How to Create a Vision Board

Vision boards are becoming more and more popular, and today I want to talk to you about why this is a trend you should jump on! Understanding how to create a vision board is something with no downside and incredible upside potential!

I Was Lost

I have been investing in real estate for five years now. Throughout that time I’ve experienced several ups and downs along the rollercoaster of life. Many of these hurdles could have been avoided had I formed a clear vision initially.

Now I know that understanding your 5, 10, 25, or 50-year goals is a must if you want to become successful. As Lewis Carroll says, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” Without a clear vision, it becomes easy to fall prey to shiny object syndrome and constantly chase new get-rich-quick schemes.

A little over a year ago, I sat down and took some time to really plan exactly where I want to be in five years. I wrote out where I wanted to live, what relationships were most important to me, what my business was doing, and everything I could think of to describe how my ideal life would look in five years.

This vision quickly fell into line as the north star to my real estate journey. Any time I had a new opportunity, I simply asked myself if it would help me achieve the goals I wanted to achieve, and then acted accordingly. 

The Epiphany 

I had heard about creating a vision before but hadn’t given much thought to it until last year (2019) when I was interviewing Brandon Turner on The Military Millionaire Podcast. He showed me the vision that he had drafted for their business and we talked about how much it helped shape his goals for the future. He recommended I read the book Vivid Vision by Cameron Herold, which I did shortly after. 

Vivid Vision discusses how to determine your vision, document your vision, and focus on your vision in order to become successful. 

Of course, it helps if you don’t procrastinate as I did after reading this book.

A few months later, I was reading Man Up by Bedros Keuilian. As he tells his story of success, failure, and then massive success in life…he shares that finding clarity of vision is what changed his life for the better. I started and finished the entire book on a flight back to Oahu, and it changed my life. 

After reading these two books, I sat down and spent a lot of time visualizing my future. I wrote down everywhere I wanted to be in five years and held nothing back.

The crazy thing is that several of these items have already come true!

For example, in December of 2019 I wrote down that I wanted to host a real estate investing conference for service members, and in May of 2020, I got to help launch the first-ever Veterans REI Live conference!

What Is a Vision Board?

You may have heard of a vision board before, and I am a huge fan of them. A vision board is simply an expression of your vision for the future, manifested through images, so that you can spend time focusing on it daily. 

The point is to put pictures of the things you want to earn in life. That could be pictures of cars, groups you want to join, places to go, accolades to earn, and anything else you want to put on the board. 

Don’t overthink this board, but don’t hold back either!

You can even create a version of your vision board as the wallpaper of your cellphone, a trick I first learned from Steve Harvey.

Why Do You Need a Vision Board?

Visualization is extremely powerful. 

Have you ever noticed that when you buy a car you suddenly begin to see that same make/model all over the road? The car was always there, but your brain was filtering it out of the hustle and bustle around you. When you bought that car, your brain started to recognize they were important to you (because you focused on it more). 

This part of our brain is called the Reticular Activating System. When you spend time writing your goals and visualizing your future, you are telling your brain to focus on achieving those things. In the same way that your brain started to recognize similar cars, it will now begin to recognize opportunities that could help you achieve your goals. 

Your brain doesn’t distinguish real from imaginary. There have been studies that show if one person does something and another visualizes doing it, the brain areas will be activated in both cases.

For this reason, visualizing your goals every day has no downside and infinite upside. I highly recommend you spend time doing this every single day. 

How To Create a Vision Board

I alluded to this above, but a vision board is essentially a whiteboard, corkboard, chalkboard, or any other kind of board, where you can hang pictures of the vision you have laid out for yourself.

For example, I want to have 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, so I have a picture of the plaque YouTube sends creators after they reach 100,000 subscribers. I wanted to host a conference, so I posted a picture of Grant Cardone speaking to thousands at the 10X Growth Conference. I also want to travel with my family, so I posted pictures of my family and some destinations I want to visit. 

You can make your vision board organized like mine or slap pictures all over the place. The layout doesn’t matter, the styling doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t matter if you use pictures or drawings or words. 

You simply need to build a board that allows you to use your imagination to visualize what it will be like when you have achieved your vision.

This simple process is how to create a vision board, that works!

Audio Recording

I don’t know (scientifically) if this helps at all, but I took the vision statement I wrote (reference Vivid Vision) and made an audio recording of me reading it out loud. That way I can listen to my vision statement on the drive to work every morning.

It is only five minutes long, but it ensures I’m in the right mindset and spend time manifesting my future every morning!

I will say, it is a little odd listening to my own voice read this off. One day I might hand it to a voice artist on Fiverr and have them record it for me. Nonetheless, the principle holds true. The more you hear, see, envision, and focus on what you want to achieve, the more opportunities you will have to make it a reality. 

Most “How to create a vision board” articles and videos don't mention this idea…maybe I'm just crazy, haha!

How To Create A Vision Board | Consistency

You owe it to yourself to take a few moments at the end of your morning routine to focus on visualizing your future. The more you can feel what it will be like and how your life will look, the more you will attract those things into your life. 

I know, I know, this sounds like a lot of hocus pocus crap, but it works!

Learning how to create a vision board changed my life, and it might just change yours too!