If you’re like me, you love the idea of creating a vision board to help focus on your goals but you don’t have dozens of old magazines lying around. But that doesn’t mean you have to start slipping old magazines into your purse every time you visit a doctor’s or dentist’s office! Why not just create a digital vision board using online resources?
The purpose and mission are the same: You can use your digital vision board to prioritize your life’s most important goals and choose which goals you want to achieve this year. Then find photographs that represent those goals and dreams. The only difference is that you’ll find the photos online and don’t need glue or tape!
How to Get Started: Choose Your Medium
Digital vision boards can be made using Microsoft, Pages, Google docs, PicMonkey, or Pinterest.
- Microsoft offers a free desktop app called “Vision Board” which makes placing your photos much easier and more visually appealing than just importing them into Word.
- PicMonkey is a paid platform with a free 7-day trial period and they offer very detailed advice for creating a vision board using their platform template in this blog post.
- Pinterest is an easy way to search for photos of your ideal lifestyle and simply pin those to a secret board. If you want to make your vision board public at any time, it’s a simple switch under Settings.
- Google docs requires you to just import your chosen photos, then you can type the goals underneath, around or above the photos.
- Same thing with Pages from Apple. Just drag and drop the photos you want, adjust them for size and add your own words.
How to Choose Your Photos
Using digital photos for this project allows you to search from the millions of photos online, which is a vastly larger selection than a few old magazines your mother collects. In this respect, creating a digital vision board is easier and quicker than the “old fashioned” way.
- Unsplash offers completely free, high-quality photos which you simply download to your computer.
- Stock photo houses offer high-quality photos for which you pay a small fee to use.
- Google Images offers access to millions of images ONLY if you plan to keep your vision board for personal use only and NOT post it online. If at any time you think of publishing your board online in a blog post or Instagram post, rethink using the Google Images as you never want to be accused of copyright infringement.
- On Pinterest you don’t run any copyright risks because you’re pinning those desired photos onto Pinterest, not directly onto your website.
Find Photos that Resonate With You on an Emotional Level
Vision boards are just as much about your emotions as they are about the material things you want to bring into reality. Do you REALLY want to earn the sporty BMW roadster convertible or do you just want that freedom and the carefree life the photo symbolizes? Vision boards are not solely about material things; fso look for photos that make you FEEL any positive emotion. Then, once you’ve got the photos, consider adding words, quotes, or affirmations that also speak to you.
Tip #4: Keep a Screenshot Handy
No matter which tools you use to create your digital vision board, take a screenshot (or two if it’s large) and save it as your wallpaper on your laptop and phone. Make a point of looking at this every day and meditating on what steps you’ll take to get closer to those goals. Consider if you need to break these large goals into smaller goals; map out those action steps. Also reflect on your progress every night before you go to sleep; visualizing prior to sleeping helps you feel motivated to get up in the morning and start working toward those goals.
In the end, achieving your goals is completely up to you and the actions you take. Your vision board – either traditional or digital – is simply a tool to help you stay on the path toward your ideal life.