The year 2020 is almost here, people! Before you know it, it’ll be a new year and everyone will be crowding the gyms. We’re not bashing the idea of wanting to get in shape, but (no shade) we notice a lot of those new people at the gym don’t last long. We get that committing to fitness is hard. Anything worth doing is hard! What really helps you along the way is staying focused and a vision board can really help with that.
A vision board is a poster board with clippings and cutouts of things that inspire you. They say that seeing your goals helps you stay more focused than reading them which is why you need the visual aspect of the board. Completing long-term goals can be exhausting and it’s easy to forget why you’re doing it in the first place. Vision boards are a reminder of what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Like we said, 2020 is almost here folks! Let’s make it a great year to get shit done.
What is it that you want to accomplish? Do you want to finish magic school, move out, or get a better job? Find out what your goals are. There’s no right or wrong way to have goals so don’t be afraid to put whatever your heart desires on the board. Anything is possible.
After you’ve decided on what you want to accomplish, comes the fun part; finding inspiration! Grab a few magazines, dust off the old printer and look for images that correlate with what you want for your future. If you want to get a new car, cut out images of cars from magazines or look up pictures of the car you want and print them out. Gather all of the pictures that you need in order to represent each goal accurately. When you look at your vision board, you don’t want to be confused. You’ll want to know exactly what you meant when you put, let’s say, an eggplant up there.
Now it’s time for Frankenstein to come to life! Take all of your cutouts (they can be letters and words too) and arrange them in a way that makes the most sense to you. If you want to put them in chronological order, great idea! If you want to put them in order from least to most difficult, another great idea. If you want to group them by color and make them into a rainbow, perfect! What’s great about vision boards is that they’re made entirely for you. You organise them in a way that’s good for you so that it can help you in the best way that it can.
Get creative with this step! This part is the most fun of the entire process. Don’t forget to hang your vision board somewhere where you’ll see it every day. A lot of people choose to put it in their bedrooms because it’s the first thing they see when they wake up and the last thing they see before they go to bed.
Setting a date makes everything on your vision board feel very real. It also applies the good kind of pressure that will force you to get going. If you make a vision board and don’t set a date for when you want your goals completed, they tend to fall by the wayside and never get done.
This step can be a little bit tricky because you have to be realistic and give yourself as much time as you need but can’t give yourself too much time to slack off. We recommend doing some research to make this step a little bit easier. Find out how long it took other people to build up their credit, buy a new car, etc. This step is a little easier if your goal already has a date built into it. Say you want to get good grades this next year. Your date is already set by the school because they have a set date when you hand in your final papers, take exams, and so on.
This step directly correlates with the one before it, so don’t even think about skipping a step! Once you’ve set a date for the time to complete the goals on your vision board, the next step is to fill in a major blank in the plan: how to accomplish them.
Draw out a timeline of every goal that you’ll need to accomplish before you can accomplish your ultimate goal. For example; if you want to go to college think about the things you’ll need to do before you do it. You’ll need to choose a college, you’ll need to apply, and you’ll need to save money and/or apply for a student loan. All of these things are like checkpoints in a game. They’re big accomplishments that you need to do in order to complete something life-changing.
This step is almost like the last one except this one gets very detailed very quickly. In order to accomplish the major goals on your vision board, you have to set time aside every day in order to work on them. If you’re looking to get in shape, you’ll have to make time to get to the gym. If you’re trying to make the honor roll at school, you’ll have to set extra time aside to study or meet with a tutor.
This step is different from the last one because instead of marking out big goals, we’re getting into the nitty-gritty of your everyday routine. You’ll have to take time out of every day to work on your goals which is easier said than done. Odds are that you will have to sacrifice certain things in order to stick to your schedule.
This step takes the longest and sometimes it may feel like you’ll never accomplish what you set out to do but when you feel like this, look at your vision board. It’ll remind you of the reasons why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Congratulations! You did that thing! Slayed it! It’s been fried, died, and laid to the side! Once you’ve completed your vision board and every goal on it, take time to relax. You’ve worked hard for this and you deserve it. Don’t forget to treat yo’ self either. Completing a major goal takes serious discipline!
And even if you didn’t accomplish your major goal, keep trying! Not everything happens on the first go. Take a minute to analyse where you went wrong so that when you try again you can change your approach to what made you fall off the wagon. Be proud that you made it this far and be motivated to try again.
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