09 Jan 24

Creating a vision for 2024

Who, like me, finds January supremely challenging? Although as I write my first blog post of 2024, the sun is shining outside, and there is nothing more invigorating or indeed optimistic than a blue sky and some piercing warming sunshine melting away the nights frost. But boy I struggle with the January blues. After all the colour and excitement of Christmas, it’s just rain and grey skies stretching out for the next couple of months. Therefore doing a simple vision boarding exercise is a simple and effective way to gain clarity, optimism and indeed motivation. It gets my mojo back.

I’m seeing a definite shift away from setting goals and new year’s resolutions, in favour of ‘wintering’ at this time of year, which essentially means going slow and gentle and being kind to yourself. If this is you, give yourself full permission to swerve the calls to diet, exercise and smash all records. However,if you feel the need to get going and seize this feeling of new year renewal, vision boarding helps break through the feeling of fug and gets you going!

A vision board isn’t a to-do list, it’s not a goal setting exercise and comes with no actionable tick list or timeline. A vision board is all about taking the time to slowly lean into how you want to feel this year, and what that looks like. Images hold a lot more influence on our minds than the written word, which is what makes them such a powerful tool. For me the serious business goal setting and planning comes later in the year when I’ve got my mojo back and the days are getting longer. By Spring I’m full throttle and going at it with gumption! So the start of the year is all about enquiry, mapping out the destination, so you get going down the right path. The actual plan of how you are going to get there is of course an essential component – but detail can also bog you down or kill the creativity before you’ve even got started.

It’s also about allowing yourself to dream big, bigger than you dare. When you feel the thrill of what is possible it automatically lifts your spirits and gives you life! It’s this energy that will carry through to the all important motivation required to get you closer to your dream. I host a Vision Board live webinar every year and it was wonderful to hang out with so many of you last week. If you missed it you can still sign up here and watch the replay, as I share my method of creating powerful mood boards, that hold real traction,and help break the spell of negative thinking.

I aim to think of all areas of life, from work and money, from family and friends to health and fitness. Not all categories make it to the board but it’s great to check in with yourself this way, and note what’s working and what could do with a shift. As you work through the vision boarding process, you soon get a grip on what really matters – like any kind of mood boarding exercise the magic happens as you edit down your ideas to the ones that really resonate. I resist having too much on my vision board – or else it all just gets too overwhelming! They key is to find images that really strike an emotional chord within you and get you feeling excited. I mostly use Pinterest and Google images, using the search tool to describe the type of image I’m looking for. Then keep scrolling until I get the a-ha moment of yes, that’s the feeling I want!