Could you use a nudge or a reset to keep your new year’s resolutions on track?
A vision board might be just what’s needed to keep you focused.
Vision boards are visualization tools intended to help manifest what you desire: collages of words, images, symbols, or small tokens that can depict hopes and dreams (owning your own business), offer affirmations for daily living (body positivity), or encourage self-improvement (developing new skills).
A vision board can be anything you want it to be.
“No one does your vision board for you,” said Kristen Ayers, owner of Prime Pageants in Columbus. “This is your moment.”
Ayers was a mentor for the 3E Vision Board Initiative offered on Feb. 19 by Women of Toledo, a nonprofit that educates, engages, and empowers women. She spoke to a diverse, multigenerational group that had gathered to create their own inspirational tools at the WOT offices, 425 Jefferson Ave., Toledo.
The project is more than mere arts and crafts. It should involve “brain dumping,” as Ayers phrased it — thinking about all the possibilities, then narrowing down the focus “to get clarity.”
“Be super honest. Dig deep. Reflect,” she advised. And then consider what actions you can take.
Vision boards can prompt “the power of change,” Ayers said, but “you have to do the work.”
Martha McAnlis, a local life and business coach, spoke next. She encouraged the women to figure out the why behind their goals, so they’d be “doing what’s true to you.”
Before inviting participants to assemble their boards with images, stickers, words, and other materials, Nina Corder, WOT’s managing director, gave one last piece of advice: “Don’t just put pictures without knowing how to achieve,” she said.
Factor in the elements — people, supplies, finances, time, etc. — required to be successful, she advised.
Rhonda Long, a certified holistic life coach in Maumee, also creates vision boards and guides others in making them. She said vision boards can be deeply important tools, because as people create them or look upon the finished artworks, they’re “feeling motivated and inspired.
“It has to do with the law of attraction,” she continued: “the belief that we can dream it. And if we start making it concrete in certain ways, we can bring it to life.”
Ms. Long has two vision boards hanging in her closet, so she can view them daily.
“It gives me hope. It gives me faith,” she said. “Watching things come to life that I’ve put on these boards gives you affirmation that everything is possible.”
First Published March 6, 2022, 4:00 p.m.
