The First Thing You Should Do in the New Year
Resolutions are great, but vision boards are better.
Most of us have declared New Year’s resolutions of some sort in the past. How often have they stuck with you throughout the entire year? Or even through the end of January? My guess is not very often.
It’s no surprise that most of our resolutions fall to the wayside, and there’s no shame in it. Everyone heads into January with fresh energy, wanting to leave their past attempts and failures behind them and convincing themselves that this year is different and they will reach new heights moving forward.
The easiest example of this is going to the gym. It’s the first Saturday of 2020 and I went to the gym, as I sometimes do on Saturday mornings, but today is different. In the same way that it is different every January: the gym is packed. There’s a wait for treadmills and spin class is booked. My guess is that this will last no longer than a month and then it will die down to its usual Saturday morning capacity.
Not achieving one’s New Year’s resolution is so common that there are How To articles instructing people on how to be successful. CNN Health estimates that while about 40% of Americans set resolutions around January 1, only about 40% to 44% of them will be successful at six months. That is actually higher than I would have guessed.
Katia Hetter offers great advice in this article about setting specific and attainable goals. Make it public, know yourself, allow for and anticipate some failure, and find ways to set yourself up for success.
But I would take this advice one step further. Instead of just creating a resolution to lose more weight or save more money, what you should be doing is creating a vision for success. This means setting an intention for a lifestyle change and visualizing how you want to look, feel and live your life.
The way athletes visualize crossing the finish line first is the same way you should begin to visualize accomplishing whatever goal you have set for yourself.
Why Create a Vision Board
The Law of Attraction is the belief that like energies attract each other. That if you have positive thoughts, you will attract positive energy into your life. It is the idea that what you put your attention on grows stronger.
I know many people dismiss the concept that you can simply “think positively” and change your life. What’s important to remember though is that actually attracting what you want in life and genuinely transforming goes much deeper than thinking.
In order to truly change your life or manifest something new, you have to feel differently. Which is where visualization comes in.
Yes, it starts with a thought, as everything in this world starts with a thought. But in trying to manifest something or accomplish a goal you move from thinking about the idea, to visualizing your outcome to then living your life as if you’ve already achieved what you had in mind.
As Wayne Dyer states in his book Real Magic, you must “learn to act as if the life you visualize were already here.” This is how the Law of Attraction works.
If your New Year’s resolution is to lose weight and eat healthier, you have to put your mindset into that of someone who is healthier and more fit than you are. Act as though you’re already 15 pounds lighter. How would you feel if that were the case? What diet and exercise decisions would you have made along the way?
This is where creating a vision board gives so much more power to your goals. When you stare at a list of goals that you want to accomplish, the default feeling may be one of lacking. As you look at the things you have yet to check off, the feeling that these things are not yet in your life may be grow stronger.
Generating these feelings of lack may actually keep you farther from your goals and in a continual state of lacking.
When creating a vision board however, you’re searching for images that generate feelings you want to have and hold on to. You’re making a collection of all of these feelings and continuously putting yourself into this frame of mind. Seeing images of your goals creates excitement. It depicts a possibility that could be yours, making it easier to generate feelings that you’ve already accomplished your goals.
Wanting to buy a new house this year? Find images of homes that get you excited. Fall in love with specific interior design concepts. Stare at pictures of your dream home and visualize what it would be like to already be living inside that home.
They say pictures are worth a thousand words and it’s true in this sense. It’s much easier to generate feelings of positivity and start attracting what you want in your life when looking at photos instead of a list of goals.
The power of creating vision boards is summed up so perfectly in a story from Joseph Assaraf. I heard this story on The Secret (which you can currently find on Netflix) and recently read about the very same story again in The Passion Test, a book about creating your best life by Janet and Chris Attwood.
When discussing the Law of Attraction, Joseph Assaraf, a researcher on achieving more with the power of your thoughts, describes an encounter with his son one afternoon as they were unpacking boxes in a new home they just moved into.
Joseph’s son was looking at picture frames and asked his dad what they were. When Joseph went to see what his son was holding, he explained that they were vision boards. A collection of images that Joseph had hoped to someday have or achieve.
As he looked closer at one specific board, he was shocked. The board held an image of his dream home that he had created several years earlier. Joseph realized that the home on his vision board was the very home into which they had just moved. It may have taken years, but he had actually manifested his exact dream home by creating vision boards.
You don’t have to take my word or Joseph’s on the power of visualization. Create a board for yourself and see how you feel.
How to Create a Vision Board
Creating a vision board is literally as easy is 3 steps. The first thing you’ll need to do is select your platform. You could grab some poster board, a cork board, a few picture frames or a magnetic white board.
This year, I’m choosing a notebook and creating a vision book rather than a board. This way I can continue to add to it throughout the year and it’s something that’s smaller and may be easier to revisit as I need some inspiration.
Once you have whatever is serving as your board, you’ll need inspirational content in the form of magazine clippings, articles, pictures you’ve printed from your bookmarks on Instagram or whatever else resonates with you.
I typically like to grab a few magazines covering mindfulness, health and wellness, fashion, home decor and travel.
There are no rules to what you can or cannot clip for your board. Anything that inspires you, gives you feelings or joy, or is an actual goal of yours should be clipped and pasted to your board. Choose images or words, anything that gives you a feeling of power towards achieving your goals.
Remember, the idea here is that you’re generating feelings of joy and setting an intention for your desired lifestyle. Just because you clipped a photo of Italy doesn’t mean that you need to go to Italy this year. It could be that the scenery you’ve chosen gives you feelings of peace and tranquility and reminds you to take some time out of your schedule to get outdoors and enjoy yourself.
The obvious third and final step is to assemble your board. Remember to keep it somewhere that you can see it often and be reminded of the intentions you’ve set for yourself.
