at least 10 to 20 pages ripped out in a stack. If you're using Pinterest or googling images, you want to collect at least 10 images online. You want to print these off or you can use them to make a digital collage online. Whether you're using magazines or online images, you want to make sure that you're writing exercises are close by. They're going to help remind you of your goals and the words that you are looking for it that you did all this hard work to figure out. You want to make sure you have at least 10 images collected. Make sure in these 10 images that you include words, so motivational words, inspiration sayings. You can refer back to our writing exercise all about that. You also want to look for symbols. These are images that represent something important to you and it may not be what they are actually in real life. For example, I have a fig tree on my vision board and it's not that I care about having a fig tree in my house, even though they're beautiful, what I care about is that that fig tree represents to me, it is a symbol about growing a family and really focusing on my home this year. You also want to look for background images. These could be large patterns, color or scenes that are going to go behind other smaller images. Our boards are all about how we want to feel. The background images are a great way to add a mood to our board and make sure we're attracting these feelings in our real life. This lesson is purely about collecting images. Enjoy it, set a timer, but remember no gluing. No gluing. We, in the next lesson, are going to build our compositions and bring our vision boards to life and glue. See you there.
9. Cutting, Planning & Pasting: How fun was that? Terrier magazines is the best. This lesson we're going to cover a lot. This is where it all comes together. The hardest part of the lesson is that I'm going to ask you to set a timer and stick to it. What I've learned from teaching this over the years is that you need to do your vision board in one sitting. I know you want to wait, you want to think about it, but no, it just won't happen. We're going to actually do it in 30 minutes. As you get going, you're going to feel like this isn't enough time, but I promise you it is. If you're feeling rushed, it's good. It's going to help you make decisions, get really true to yourself, what do you want to include, what needs to go? It's going to get you clear and focused, which is the whole point. In 30 minutes, in this lesson, what you're going to do is you're going to cut out your images, place them on your Bristol board, and then the very last step is gluing them down. It's the last thing you're going to do. I have some tips for each part of this lesson that are going to really help it go a lot more smoothly for you. First, cutting out your images. Now we have a stack of images. We need to cut out our visuals and we need to keep some things in mind. You want to make sure that you have some large pattern areas colors for your background. You want to glue your smaller pieces onto this. Keep those pieces separate and down first. You want to cut out some images very tightly so that they're very crisp and clean. But in some, you want to leave some space and some color behind them. Again, we want variety. If there's any images that suit a circle or geometric shape, you want to keep those as we want some hard edges and some organic shapes as well. You're going to have a lot of words most likely. I highly recommend taking the time to cut those out really nicely and neatly. Those are going to go on top and be the last step, so you're always going to focus on them. You want to make sure that you have some nice clean edges to look at. As you go through your pile of images, make sure that you're pretty ruthless. Don't spend time cutting out things that you aren't actually that interested in, even though you toll them all out. Be ruthless, save yourself time, and only cut out things that really are going to make it to the board. Once you have all your shapes cut out, you want to plan your composition. This is without glue and moving images around on your board. I use a big poster of Bristol board and I cut it in half, usually around 14-16 inches. You can have it any size, but remember, we want this up so we can look at it daily. Don't make it too big and then never put it up again. Make sure you're thinking about where it's going to go on your house. When you start building the composition for your vision board, you want to actually start with your background pieces. Those larger pieces that we kept aside can go down first and we're going to build a layer upon that. You may decide you want different areas of the board to actually represent the Wheel of Life exercise we did and separate them into their own areas, or you might mix them all together. If you have a main focus for the year, I highly recommend doing that as a main image in the middle of your board. The size and placement of images can help you put certain focus and keep them really clear in the forefront of your board as you go through your year. Remember, you're trying to fit a lot onto this board. You want to make sure that you're layering things, you're tucking things, and stacking things so that it will all fit. Once you have everything down on your board, make sure you go back and check over the writing exercises you did. Are there any goals that are missing? Are there any words of encouragement that you really want to make sure that they are there on your board? If you want to print something out or go find other images, make sure you do this now before you glue. Now you're ready to glue. I know it seems painful because you have everything laid out and imagine moving it, it's so lovely, it's going to be very upsetting. But here are some tips to make it easier, I promise. I always take a picture of it. You have this beautiful composition, take a picture and then rebuild it from the picture. Another thing that really helps me is I actually glue small pieces on top of the larger pieces so then when I'm stacking it together, there's only a few pieces that I'm actually moving around and fitting together. My biggest tip, don't worry about it. If you have this amazing plan and it looks completely different when you're done, it was meant to be. Life is messy and so is it going to be our vision boards. That's the whole process. I have set you up for success. You've got this. You're going to set your timer. You're going to cut your images, place them on your board, and then lastly, glue them down. It is so amazing to see your vision come to life. In the next lesson, I'm actually going to share how we can use this board in our daily life so we don't lose the momentum that you have found in this class. I'm so excited for you.
10. Conclusion: You did it. I hope you enjoy taking this time for yourself and getting super clear on what you want. I can't wait to see all of your creations. Make sure to take a picture and upload it in the projects and section below. I cannot wait to see. I also highly recommend writing the date when you did this on the back of your vision board. It's really fun to go back and look, especially when you've made quite a few. Thank you for taking the time to get clear on your desires. Thank you for looking at the different areas of your life and setting goals to improve them and celebrate the ones that are going great. Now you have this powerful visual tool. How are you going to use this in real life? Here are some tips to get the most out of your vision board. First thing you want to make sure you keep it somewhere that you can look at it every day. I recommend taking a picture of it and using it as your screensaver or on your phone. Read your mantras everyday aloud to help keep your gratitude up and your inspiration high. Another thing is to make sure every day you're working on these little and big goals as you go. Every day is important to take those steps forward. You also can add to your board, if things come up, you want to add pictures and ideas. It's a great way to do it. You also want to make sure that you're celebrating wins. As you achieve your goals, make sure you're taking that time to really enjoy it. Another thing to do is to check back in. I've included more of the Wheel of Life templates in your PDF. I like to do those every three, six months a year from now. It really is amazing to see how areas of your life improve when you focus on them. This is what participating in your life looks like. It's always about reflecting, adjusting, having new goals, accomplishing them, adding to them. It never stops, and that's amazing. Thank you for participating, not only in your life, but in this class with me. I really, really enjoyed teaching you this process. I would love to see your vision boards. Please, post a picture below, and again, comment and like other student's vision boards as we cannot do this alone, we need each other to reach to our goals. Let's start here. Thank you for your hard work. Remember, life is about how we experience it every day. By doing this class, you are doing this important work. I thank you.
Jamie Smith, Artist, Teacher & Community Builder
