This post contains affiliate links. This means I will make a commission at no extra cost to you should you click through and make a purchase. Read the full disclosure here.

The start of the year is the perfect time for creating goals, and a vision board for manifestation!

If you’ve never created a vision board before, or maybe you have but they never seem to work- you’re in the right place!

The big idea around vision boards is manifestation.

If you’ve never heard of manifesting before, it’s the idea that you can attract your dream life to you simply by envisioning it.

Which sounds fantastic, but of course, life is not all magic and you need to put in a lot of work to make your dreams a reality.

But in order to do that, you need to know what your goals are first.

And that’s where a vision board comes in.

What is a vision board and why should you create one?

So why should you create a vision board? What’s the point of it?

The idea of a vision board is there to help you visualize your goals so you know exactly where it is you’re going and what you want to achieve.

You can hang it somewhere you’re going to see often so you can always have that dream front and center.

The idea of manifestation, vision boards, and the law of attraction is not just “stick some pictures on a board and wait”. You actually have to put in the work to see results.

You can’t just hope for a million dollars and sit on your couch watching Netflix in order to get it.

The Universe isn’t going to deliver you your goals on a silver platter.

But, it’s the idea of “if you can think it, you can achieve it.”

Your thoughts are powerful and if you’re constantly reminded of your goals by seeing them on a vision board, the idea is that your thoughts drive your actions, and your motivation to reach your goals which in the end will make you more likely to achieve them.

What to do before you create a vision board for manifestation

So now that we got that out of the way, how do you actually create a vision board?

It’s more than just sticking pretty pictures up on a corkboard and calling it a day.

First, you need to work on setting your goals.

I personally do a vision board for each year, but also feel free to include some long-term goals on there as well.

Reflect on the past year

Chances are, you’re thinking about making a vision board in January. So the first step would be to reflect on the past year.

But, on the off-chance you want to get your life together on a random Tuesday in July, this is still important for you too!

Think about what you’ve accomplished so far (And if you say “nothing”, you’re likely being too hard on yourself!)

What goals have you hit?

What goals did you want to hit, but didn’t?

Have you tried to start any habits that you may have forgotten about or fallen off of?

This is a good exercise to look at where you are in life and do a bit of an audit.

This is not the time to get all woe-is-me and down on ourselves if your year didn’t go quite as planned.

The New Year is a chance for a clean slate. A fresh start where you can in fact change your life, one step at a time.

You just need to decide to change. And then go after it.

Think about where you want your life to go next

Now it’s time for the fun part of this exercise.

It’s time to dream big and really think about where you want your life to go next.

Grab a journal and write out what you think your perfect day would be. This can be called manifesting or scripting.

And make sure to get specific too.

What house do you live in? What time do you wake up?

What habits do you have, and what goals are you achieving?

This exercise will help you see where you actually want to go in life with no restrictions and really hone in on what your biggest dreams and desires actually are.

You can think about money as if it were no object and there are no restrictions on what you actually want.

You can choose a time limit for when you want this perfect day to be (for example when you are a certain age)

But I think this can put too much pressure on us to achieve those things and may make us feel as if we’ve failed if we don’t hit all the goals by that point.

So I like to make it a bit arbitrary because I believe that we’re exactly where we are supposed to be at any given moment and there is no timeline on when we will manifest what we want to achieve our dreams.

Decide on your long-term goals

Now it’s time to get specific.

You have a dream set for what you want to be living like in the future. Now it’s time to decide how we are actually going to get there.

Dreaming up our new life is the fun part, but you’ll never actually get there if you don’t take action on achieving those dreams.

So this is where the real work comes in.

You can consider what your goals are in the next 3 years, 5 years, or just things you would like to do but they don’t have a specific timeline.

Maybe you have a dream house or a dream car, but you’re not sure when you plan to get those things.

Or maybe you have a dream vacation you’d like to go on in the next year or two.

I try not to add too many long-term goal photos on my vision board since I create one every year. I want to envision smaller, year-long goals more than bigger ones.

But there are no rules regarding our dream life, so do whatever you like!

Decide on goals you want to hit this year

Next, think about the goals that you want to hit this year. What is going to get you closer to the long-term goals that you can achieve in just this year?

Do you want a job promotion?

Do you want to hit a financial goal?

What are your new year’s resolutions?

You want to think of these things before you even start your vision board because soon we’ll be looking for pictures of things to represent the goals we want to hit and the life we want to live.

How to create the perfect vision board for manifestation

Once all your goals are laid out, it’s time to start creating your vision board for manifestation!

This is the fun and easy part of the process.

1. Gather your materials

The first thing you need to do is gather the materials you’ll need for creating your vision board. Thankfully, there isn’t much that you need.

You need something to put your photos on. This can be a corkboard like this one, or you can choose to have it on a poster board as well.

I personally use a cork board so I can reuse it each year when I go to create a new vision board, but if you’d like yours to be permanent you can buy a poster board each year for yours.

Depending on how you plan to keep your board when you’re done with it, you can use either tape for your photos or thumbtacks if you don’t plan to make the photos permanent.

I personally use thumbtacks so I can take the photos down each year, but I still like to keep the old photos so I put them in a ziplock bag with the year on them so I can look back and see what I was going for in the future!

2. Gather your vision board photos

Next, start looking for photos that represent your goals. and you want to be intentional with the pictures you put on here because these are what you’ll be looking at for the next year to essentially shape your reality.

A few ideas may look like

• Quotes you love to represent the year
• Pretty photos to give you an overall feel for your year
• Future house photos
• Financial goals
• Business/job goals
• Self-care
• People that inspire you

Whatever you put on your list of goals, try to find one or a few photos to represent those things.

You can even write out the exact thing you’re looking to do on the back of the photos if you’d really like.

But where can you find these photos?

The most common place you’re probably thinking about is from old magazines but to be honest with you, I don’t own a single one of those!

So, I create a digital vision board on Pinterest and gather all my ideas there first.

You can also look on other social media like Instagram if you see quotes there that you really love or other aesthetic photos.

And if you can’t find a photo to be exactly what you want, feel free to create it as well!

For example, I really liked a quote I saw but didn’t see any photo I liked with it, so I created this one for myself instead:

(Psst… Feel free to save this image for yourself if you really like it!)

You can have a lot more personalized options when you begin creating images for yourself! I created this one in Canva, a super easy tool to use.

All I did was searched for “Instagram post” as a template and found one in the vibe I liked, changed the text, and boom! Perfect quote photo.

Once you have your images, go through and lay them out in a Google Docs or Word doc in order to print them out.

3. Begin laying out your vision board photos

After you print out your photos (I go to get mine done at FedEx to make sure they look professional and nice) all you need to do is start cutting and laying things out!

I make mine look as nice as possible and make sure I am intentional with how things are laid out.

I won’t stick two quotes next to each other if I can help it and I try to mix up the goals (i.e future house photos vs. book photos).

That way you get a nice mix of everything throughout your board. But of course, you can lay yours out however you please.

Try to have fun with this step and take your time with it. This is a great time to get creative since you’ll be looking at this for the next year!

4. Place your vision board where you’ll see it often

If you end up placing your vision board in some random corner that you never see, you’re likely going to forget it’s even there!

And that pretty much defeats the purpose of all your hard work in the first place!

So make sure your vision board is going to be in someplace that you see often.

For example

• Your bedroom
• Your office
• Digital places like your phone or laptop background

I personally have my physical vision board hanging in my office.

I also make it my computer background, and a smaller version for my phone background so it’s always in view!

Because I may not go into my office every single day, but I will be on my computer all the time!

Digital options for creating a vision board

Don’t have a place to hang your vision board? Or maybe physical boards just don’t vibe with you.

That’s okay! Because digital vision boards are also an option as well!

Digital vision boards are even easier to create because you don have to print things out.

But I find these may not be as effective because they won’t be in your environment easily visible.

Create a vision board on Pinterest

Creating a vision board on Pinterest is easy.

All you have to do is create a new board (literally) on Pinterest and name it something like “2023 Vision Board” or whatever you’d like.

Then, you can go through and pin any images that you like on Pinterest!

This is the exact same as the previous steps for creating a physical vision board, but you just won’t be printing them out.

I have one for myself and I like to pin extra things on mine since there really is no limit to pinning, and then choose the best ones to actually print out.

And like mine, you can even add sections to categorize what you’re pinning as well.

Pinterest also gives you the option to keep your boards private so if you don’t want anyone else to see your ideas, pins on private boards are only shown to you!

The only problem I have with this, as I mentioned, is this board lives on Pinterest. So you won’t be able to see it all the time.

But it is a good alternative if it’s all you have available to you!

Create a vision board on Canva

Maybe you want to take this one step further though. If you know how to use Canva, you can create a digital board with it!

This is a good option because you can save your vision board as a photo and put it as your computer or phone background, making it more effective because you’ll be seeing it more often.

A vision board is essentially a just collage of photos, which is really easy to do in Canva!

So this is always an option as well.

All you’d have to do is save all the photos you like, drop them in a Canva doc and arrange them how you want!

Why some vision boards don’t work

When I was younger, I’d watch my Dad create “vision boards” but in reality, they were just pictures of things he’d never achieve because there was no action behind them.

So, being very young, I thought to do the same thing.

He’d stick houses and mansions with massive pools on his board, money, and nice sports cars.

Things that, yes, technically could be obtained but here is the problem with vision boards and when they don’t work.

If you just stick any old picture on the board and think “Yeah I’d like to be a millionaire before I’m 30, have a nice house, car, and a football-playing husband”

Those things are great and very well may be attainable but… you can’t stick all those dreams on a board and then take zero action behind them.

Vision boards for manifestation aren’t magic pills to help you achieve your wildest dreams or a magic mirror on the wall.

You need to work for them, as mentioned before.

And I keep mentioning this because of how important it actually is to create the perfect vision board for manifestation!

This is why it’s so important that you start out with goals that are actually attainable and only think about things you plan to actively work towards and go after.

I hope this was helpful, and if it was, check out some other content from me!

You Might Like:

• What is the Law Of Attraction + Does it Really Work?
• What is Manifestation + How to Use it to Your Advantage?
• 8 Morning Habits of Productive Women