Dream Boards for Quiet Creatives

Hey there gorgeous,

I’ve got something powerful to share with you today. Something that might just change your life.  Radically alter it if you will. Something that I’ve not done for a few years, but having done before, absolutely know the magic it can unleash.

I’m talking about Dream boarding.

Dream boarding, otherwise referred to as vision boarding, is a creative and visual practice people use to clarify, concentrate, and maintain focus on specific life goals and desires.

When you make a dream board you basically create a collage (or board) that visually represents your dreams, goals, and desires.  Once made, you display it somewhere you will see it every day.

The concept behind Dream boarding is that when you are constantly in the presence of images showing what you want to achieve, it will influence your actions and decisions on a subconscious level, to help bring you closer to your objectives. It’s a bit like having a visual mantra that encapsulates what you want from the year ahead. Instead of saying a mantra or affirmation to yourself, you visually experience your dreams and aspirations. On repeat.

If you’re a visual thinker like me, it’s a brilliant way to bring into your orbit the things you truly desire from life.

What can you use dream boarding for?

In the past I’ve used dream boarding to :

-bring into my orbit magazine features and interviews (literally every magazine I and my pottery have been featured in was on a Dream board of mine at some stage)

-help clarify the feelings I want to embody in my life and business (rustic, vintage, country, beauty, relaxed, cosy, unhurried)

-crystallize in my minds eye what various areas in my house could look and feel like (hello vintage wooden pigeon holes in the kitchen and my entire dry goods cupboard filled with vintage glass bottles)

-help me reaffirm the ways I enjoy spending my ‘me’ time ( walking on back country roads picking wild olives on crisp winter mornings, gumboots on and mittens in hand)

This year I’m using Dream boarding to manifest my dream rustic country house. A rambling garden with established orchard are non negotiables. A sense of space and seclusion are too. Add stone garden walls, wide verandas, poultry and a vegetable garden and you get the picture.

If you have never made a dream board before and have big aspirations for this year, I highly recommend you put aside a few hours this weekend to do so.  It’s actually a really fun thing to do, and not a bit like work.

I mapped out steps below to help guide you on the way.

How to create a dream board:

First up, gather together your source materials.  You want to be looking for images and quotes that resonate with what you would like to bring into your life. If there are magazines that you want to be featured in they are a great place to start.

Other source materials could include your Instagram saved folders, Pinterest, and screen shots from your phone. If there are digital images that you really want to include you can print them out.  Contemplate using a tool like Canva to bring quotes and images together online in a single document you can print out to cut up later.

Next up grab a pen and paper and outline your goals for the year ahead. Take note of how you want to feel throughout the year.  How do you want to feel in your business and family life? How much money do you want to make and in what way?  How do you want to engage with your friends?  What do you want that to look like? What do you want to achieve in terms of personal development (which courses will you do this year, which memberships will you join?) and how do you want to think about your body and health?  Do you have places you want to visit or holidays you want to take? This step is basically just a great big brain dump of all the good things you want to work towards and bring into being over the following 12 months. Don’t forget your Instagram goals too. Want to hit 5k followers this year? Write that down.

My headings in this brain dump stage for this year were:

Work

Home

Health

Profile

Relationships

Personal Growth

How do I want to feel?

Now, the really fun part.  Visually bringing together all the elements on the Dream board itself.

You can do this digitally or in the real world, but as a tactile and super visual person I find literally making a collage onto a cork board or large sheet of cardboard works best for me.

Grab a cuppa and a sharp pair of scissors, a glue stick and card or a corkboard and pins.

Now you get to pour over all the words and images you’ve gathered together, looking for those that speak most strongly to everything you have written about. When you identify images that resonate, cut them out, print them off or handwrite them onto cards, and loosely arrange them on your board. When it is all covered and looking delicious, attach them to the board.

The key here is make this board feel really appealing.  You want it to feel like a you have created a great big beautiful present of a year for yourself.

Finally, and this last step is important, you need to find somewhere to put the completed dream board.  Keeping it looking gorgeous helps here because you want it somewhere you will see it multiple times a day, if not have it in proximity to you for multiple hours a day.  You want to integrate and associate all those lovely things you have gathered together with your concept of who you are and what you are going to do in the oncoming year.

To supercharge the power of this exercise, integrate into your daily routine 5 minutes of dream board contemplation. If you’ve got your dream board on a wall in your studio, make it the very first thing you look at every single morning.  Visualise yourself stepping into those places, achieving those goals, having those experiences. Feel what it feels like to be the person living that life. Feel the motivation to fully embody it.  Feel that visual encouragement to continue to take intentional actions towards making your dreams become reality.

It’s fun and exciting, right?

Let me know how you go.

X Ilona

PS If you have only just got back from holidays and not yet readied yourself for the year ahead Instagram-wise, don’t forget to head to this post to check out my January Instagram Checklist.

Written by Ilona Glastonbury