Importance of a Vision Board

December 16, 2015

By Danielle Ketterer, Project Manager, DRI’s Healthcare IT Practice 

Our women’s group in the office always tries to come up with a new idea of what to talk about at our monthly meetings. Many different ideas were thrown out and then someone thought of a great idea for our meeting last month to all make vision boards and then talk about it all together. I was skeptical about the idea at first because I thought to myself, “Why would a vision board help me accomplish my goals?” So with that question in my mind, I decided to do some digging into the benefits of a vision board and here is what I found.

Flipping through a health magazine, you could probably find: one hundred different pictures of what you wished you looked like, one hundred more pictures of how you wish you ate, and probably many more materialistic items that you wished you had. But are these realistic goals? How are you going to accomplish these things? How are achieving these goals going to benefit you? These are all questions that come to mind when trying to decide what to put on your vision board. Every person is different in what their ultimate vision is, but putting it down on paper and looking at it every day is important to accomplishing that vision.

Steps to making a vision board:

1. Be realistic: Owning a multi-million dollar home would be amazing and anyone would love to live in one, but making $10 an hour at the coffee shop twenty hours a week is not going to get you to have the resources to own that dream home unless you inherit your great aunts fortune. Think of what it is going to take to get you to have those resources. So maybe it is going to school to get a degree that will help you get on the track to that dream home. Being realistic is going to help you be motivated to do what it is that you would like to accomplish instead of having this large vision in your head, but no idea of how to get there.

2. Be long term thinking, but also think about the short term: Thinking of your ultimate goals in the future is important, but what is more important is how you are going to get there. If you want to lose 100 pounds, that is not just going to happen by pasting a picture of someone with a six-pack on a paper and looking at it every day. You have to have action in order to get where you want to. So maybe you would like to lose 100 pounds, but instead of posting a picture of a half-naked person you post a picture of three new workouts you are going to try this week. That way you know those three workouts are going to help you achieve the ultimate weight loss goal.

3. Quantifiable: “I want to make more money” is something that you hear from everyone. Changing that to a statement like: “I want to make $100,000 this year” makes the goal more attainable. Making the statement quantifiable, makes it better to have a plan on how to get there. As recruiters, we might have to close 25 deals to get to $100,000 so every time you close a deal you know you are one step closer to that yearly earnings goal.

4. Encompassing different facets of your life: Making more money and owning a fancy car are great, but those should not be the only areas on your vision board. Whether it is improving your spiritual life, working on friendships, seeing your family more, or managing your stress these are important parts of your vision boards to not forget.

After doing some research I realized the value and importance of having a vision board and how they can help you to achieve your goals. Our women’s group all put ours at our desk, so having that vision board where we can see it all days helps us to always have those goals on our minds. I suggest to anyone to make a vision board to help give yourself some direction.

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