How Visionboarding Can Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

Deborah and I began our relationship in one of the most picturesque places on the planet. The sun was hot, the water was cool, and she was beautiful. Everything about our experience was magical. We weren’t living for the future or in the past..we soaked up every moment.

We each had some idea of what we’d do in the future, but for me, that was more along the lines of, “figure out how to continue making money abroad, so this can last forever.” Deborah had more ambitious plans, but I’ll let her write about those.

I was working remotely as a web developer, and it allowed me to have experiences around the world I couldn’t even have dreamt of as a child. But, I knew it couldn’t go on forever. At a certain point, I would need to go home and find new clients, or develop a product I could sell abroad, or find something to do.

I had ideas, but I had never really explored them. I had a dream for “someday,” but if that sounds vague, it’s because it is. I never even explored whether or not I was the line of work I wanted to be in. It was just something I started doing at 18, without much conscious thought, while I accepted whatever life wanted to throw at me.

In walks Deborah.

The life I was living was fine for me for the time-being. It’s probably fine for a lot of fun-loving 22-year-olds, but as soon as another person walks into your life, it’s only fair for both of you to start making real plans for the future.

Vision boards are often associated with pseudoscience-y rubbish that really doesn’t belong in your life. Every video we watched would tell us to, “tell the universe what you want, and be open to receive the abundance,” and “if the universe doesn’t provide, you just didn’t want it enough.” That’s nonsense. I don’t advocate using a vision board to connect you with some higher power.

But, visionboarding can connect you with what you really want, and it can serve as a daily visual reminder of what you’re working towards.

The Vision Board Exercise

Lay back and close your eyes. Empty your mind of everything, and then visualize your ideal life. Where are you? What’re you doing? How does it feel? Who are you with?

For a week, Deborah and I did this exercise every day, and everyday, we’d each add one new item to the vision board, then find an image to represent that piece of the vision. We pasted all of the images into a Google doc, because we didn’t actually have a board.

Over the coming days, we added a joint YouTube channel, a flat in London, but most importantly we came up with a stroller, and eventually an engagement ring. I don’t know how or why those things popped up, I didn’t even know I wanted those things. But I did, and I do, and I don’t even want to think where I’d be if we hadn’t done that exercise.

Not Everything Goes According to Plan

We don’t have everything we wanted, haven’t accomplished everything we set out to achieve. But, we’re working on it, and we consistently practice visualization to check in on our vision. It changes it from time to time, and we change our plans on how to get there from time to time. But, we’re always working on it.

When our plan doesn’t work out, we try again. When we do achieve a goal, we celebrate and set a new one. Most importantly, we use the vision board as a visual reminder of all of our achievement, past, present, and future.

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