Vision-casting for the year ahead is the name of the game come late December / early January.  You can really create a vision board any time of the year, but the switchover to a fresh new year is often an inspiring time to tackle this.

While you may have done a version of a vision board in the past, I’m sharing the process I use because I take several of my interests: vision-casting, dreaming big, Feng Shui & energy, personal development and manifestation practices…to create a board with intention and focus.

Here are the 5 steps to create your 2021 vision board:

STEP 01: CLARIFY YOUR 2021 GOALS & DESIRES

This is where I like to use some of the core principles of Feng Shui and the Bagua Map.  If you’re not familiar with Feng Shui, it’s a Chinese philosophy and practice to harmonize your surrounding environment (think your home or your workspace) to create an energy flow that’s aligned with your goals, desires and intentions.

The Bagua Map shows how you map your environment and what area of each room, your house, or office space you’re in represents certain parts of your life.  Here's a graphic representation of a bagua map and there are 9 areas:

So, while we’re not necessarily “feng-shui-ing” your space in this exercise, we are going to use the 9 areas to focus our intentions for 2021.

PRO-TIP: This way, if you do practice feng shui in your space or you’d like to, you’re already halfway there setting your intentions and then you can follow up and learn more about what else you can do in your physical space to boost the energy and frequency around manifesting your desires.

Brainstorm what you’d like to improve, manifest or create in each of these areas in 2021:

MONEY

Envision how you’d like your wealth and prosperity to grow in 2021.  What does it look like to you?

• Is it paying off debt?

• Earning a certain 5 figure income per month?

• Buying a house with ease?

• Managing your finances better?

• Maybe just feeling comfortable and confident raising your prices for your business?

FAMILY

Your family covers a wide swath of people and you should use this area to envision exactly what you want to create for your life:

• Want to make it a point to stay in touch better with parents & extended family?

• Are you working to create your own immediate family through pregnancy or adoption?

• Do you want to focus on the “family you choose” in your close friends and doubling down on those relationships?

• What is it you want to see happen for you and your family in 2021? Dinners together at the family table every night?

KNOWLEDGE

This is your area of wisdom, personal growth and development.  Envision what you’d like to learn in 2021:

• Is it new strategies to accelerate your business growth?

• Or that you want to read a new book per month?

• Perhaps you want to make time for a personal or business retreat to gain new knowledge?

• This could also be about how you share your knowledge as an expert…

CAREER

What is your mission and higher purpose?  Your career is finding and following your life path, and since most of you here are entrepreneurs, this is where you want to envision what you want to create, put out in the world, help people with, or offer & provide:

• What are your big goals for your business in 2021?

• If you could make 3 big things happen this year, what would they be?

• Never forget why you do what you do - envision how you’ll help your clients…

• Are you growing a community as part of your mission? What are your goals for that?

• Dream up all the things you want to make happen for your business in 2021…

TRAVEL

You’re probably tired of staying home, so let’s all be optimistic that the world will come back to some semblance of normal soon and we can start planning for those fun trips, conferences in other cities, vacations to unplug and retreats to boost our development:

• Where do you want to go? African safari?

• Do you want take your family to Disneyland?

• Planning a business retreat to Europe?

• Maybe you just want to plan for one long weekend away with your sweetie per quarter…

CHILDREN

In Feng Shui, the area on the bagua map for children also represents creativity.  It’s because when you’re creative, you’re birthing an idea from scratch and introducing it to the world.  So, for this area you can be envisioning goals and dreams for:

• Literally, how you want life with your kids to look in 2021? Maybe it’s just them in school!

• Adopting a child or getting pregnant and adding to your family?

• A longtime creative desire and endeavor like writing a book…

• Or taking up art classes to kickstart those creative juices…

LOVE

Love bleeds into every area of our life, and is often what propels us forward.  For this area, consider how you want to manifest love in your life:

• How do you want your romantic partnership to be? More intimacy? Clearer communication?

• Do you want to incorporate date nights at least once a week?

• Are you single and want to get on those dating apps again and meet your person?

• Also consider relationships of any kind in your life: do you want to be more intentional with who you’re surrounding yourself with in life and business?

REPUTATION

Don’t get squirmy when thinking about your reputation.  What is really means, is what do you want to be known for?  And, how do you envision becoming more visible for what you do and how you serve?

• This could look like starting a podcast in 2021…

• Manifesting 10-15 opportunities to be interviewed on other peoples’ podcasts…

• Finding new ways to get in front of other people’s audiences who are aligned with yours…

• It could mean giving back and investing profits from your business into charities you stand behind…

HEALTH

New year, new you.  We all know that saying well, but what do your health goals for this upcoming year uniquely look like to you?

• Want to get slimmer, trimmer and stronger?

• Start that pilates class and commit to it 2x a week?

• Eating foods that sync with your cycle for optimum energy?

• Walking your dog daily?

• Don’t forget to consider your mental health and what helps support you that way - daily meditation? Vacation time? Not working weekends?

STEP 02: CREATE AN AFFIRMATION FOR EACH AREA

Once you’ve brainstormed all the things you can think of for each of these 9 areas, I want you to write ONE affirmation for each area to help you remember your intention.

So, even though you may have written down 11 things in your Health area, you may decide to boil down your Health affirmation to this:

I feel good in my body, my clothes fit well, and I boost my energy with nutritious foods, good sleep and regular time off.

You can also prioritize the 2-3 main areas you really want to focus on improving in 2021 (say it’s health, money and love for you)…then, go ahead and create 2-3 affirmations for each of your top priority areas for 2021.  Keep your affirmations handy and I like to write them down regularly in my journal (it helps to physically write them out), or to say them out loud before I start my daily meditation.

STEP 03: VISUALLY EXPRESS TO MANIFEST

Now, the really fun part!  You can go old school with this and cut images, words and inspiring pictures out of magazines to paste on a poster board.  Or, you can let your fingers wander over to Pinterest and start collecting images that represent what you want to create in each of these 9 areas.

You’ll probably find a lot of images, so you can worry about editing later, but for now, go crazy and just start downloading those images and words that really inspire you and reflect what you are envisioning for yourself, your loved one, your business, your health, your travel, etc etc.

STEP 04: CREATE YOUR BOARD

Whether you’ve chosen to create a physical board or a digital one on Canva, the idea with this vision board is to place the images you found in the appropriate area on the board that matches where those areas are on the Feng Shui Bagua Map.

For instance, if you have words and photos that represent what you want to manifest in for your money and wealth in 2021, you’re going to place them in the upper left hand corner of the board.  For career?  The bottom middle.  For children and creativity?  The right middle.  Follow the bagua map and create your board so the energy for each of the 9 areas is flowing in the right space! 

STEP 05: PLACE IT WHERE YOU’LL SEE IT

You want to put your vision board where you can see it everyday.

I learned this one from some friends on Instagram: I created one version of my board and used Canva to create a template to use on my iPhone lock screen as the wallpaper so I see my goals and intentions every time I pick up my phone (which is a lot!).

BONUS:

You’ve come this far, so now I want to encourage your to set a few more intentions for 2021.

Choose A Word Of The Year

What word encapsulates everything you want to manifest, or who you want to be in order to manifest these desires you’ve laid out on your vision board?  

It can be any word you want, just be sure it’s meaningful to you.  Once chosen, set a daily alarm as a reminder on your phone - if you go into the alarm settings you can actually customize your phone alarm to have a label.  Write your word of the year on that label, and maybe you set it for every afternoon at 3pm…you know, that afternoon slump time where you need a pick me up?  

Reminding yourself of your word daily and remembering why you chose it in the first place will help keep you on track to manifest your 2021 vision.

Choose A Symbol Of The Year

I don’t just stop at a word…I like to choose a symbol of the year, too.  In fact, you can go back and add this to your vision board if you’d like to. Or find a piece of art, a necklace, a bracelet, or simply print out a picture from Pinterest of your symbol keep it in your line of sight.

Last year, my symbol was a sunflower.  Did you know that sunflowers represent personal power?  They also always look towards the light.  And, when the sun isn’t out to turn towards, sunflowers turn and face each other because just like the concept of namaste in yoga, the light in them recognizes the light in another.

In 2020, I was using the symbol of the sunflower to remind myself to stand in my power, to be the light, and to turn towards the light in others when I need support.  It worked.

Choose A Monthly Intention

If you’d like to take a page out of my book, I like to also have a monthly intention that supports my bigger goals.  This is helpful so you can explore different ways of “being” and “doing” during the year and see what really resonates and works for you.

Based on your plans for January, who do you need to be to make it a stellar month?  Your January intention could be: Purpose, Focus, or New…just choose a word or short phrase that helps you achieve your goals for January.

Happy vision-boarding and intention-setting!  Be sure you’re following me over on Instagram, because I’ll be dropping my Word Of The Year, Symbol Of The Year and January Intention over there on New Years Day!