My vision board for 2012. It sits in my office and I see it daily. Almost everything on it has happened. Amazing.

Hi visionaries,

As part of planning for where I wanted to go, I created a vision board.  I had heard of them, thought it was a cool idea but never did one.  So one day I decided to create one.

It is quite simple to do it:

1. To start you will need a stack of magazines that you can cut up, a glue stick, scissors, bristol board.
2. Take the stack of magazines and just cut out any picture or word that gives you a great feeling.  Don’t try to understand why it makes you feel good, just get into grade one mode and start cutting (I don’t think they let you have scissors in kindergarten).
3. Now take the images and words and group them together into what  seems like the right piles to you.
4. Notice if there is any theme or themes that start occurring.
5. Find a word that describes your theme for each group of images.
6. Now find a word or grouping of words that describe your board.
7. And now layout your images and words on the bristol board using the themes to group your images.  Add in marker the word you picked for your themes.
8. Somewhere on the board in large letters give your board its title
9. Glue the images where you placed them.
10. Finished?  Not quite yet.  This really is the first step.
11. Think about what you see in front of you and what it is saying to you.  Does it give you guidance on who you want to be, or how you want your garden/house/life to look or how you want to feel?
12. Now start to think about how you can make this happen.  What goals do you need to set to ensure your inner desires are met.
13. Then hold yourself accountable to the goals and check in with yourself to see how you are making out.
14. The most important step is making sure you see this board every day so you can manifest your true desires and intentions.

Now you are likely saying to yourself, the directions I just gave don’t match my picture of my vision board.  So let me give you permission to do it how it works for you.  My vision board is a combination of images I created, words I felt were important to me and things I have collected that were meaningful.  I used a bulletin board and push pins.  And I added to my board throughout the year as images struck me.  Don’t limit your creativity in the exercise.

I also did boards for each part of my life with specific goals with timelines so that I had a way to ensure I hit my goals.  I used large sticky notes on boards.  I first started with little sticky notes on paper that over a few weeks I categorized into topics and got very specific on the goals.  Finally, I did the large sticky notes (4″x6″) on art boards.  They too sit in my office so they hold me accountable.

Here are my headers. Your headings will likely be different as will your specific actions and dates that you will commit to yourself to accomplish them by.

And in the last year so much of it has come to be:

I got fit, I eat healthy, I am happy, I am working towards Fabulous at 50, I had my picture taking in a field of sunflowers that we randomly came upon, I celebrated 25 years of marriage, I came across a rolling hill in Saskatchewan that looked just like the image of Tuscany (I took pictures of it), I let go, I trusted my intuition and I say thank you for the wonderful opportunity this year has provided.  The calendar below is my visual way that I recorded my green juice success.  This blog is a goal I set out to do.  Recently I accepted to attend TEDxTotonto.  Most importantly my board focuses on me as a whole, not just me at work.  I feel richer as a person now.

Soon I will be starting a new vision board as I have fulfilled so many of my intentions.  Now it is time to let my creativity fly again and see what my inner self is trying to tell me.  I am sure it will be interesting and I will then create a new set of goals with targets.

Are you ready to see where you want to go?  Why not set some time aside this Thanksgiving weekend and see what happens.  You will be thankful you did it.

To your future,

Jo, your 9CupChallenge partner