You’ve put in the time to create your Vision Board, and it looks amazing! You beam with pride and hope every time you glance at it. Similarly, you reflect on what life will be like once you’ve achieved all that you envision. There’s just one tiny problem – you can’t figure out how to get started and attack your vision board goals.
Did you think about WHY you put together a Vision Board?
Putting a vision board together isn’t just about cutting and gluing pictures from magazines to poster board. In fact, if it came together in less than an hour, I’m betting you didn’t spend enough time thinking and feeling your way through the process.
With each picture, slogan and placement on the board that you chose, ‘why’ you chose what you did should have been in the forefront of your mind. Every picture should have a strong ‘why’ behind it.
If your Vision Board includes a picture of a beach house, then your ‘why’ should be more than ‘because I like the beach.’ Your ‘why’ should have been something like ‘being at the beach instills a sense of calm and peace within me that relieves stress and refreshes my soul’.
Attaching a ‘why’ behind each object you’ve identified on your vision board will generate the motivation and dedication needed to attack your vision board goals one small step at a time.
Motivation
Now that you have firmly identified your ‘why’, you should be motivated to take action to achieve your vision. But what action? Well, it depends on the goal.
Is your goal is to have a beach house? Then you should be motivated to identify the steps needed to reach that goal. For many, this may mean determining how you can save money to afford one. Consequently, this leads to understanding where you can make changes to start to save for one. If you can’t cut expenses, then you may look to see how you can generate additional income. Each little step adds up paving a path towards your goal.
If your vision board has several goals or dreams listed, you might want to look at how taking one step can serve multiple objectives. In the case of the beach house, generating additional income might also fulfil the goal of wanting to become self-employed.
Reaching these goals won’t happen overnight. It takes time and patience. Because of that, your motivation may wither over time. That’s when determination has to kick to help you attack your vision board goals.
Determination
Motivation is not in endless supply. You get tired and lazy, life happens and you may get thrown off course. It’s hard to maintain a motivation when you’re getting zapped left and right, sometimes by things you can’t control.
I like to think of determination as grit. Merriam-Webster defines grit as “..firmness of mind or spirit: unyielding courage in the face of hardship or danger..”. Determination will be the true test of how committed you are to achieving your goals.
Determination and your ‘why’ go hand in hand. Motivation is fleeting. Determination powers you through to stay true to your ‘why’.
One of the things on my vision board is to have a successful blog. My ‘why’ is have the freedom to work when and where I want. I am not motivated to write every day, but I am determined to be successful in my goal. For that reason, I get up early every morning and write something. It might only be a topic, paragraph or a brain dump of thoughts but I’m taking one small step every day that will help me reach my goal. It’s not motivation that does that – its determination. This is how I attack my Vision Board goals.
Day 9: I challenge YOU to post one Vision Board picture a day for 10 days. No explanation, no review, just the picture. Nominate someone else to do the same!
