Creating Your Vision For Your Ideal Life

After you've set some goals for yourself, the next step is to create your vision for how your life is going to be. Creating your vision is a crucial part of the creative process, and shouldn't be skipped. Goal-setting isn't always enough. The goals you've chosen paint a picture of your new life – now it's your job to depict what that picture looks like, in a way that you can look at it every day.

There's quite a few ways to do this, and guess what? It doesn't have to feel like work. There are tons of fun and creative ways to create your vision, and you get to choose the one that works best for you.

Creative Visualization Tools:

1. The Vision Board
2. Mind Movies
3. LifeBook
4. Journaling

The Vision Board, a term coined by visionary John Assaraf, is a great tool to use for any age. It's fun, creative, and gets you thinking about what your goals look like. A Vision Board can be on anything – a bulletin board, poster board, or you can even glue or tape pieces of construction paper together to make your own. It doesn't matter, as long as you're happy with the end result and had fun doing it.

Next you'll want to take a look at that list of goals and find images that correspond to them. Surf the internet and print pictures to cut out and post on your vision board, cut pictures out of magazines, or draw. You can put scraps of colored paper or Post-It notes behind your pictures to spice it up, use glitter or virtually anything else you can think of. Once you've finished, put your Vision Board in a place where you'll see it every day. Look at it and think about what it feels like to have those things that you've put on your Vision Board, and really feel it. It's the emotion attached to your vision that's really going to bring it to you.

Mind Movies! This is one of my favorite tools. It really works. Mind Movies was created by Ryan Higgins and Natalie Ledwell, and enables people all over the world to reach their goals through motivational, customizable movies. They have the software to make these movies online, and let me tell you – you don't have to be a video editor or any sort of computer wiz in order to make this work for you. They make it easy on the user.

Mind Movies consist of photos that you either choose from their database or upload from your own computer, backed with music of your choosing and any number of present tense, positive affirmations. There's a wide variety of ones to choose from, but an example of these affirmations is “I am completely content” or “I have more than enough money.” Just watch your Mind Movie a few times a day and watch as your dreams come true.

If you don't want to pay the membership price, we suggest you try your hand at making your own. There's simple, user friendly video editing software that comes with most computers. If you're using Windows, you should have Windows Movie Maker already installed. If you're a Mac user, iMovie is a simple program to use and you should have your very own visualization movie in no time. We do suggest signing up for the mailing list at Mind Movies, as they provide you with 6 free, already made Mind Movies for your personal use. They also send a number of cool and inspiring videos, and sometimes they even have online seminars which are extremely beneficial.

Lifebook is a personal development tool created by Jon Butcher, and is a book that depicts the way you want your life to be, in all aspects of your life. This is particularly powerful for some people because it is based on their individual values, beliefs, goals, needs, and desires and encompasses twelve categories of life, so it is a very straightforward tool which allows for a clearer vision of your ideal life. These categories include your vision for your health and fitness, intellectual life, emotional life, character (characteristics/traits you want to have), spiritual life, love relationship, parenting, social life, financial life, career, quality of life, and your life vision (what it's all supposed to look like).

Jon has a program you can follow, or you can make your own, much in the same way you would make a Vision Board. Just get yourself a journal, notebook or scrap-booking book and you'll be set and ready to make your own Lifebook. Use pictures, words, and anything else you might think of to make this picture of your life-to-be.

The last tool we're going to talk about is journaling. This is definitely an option most enjoyed by the writers of our world. Basically you write the story of your life, much like you would write a fictional story, but here's the best part – it's your story for your dream that's going to come true! The key is to write everything in the present tense, and be as positive with your wording as you can. Write it how you want your life to be. Read that story every day and feel the feelings of having the life of your dreams.

Happy creating!

Check out these websites and what they have to offer:

Vision Board – www.johnassaraf.com/events-attractions/the-complete-vision-board-kit-is-here

Mind Movies – www.mindmovies.com
Lifebook – www.mylifebook.com