Feb 15, 2012

40 years old and focusing on the future - making a Vision Board with Pinterest


So this is it! I am officially an old fart. I just turned 40 years old. Not that I feel any older. Actually I feel a lot better about life these days than I did a few years ago, so overall I think I am ahead of the game. There is a lot I want to improve about myself, but I feel like I am on the right track - I'm more involved with art, have more control of my own schedule, I'm working for causes that I believe in, and am less angry and more positive than I was years ago.

I am a lucky girl. 

And guess what! My wonderful husband just threw me a surprise party over the weekend (the sneak!) and as a former community theater actor, he acted his pants off and threw me some curves so that I wouldn't see it coming. We had a get-together with a few friends, and I am so very very grateful for the love and support from everybody that participated. It was a blast!

My vision board

Today I wanted to sort out some future goals, so I made a vision board. This is an exercise I started during my retreat workshop with Tama Kieves that I really wanted to expand on. The idea behind the vision board is that you take a lot of pictures of things you like (cutouts from magazines and such) and paste them to a board, so that you can visualize and therefore manifest what you want in your future. I've added a lot of text to my vision board, most of it handwritten stream of thought writing that is similar to what I incorporate in my artwork.  There are a couple of copies of my art in there as well - reminders of what I want to create in my future.

Close up on my board

What's cool about vision boards is that you don't have to go all old school and make one by hand. There is some software out there to make digital versions of vision boards, not to mention using Adobe Photoshop or another image editor if you just want to move images around and print something out. But I thought I'd try using Pinterest to create a vision board.

Now Pinterest is getting a lot of buzz out there right now, and I think it's the simplicity behind this social media site that has it growing so quickly. It allows users to bookmark images and videos from all over the web (or uploaded from a computer) with the push of a button. You collect those resources on one of your "boards" and can add a note about the link. Clicking  the image on your board brings you back to the original link, and it's easy to "like" and "repin" images from other users. I found that if you add the price to an item you've pinned, the site adds a little banner over the image. All in all it's very cool. And very addictive. So look out with that!

My Pinterest Vision Board

After experimenting with a board of heart resources, I started my Vision Board. It's pretty easy, and I can always delete a pin or move it to another of my boards. The only drawback I see right now is that I cannot move the pins around the board. They load in order of most recently added and that's it. But it's still a very easy to make visual reminder of my goals.

It's worth playing with either format of Vision Board - I felt like I got to be more artistic with the tangible one, but the digital version allows for more flexibility. Currently these is no option to make a Pinterest board private, so that is a consideration. In any case, stay focused on your dreams, and may good things come to you!




3 comments:

  1. What a great idea Lisa :) I have been hearing about Pinterest a lot but never considered using it. Your idea of creating a vision board on Pinterest is very interesting! I think I will give it a try :) Congratulations on a fun surprise party :) & wish you a very Happy 40th !!

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  2. This is certainly a marvelous article. Thank you for taking a few minutes to summarize this all out for us. It is a great guide!

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