CREATING A VISION BOARD FOR YOUR CREATIVE BUSINESS

Have you ever created a vision board for your creative business? Or for your life? Or is it something you do every year?

I don’t always take the time to slow down and make one, but vision boards work, especially for those who are visual.
Oprah, Ellen, Steve Harvey, Jack Canfield. They all have created vision boards and must be doing something right.

I’m a big Jack Canfield fan and read his book The Success Principles about every couple of years. I started creating vision boards after reading an article about how he used them to grow his business and achieve his goals.

The vision board helps create clarity, which I always need.

The idea is to display the vision board where you can see it and remind you to stay focused on your goals. I get easily distracted by ‘shiny penny syndrome’ and go off in a thousand different directions, and that’s probably my artist’s brain.

I like the phrase, ‘a goal is a dream with a deadline.’

It reminds me that goals can be fun, not just task-oriented or resume builders. It also helps me ensure the goal is for me, not for someone else, or because I think it’s something I ‘should’ do.
In the past, I’ve created vision boards in sketchbooks because I’m an artist, and that’s what I do. I also have an aversion to clutter and find it distracting when I work, so I don’t have a lot of items other than art on my studio walls. However, this year, I will hang my vision board for my creative business right on the wall next to my desk. I might also take a photo of my vision board and use it as my screensaver on my computer.

I’ll let you know if it helps.

Here are the steps I used to create my vision board for my creative business:

• Create a list of three to five goals you want to accomplish this year. I choose three to five goals I want to focus on for the year because more than that overwhelms me. Four is a good number, too, because you can work on one per quarter. Or pick one that is really important to you and do that. (More about breaking down those goals in another post.)
• Collect a stack of magazines to use when creating your vision board. Yes, I still subscribe to lots of them. My guilty pleasure. There is something about the tactile feel of a magazine versus spending even more time in front of a screen. I also get a lot of catalogs in the mail, and I use those too. If you don’t have any, ask around. I’m sure many people are busy doing their January clean-out and will be happy to get rid of some magazines for creating your vision board. If not, you can always use Pinterest.
  I sit down on my studio floor, flip through the magazines and tear out items I’m drawn to or what I want more of in my life. I also gravitate to words that draw me in or I find meaningful. You can also be more deliberate and look for specific items that represent your goals.
• Get the scissors and glue, start narrowing down photos from your magazines, and create a collage to create your vision board. You can use a poster board, a piece of computer paper, or a sketchbook like I do. Add affirmation words about how you want to feel and what you want to accomplish.

Accomplishments are great, but how you want to live your life and how you want to feel each day are more important in my book.

Read more about planning and goal setting for your business. See my latest art collections or read about my work.