Tips on how to make the best vision boards ever for you and your family!
Tips on how to make the best vision boards ever for you and your family!
Tanna K. Strom MS, LMFT, LPC, RPT-S, CCPS
Licensed Marital & Family Therapist
Licensed Professional Counselor & Supervisor
Registered Play Therapist & Supervisor
Certified Child & Parenting Specialist 
My goal is still to post bite sized pieces of information that can be helpful to your individual well being or to your relationships with your loved ones. Plus, I post information that could be helpful to other mental health professionals. And of course updates on my trainings that I do and other information about my private practice. 
Specifically you will find: Books, Websites, CD's and other resources in the area of Well Being and Relationship Building. I will at times post info on activites that I feel will be of interest to you. Plus inspirational quotes and short well being and relationship building articles.
~building connection, fun, & love in your relationships~
I very much enjoy writing my weekly blog. I hope you will find this blog helpful to you.  
Basic categories of my blog are: Relationship Building, Couple Activites, Family Activities, Families in Transition and Well Being. 
If you have not checked out my blog I hope you will do so. Consider becoming a follower so these weekly posts can be delivered to your email inbox directly. 
Positive Thinking 
Believing in Your Vision Board
Belief and faith are the key components for any vision work. This is what puts the process into action. It will lead to your building of the specific actions and steps that you need to do to reach your goals. 
Note the vision board in the above picture in which an individual put an affirmation statement by each picture or topic area. This is one way to put specific words with your vision to give it a bit more power. 
Belief in your self and your vision will take you where you want to go! 
A Professional Quarterly Newsletter
for
those interested in 
Individual Well Being & Healthy Relationships
Winter 2015
Creating Powerful Vision Boards
In this issue ...
  1. Individual Growth & Well Being – Creating YOUR  Vision Board
  2. Couple Connection & Intimacy – A Couple's Vision Board
  3. Family: Creating a Healthy Home Base –  A Family's Vision
  4. Thoughtful Parenting – Your Child or Teen's  Own Personal Vision Board
  5. Strom Therapy Facebook - Update 
  6. Strom Therapy Relationship Blog – Update
  7. Positive Thinking - Believing in Your Vision Board
Individual Growth & Well Being
Creating YOUR "Vision Board"
Vision boards are a powerful tool to help you begin to get clear on what you want and to create a visual focus to take in each day as a reminder as to what it is you really want and desire, which leads to your concrete actions to make it happen.  I am listing some of the basic steps in putting together a vision board. As there is more than one way to do a vision board I hope the following will help you create your own steps in making your own personal vision board that you feel would be most helpful for you.
  1. What makes me happy? What do I feel passionate about? What am I good at ? What do I want? What goals or visions do I have for myself. I found actually writing out the answers to these questions helpful as I could visually go back and look at what I had written and contemplate it all a bit. This is my personal version of doing some foundational work before I begin forming my vision. I think recognizing  what makes you happy and makes you feel alive and what special gifts you possess all sets a frame for feeling grateful. And I do feel being thankful opens us to more abundance in our lives. 
  2. Collect materials you want to use to put together your vision board. You will want to have a base to create your vision. This can be posterboard or a bulletin board or whatever material you would like to use. Some folks like the idea of using a format that can be saved. Some do a yearly vision board and keep their collection of boards to look back through, etc. As to what you put on your board, you can use pictures from magazines or real photographs or things printed from the internet. Quotes, sayings, words that show what you want, etc can be cut out from magazines or handmade to apply or they can be written on directly. There is no wrong or right way as to what materials you use. This is about finding visual materials that show your desires and feels like a fit for you in that it feels pleasing to you. 
    Of course you will need adhesive material to apply whatever materials you do not draw or write direclty onto the board. Plus, scissors. 
  3. Decide if you want your vision board to be a personal one or one in regard to your work or both. Another option is to potentially focus on a very specific area. For example your health or your social life, etc.      
    After you decide what your board is about, you will then have to decide if it is most helpful to "go general" or "go very detailed" or "someplace between general and detailed" with your visual images.  There are proponents of all of these. Some feel that "going general" leaves open lots of spaces for ideas to flow in future time. The thought here is that you are not limiting yourself by setting yourself up a one and only one specific thing. Others feel the more detailed the better, so that your mind will reach for that specific thing. I have chosen a middle of the road approach for myself. Everyone will have to decide what would work best with what they are hoping for and how they believe this process works. 
  4. Feelings You Want versus Way of Living You Want versus Concrete Things You Want? I think these are all possibilities. One thing that I discovered it for me they all sort of go together.  And all had a place on my board. But again no right or wrong with this, all about what you want and choose to focus on. 
  5. Create your "Vision Board". This will involve selecting what you specifically want on your board. It will involve deciding how much you want on your board. Playing with and deciding what feels best as to arrangement / placement is important. You want this to be pleasing to you and something that you will be able to make sense of and that shows your focus areas clearly. So take your time. You might even choose to work on it, leave it and come back to it again.
  6. Determine where to display your vision board. This is a personal preference. Ideally you would probably want to have it in a place that you would see daily. 
  7. Be with your vision board. Let the images sink in and see this happening for yourself. This means taking some time with it each day. Really looking at all the different pieces each day. The more we focus on something, the more we will see it happen.
Note: One thing to consider is to give yourself more than one time frame to work on this. You want this to be an enjoyable project, one that brings you joy and that you associate good feelings with. 

Couple Communication & Intimacy
A Couple's Vision Board
Creating a couple's vision board could be a very connecting activity. A way to firm up what your most current desires are as a couple.  It would be similar to the steps I have outlined above, but with a few shifts. They are as follows:
  1. Shift from what makes me happy to what makes us happy? What do we desire, what do we want as a couple? Shift from what goals  / visions do we have for ourselves to what goals / visions do we have for us as a couple. The focus is on what is desired as a couple. Make sure you include what  you want in your relationship as only focusing on material things can make your vision board very limiting. 
  2. Collaborate as a couple as to how you want to design the board - general or more detailed, what kinds of pics and words, design or look of the board, etc. 
  3. After your vision board is in place and as time passes, note to each other any parts of the vision board that is happening. This can help to keep progress moving as you notice the good stuff that is beginning to take place. Remember progress counts!

Family: Creating a Healthy Home Base
A Family's Vision
Want to teach your children how to set goals and focus on those goals, then you might consider creating a family vision board. This can serve as an excellent model for helping children to begin to set goals for themselves.
The initail steps I wrote about in my first segment can serve as a guide in doing a family "vision board". There are a few shifts and things to consider as I have noted below.
  1. Brainstorm as a family as to what might make your family happier or what might be a good goal for the family. Possibly each person in the family could choose one vision for what they think might be a goal or vision that would make the family happier. 
  2. The family vision board might be set up where each member has a section of the board to paste or create their images and words. 
  3. The other option in regard to what vision to put on the board, could be one in which the family decides together what things they all feel would help. This is bit more complex to handle and would have to be done carefully. Parent would want to make sure everyone had some part of their vision or goal acknowledged on the board. (With all of these options parents may need to work with the family as to the process, helping everyone understand what the purpose of a vision board is. Of course developmental age of the children would be something to take into consideration. The younger your children the more simple the process and board would be. 
  4. Break this project up due to attention spans and make it enjoyable. You want this to be a positive, uplifing experience for everyone.
  5. Find a place that all could view the family vision board. Locate a place where all is in at one time or another each day. 
  6. Make sure to help family members understand the importance of looking at the vision board every day to help remember the vision. You might talk about in detail how this might look as children are more concrete in their their thinking. The younger your children the more detailed the better.
  7. Ask family members to tell the family if they see some of the things from the vision board happening. What a wonderful way of encouraging and promoting the visions created. 
Note: An alternative to this joint family board would be for each person to make their own personal board as displayed in the pic above. 
Thoughtful Parenting
Your Child or Teen's Own Personal Vision Board
What better way of helping children become more focused and to learn the fundamental law of when we focus on something we are going to get more of whatever that is. 
Things to Consider with a Child's Vision Board:
  1. What to Put on the Vision Board. There may need to be a discussion about what kinds of things you would want to put on a vision board. Just putting toys and games that a child wants may limit all that a vision board can offer. As parents you may want to huddle on this one and decide what angle you want to take on this. Remember you can go with kinds of feelings you want more of. You can go with possible solutions to things that are upsetting. You can go with what you want more of at school or more of at home. 
  2. Choosing to Have a Simple Board with Only One - Three Focus Areas. Fewer items will give a more clear focus and intent and may feel more helpful for a child.
  3. Help Chlldren and Teens Know How to Use the Vision Board After it is Up. Helping your child or teen know that the more they focus on this the more ideas will come to them as to how to make this happen for them. Also that they will have to do the follow up action to make it work. 
  4. Acknowledge Progress that Occurs. Encourage your chlld or teen with acknowleding and talking about what you see going on that are working on. Maybe they say they want more friends. When they invite a child to come over, this would be a time to acknowledge the step they made to begin to be more social with other children, thus possibly leading to more friendships. 


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