Visualise your dreams and intentions

Feelings: Feel connected, feel inspired.

Time required: 30 to 60 minutes to reflect, create and find inspiration.

What you’ll need: A physical or digital vision board medium. Grab poster board, magazines and scissors, or start a fresh Pinterest board.

ABOUT THE RITUAL

Oh, the places you will go.

This phrase is more than a cliché; it’s incredibly true. Every year brings life-changing transformation in ways we couldn’t have seen coming. From personal expansion to achieving big milestones, discovering unexpected joys to embarking on new adventures — looking ahead can feel inspiring and deeply exciting.

But it can feel a bit overwhelming, too.

We often put so much pressure on ourselves to achieve. We feel pressured to balance, to commit, to manage, to succeed in… well, everything. With so many weights on our shoulders, looking ahead to the next year can feel like a daunting task.

This vision board activity asks you to cut out the heavy stuff and focus on what brings you light. Rather than a distinct list of goals, activities and must-do’s, we encourage you to use this ritual to uncover more about who you are, what you want, and where you want to go, even if you haven’t carved out the details yet.

Throughout this activity, aim to centre yourself into a creative, inspired state of mind where you believe anything is possible and everything you hope for will happen. You will be amazed at what you uncover when you place no limits on your wildest dreams.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Find time and space for creativity and no-limits imagination. Set up your blank slate, whether it be a physical poster board or a virtual vision board medium.

2. Set aside your thoughts on the how. Don’t focus on technicalities. Stop yourself from considering whether something is ‘realistic’. This activity is an expression of your innermost wants and desires, so try to be mindful of when you restrict your ideas or place limiting beliefs on yourself.

3. Begin to pin, paste or post any bits and pieces that spark the imagination. Grab images that inspire you, words and phrases that light you up, and visual pieces that feel aligned with you. If anything causes an emotional reaction in your body — stirring in your heart or butterflies in your belly — capture it and keep it on your vision board.

4. Get lost in mindful moments of creativity. Continue until your vision board feels complete.

5. Review and reflect. Take a step back and inspect what you have created from a birds-eye view. What sort of person does this vision board represent? Does this feel like who you are now, who you want to be, or a blend of the two? Has it inspired any new goals or changes for the next year? How can you bring this inspiration into the next twelve months?

6. Keep your vision board somewhere safe, so you can check back in a year. By setting your intentions, even if you don’t understand what they mean, you allow these ideas and elements to find their way into your life. It will be a moment of magic to look back and see how far you’ve come.