Vision Board: A Spiritual Ritual

Here is a ritual to perform if you are looking to connect who you have become to who you want to be.

You don’t need to be an artist to create art! This ritual is a celebration of you. Here is a safe space to honor all of your accomplishments and inner growth. This practice will enable you to reflect on your past choices, habits, and experiences with an open heart and mind so that you may learn, release, and move forward with a clearer idea of what you want for yourself.

In my high school bedroom, I had two whole walls completely covered in collage. You couldn’t even see the paint color, it was so packed. I spent years clipping magazines and scotch taping photos of my friends. There were layers upon layers. Maybe this is why this form of expression comes more naturally to me in adulthood. This “modern” art statement I have most recently created certainly has more purpose and functionality than my teenage bedroom ever did. It is thoughtful yet playful, inspiring and full of manifestation magic.

On this page, you will find the story of how my Vision Board unfolded and simple steps to create your own.

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Who is a Vision Board for?

• This visual manifestation of self is for the soul seeker who is looking to align their present identity with their ideal self.

• Those who wish to learn how to celebrate themselves - for there is value in every win no matter how small.

• The adventurous spirit who revels in self discovery.

What are the benefits of a Vision Board?

• In this exercise we clearly define our focus and set the direction we want to take when it comes to personal development.

• Find within the layers of creativity: symbols of your own strength and resilience.

• Use this board as a source of inspiration and motivation.

When is the best time to make a Vision Board?

• This Vision Board is best done at the start of a new cycle or phase such as the new year, a big move, a new job and so on.

• Any significant transition or new beginning is the perfect starting point.

• You’ve experienced a spark of inspiration and want to use your Vision Board as a tool to visualize and reach your goals.

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Step One: It’s a date!

You will need some time in advance to prepare for this ritual. Look ahead and set a date. In the time leading up to this magical moment, you can gather your thoughts and things! During this span you will set the stage for your Vision Board using Step Two & Three.

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Step Two: Internal reflections.

To move forward on the right foot, we must first look behind us. Assess how far you have come and what direction you have taken thus far. Determine what challenges still linger. Revisit your proudest moments or accomplishments and celebrate your successes. What habits or traits do you wish to keep or continue and what do you want to shed and leave behind? Make lists to organize your thoughts and lay the foundation for this new beginning. Do some journaling to reflect on the time past and how far you have come. Take notes on these following topics:

• Themes

  While reflecting on your past, think of the themes of the last phase of your life. Name them! For example, I have created a Vision Board to welcome in the new year. In assessing the past year, common themes that ran throughout were compassion, reflection and self-care. These were my major internal focuses. What synchronicities can you find while exploring the last phase of your life? What themes/traits did you focus on?

• Challenges

  What challenges did you face in the past phase of your life? Did any past traumas arise? How did they present themselves in your life? Do these challenges still need to be addressed? What can we gain from the hardships we face? If there is even a shred of good during difficult times, can we acknowledge the duality? How does this change our perspective of what we faced?

• Highlights

  Celebrate once again your greatest achievements over the last phase of your life. Did you hit any milestones? List the highlights from this last cycle.

• Lessons

  What major lessons did you learn? In what dimensions of your life did you grow (body/mind/spirit)? What epiphanies did you experience?

• Gains

  What have you gained in this last phase? Did you create new routines or start some healthy habits? Did you learn a new skill or trade?

• Shadow Work

  Our shadow work areas are the unconscious aspects of our personality that present themselves as patterns of behavior. Shadow work is linked to fears, counterintuitive habits and anxieties. These can be traced back to past life or childhood traumas that have never been healed. From here we can process the emotions linked to specific events to break the chain reaction. What shadow work have you done in your life? Can you identify counterintuitive behaviors that could be linked to unfinished shadow work?

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Step Three: Looking ahead.

As you plan your ensemble for a romantic date, you determine what you want your look to say about you. So to will you decide how this Vision Board will represent your true self.

• What do you want the Vision Board to say about you?

• What areas of your life would you like the Vision Board to symbolize?

• What values do you want to be represented?

I can offer some guidance with my previous post, Wolf Moon & New Year Ritual. Here you will find a list of journal prompts for self-reflection and intention setting.

Return to the categories in Step Two. This time imagine yourself propelled into the future. Visualize yourself at the end of the cycle you are currently planning for. How would your future self compose the answers for this list? Dream beyond your perceived limitations. Think grand. Be bold.

• Themes

  If you could choose the themes for the coming phase of your life, what would they be?

• Challenges

  Can you look ahead to imagine the challenges you will face to be better prepared for the adventure?

• Highlights

  Your possibilities are endless. You are Boundless in this space. What do you want to accomplish for yourself in this coming era of your life?

• Lessons

  How do you want to grow? What do you wish to learn to further evolve your self-mastery?

• Gains

  What will enrich your life? Imagine the skills, habits, steps you can take to get closer to your ideal self?

• Shadow Work

  After reflecting on your shadow self, can you identify the links between unfavorable behaviors or patterns to unfinished healing from past experience?

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Step Five: Map it out.

Congratulations! You are a self-reflection master. It is not always easy to take an honest look at ourselves. The purpose of this work is to shed our ego, show vulnerability and humility, and connect to our higher selves. Our higher self is the master of our true spirit. They encompass all the beauty and wisdom we will carry in this life and all lives we have lived and will live. Sometimes we forget this connection to the purest form of ourselves. Through reflection, awareness and intuition we can maintain that connection and find strength within it.

In this step your vision board will begin to take shape. This is the blueprint.

Choose four main directions from your previous work that you wish to follow for the coming phase of your life. These realms of self represent what you wish to nurture and cultivate. You will plant these seeds and watch them grow and flourish. Each one of these realms you will connect with an element (earth/air/fire/water), a season (spring/summer/fall/winter), and one of the four cardinal directions (North/South/East/West). In doing this, we call the strength and spirit of these energies to uplift our efforts.

When we set our intentions and connect them to natures elements, we align with universal energy. What we put out into the universe, the universe can bestow. When we emulate our intentions we receive the same in turn. Create a simple mantra to go with each realm of self. You can use “I am” present-tense statements to uphold the positive message and honor your higher self. See the examples below:

Spirituality 🦋 North ⬆ Winter ❄️ Air 💨

I continue to grow. I gain wisdom, knowledge and experience in spiritual matters. I seek expansion and balance of my mind/body/spirit connection with increased awareness of my place in the Universe.

Love ♥️ East ➡ Spring 🌺 Fire 🔥

I am in love with myself, in love in my loving relationships. Getting comfortable in love. Knowing my body and what it loves. Honoring my body and nurturing my auto-sexuality.

Boundless 🌅 South ⬇ Summer 🏝 Water 🌊

I channel my passion, my creativity and my wisdom into Boundless. Boundless will bloom and shine and become all we have envisioned for it. Boundless is my purpose and I honor it with love, patience, and care.

Connection 👩‍❤️‍👩 Fall 🍂 West ⬅ Earth 🌎

I am dependable, compassionate and attentive to my relationships. I value those in my life and honor our connection with regular attention and love. I believe in healthy boundaries and choose the energies I surround myself with.

Watch this video to see the before stages of Vision Board prep!

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Step Six: Gather supplies!

While collecting supplies, think of colors, textures and images that match the direction, season and element. Use regional pictures to represent the directions. Shades of blue to symbolize water, clouds for air, plants for earth… Have a representation of each within your Vision Board.

When it comes to the actual components, you probably have much more at your fingertips then you realize. A great resource is social media. If you have an Instagram or Pinterest account, look through all your saved posts. I often click the little save icon while scrolling through Instagram all throughout the year. Now I can effortlessly sort through images I have loved and choose which would be a inspiration and symbolic reference for my Vision Board. Simply save the images and upload them unto a photo printing service like CVS or Shutterfly. You could have these within the hour for real cheap, less cost and less hassle than magazines that are hit or miss.

Choose your Soul Reflection.

What will the center focal point of your Vision Board be? Choose an image to represent you as a whole. Maybe it’s your favorite photo, and inspiring illustration, your favorite poem. This will be your Soul Reflection placed center stage of your Vision Board.

Here are some of our latest Boundless Instagram post for inspiration:

Words That Inspire

I keep a great number of inspiring mantras in my back pocket. Here I chose my favorites, grabbed some pretty paper and a good calligraphy pen and gave my best attempt at stylishly writing them down. You don’t need to be an artist, just add a few fancy scrolls at the end of each sentence or do a simple block print. Then go back and add a second color on select letters or some simple doodles.

If you’re an artist or crafts person like myself, you may have some resources in your work space to add texture and highlights to your vision board. I happen to have a large collection of feathers from my millinery days, scrap trim and appliques, faux flowers, fabric, wallpaper remnants… Also look for trinkets throughout your house that spark joy. These can all be added to your vision board! Get creative and think outside the box!

Decide where you will display your Vision Board. Choose somewhere private but accessible. Make it portable by using the tri-fold display boards from your science project days. Find them here. Or you can purchase a cork board in nearly any size. I used cork tiles bought at CVS since I have an unusually shaped wall. This way I could lay the cork squares to fit my space. They come in a pack of 4 and they are 12” x 12”. Find them here. Collect your thumbtacks or use sewing pins. You can use decorative thumbtacks but keep in mind, you will need a lot.

Choose your base. You can paint the cork or use decorative paper. Wallpaper remnants also works well. Setting the base ensures there will be no bald spots on your Vision Board and adds a finished cohesive look. If you are painting, do this the day before you set to work on your Vision Board.

Once you have all your supplies in order, separate them into the four desired realms you chose to represent your journey.

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Enjoy a quick time lapse video of my Vision Board creation process.

Step Seven: Have some fun!

You are ready! The day has come to have some fun with your future. This is an important moment for you. You have worked hard in preparation and now it is time to enjoy the harvest. Here are some helpful tips to remember while you work:

• Wake up your body. Do a little stretch. Dance! Get moving. Put on some uplifting music and get ready to create.

• Allow this time to be a safe space for you to unleash your wild. There is no room for judgement.

• You don’t need to be an artist. Anything goes here.

• This isn’t permanent, it’s just thumbtacks. You can always go back and move or shifts pieces as you see fit.

• Continually take steps back and watch from afar the progression of your work. Take a tea break mid way to just observe.

• Don’t get too wrapped up in details at first. This entire process happens in layers. There is no such thing as perfection.

Determine the layout.

Will all the realms and elements meld together or will you divide your Vision Board into sections? Whatever you choose, be flexible. What you set out to do may not be what you wind up with and that’s fine. Let it create itself.

Start with your base.

Lay the foundation and cover the surface with your desired medium.

Here is my Vision Board base with cork tiles bought at CVS. I staple gunned them to the wall for extra support but they come with sticky pads.

Here is my base with the foundation layer added. To cover my cork, I have used wallpaper remnants, magazine pages, old shopping bags, and decorative craft paper.

Work in layers.

Next select the largest images from your realms and place them in the determined sections. Add your Soul Reflection in the center.

Working from largest to smallest, continue to pin and layer your images moving in a clockwise direction. Don’t work in one realm at a time. Flow through them all together.

Finishing touches!

You are nearly finished! After all your images are placed take a step back and enjoy your progress. Make any shifts or changes you see fit. Time for the details!

• Next add your words, the inspiring quotes or poems you chose, the calligraphy work you created.

• Finally we add texture. Use feathers, trim, accents, beads, fabric, whatever you collected during your time in reflection. Highlight your Soul Reflection with your most special trim or accents.

Drum roll for the big reveal… relish in the beauty you have created! Fully embrace the joy and pride from this abstract mirror of your life. This whole process was an investment into yourself! You deserve this vision. I hope you gained clarity throughout this process. May you find comfort in who you are and where you are headed. Be your biggest fan!

How do you feel? What did you love about this process? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. If you post photos of your work, tag @helloboundless so we can repost in our stories! Scroll down to see images from my most recent Vision Board.

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Sincerely,

Abigail Duncan | Spiritual Guide