5 Ways a Vision Board Reduces Stress

Do you like window shopping?  How about going to open houses and looking at really nice houses in your area?  Do you car shop when you aren’t in the market for a new car? One day I discovered that I really didn’t like to do these things because it just made me feel bad about my current life.  I was so stressed about my current life, that I had stopped dreaming. It hurt too much to look at things that I would like but couldn’t have.

Now, I’m all for being content with what you have and sometimes these activities I’ve mentioned as well as our constant view of the best of other people’s lives on social media or HGTV, can be a source of causing discontent, jealousy or stress and should be avoided.  

What I found though with my inability to enjoy dreaming was that I had started to “just go along for the ride” in life, whatever happened was happening to me and out of my control, and that resulted in me not going the direction I wanted to go.  Think about being the driver of a car versus the passenger. The driver is in control (even when others try to be back seat drivers) and if they make a wrong turn, they have the ability to make corrections and get themselves back on track. A passenger, on the other hand, is watching the world fly by as they look out the window.  They are not in control of the direction of the car or the destination.

A major key in busting through stress is taking on self-responsibility to think and respond differently.  When we are in the driver’s seat and controlling the pain, thoughts, and feelings, and we don’t let them control us, we are set free to start reigning in life (controlling the direction our life goes).

Instead of life happening to you (much of which you won’t want or like), you grab life by both hands and make decisions and choices that change your current reality into the life that you want, and even more importantly, the life that Jesus died to provide for you and wants for you.

One way to take this control is to create a vision board.  Here are 5 ways a vision board helps with stress…

1. Surrounding yourself with images of your vision for life makes you energized.  Stress sucks the life and energy out of you.  Everything seems like a big deal. Everything sounds like a lot of work. And you are tired.  People without a plan, meaning, purpose or hope feel dead inside. Proverbs 28:18 KJV “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” They lack energy, don’t want to leave the house, they have few friends and lead boring lives.  But just a glimpse of what could be revitalizes their hope and energizes their lives. A vision, a plan, a goal to pursue when done correctly, can give you new energy.
   
   
2. A vision board increases your joy level because it ensures that what you are looking at is positive, future-focused and what you want out of life.  Instead of looking at what you currently have all the time, you look at where you are headed.  Just like I talk about in my book, What Are You Looking At? Finding Joy in the Chaos and Monotony of Life, my joy levels were in direct relationship to what I was looking at.  It is too easy to get stuck in the microscope view of life where all you can see is the problem and it looks big! But there is this whole other world or life going on around you that having a vision will allow you to see and participate in.
   
   
3. Progression in life is possible when you have something you are working towards.  No results, growth or progression happens when you have no goal.  “Where there are no goals, neither will there be significant accomplishments. There will only be existence.”  (Anonymous). Complacency is the greatest enemy of possibility. You don’t need a perfect life to have less stress.  You need progress. We have been made so that just a sliver of hope, a sliver of success, a sliver of progress makes it possible for us to get back up and go again.
   
   
4. Vision boards engage a part of your being that God created - imagination. You cannot have a larger life with a restricted imagination.  You actually limit God when you don’t use your imagination.  He used this part of our beings to help Abraham imagine having as many descendants as there were grains of sand - and Abe lived in the desert!  He looked at sand all the time. God uses our imaginations for us to be able to “buy in” fully to the big things God wants to accomplish in and through us. Engaging your imaginations is a pretty big deal because in Genesis 11:6 at the Tower of Babel, God said, “This is only the beginning of what they will do, and now nothing they have imagined they can do will be impossible for them.”  If that was true of people living from the natural realm without the aid of the Holy Spirit or the rebirth, how much more so can that be true of us that do have the Holy Spirit, are born again and live from the spirit?!
   
   
5. The people who have the most success in life visualize their desired results.  They are very clear about what they want to achieve.  Unsuccessful people are hazy, unclear and uncertain about tomorrow.  They just wake up and see what happens. The life you live today is the result of what you thought about life yesterday. By using a vision board you’ll be thinking victorious thoughts, God’s will on earth thoughts, and overcoming thoughts. Proverbs 23:7 “Whatever a man thinks in his heart, so is he." Your beliefs are simply a reflection of the dominating thoughts being entertained in your mind. If you entertain God’s thoughts about you and life long enough, they’ll become your dominating thoughts and turn into your realities.

If you can see nothing for your future, I’m convinced you can expect nothing.  A vision board will keep you focused when life gets hard, when doubts come, when naysayers say it can’t happen, when you want to give up, when you feel like you have lost the battle.  A vision board will let you rise again, declare God’s Word over your life, defeat the enemy and see the goodness of God in your life. He wants to show Himself strong on your behalf even more than you want him to do it.  

If you have realized that the last five years of your life have yielded few results that you are excited about, then perhaps you need a vision for your future.  And if you are like I was at one point where I hadn’t allowed myself to dream about possibilities, your dream muscles may be out of shape and need some practice.  Putting together a vision board is more than just a craft project. There is real power to bust through stress with it.

In my program: Stressed to Blessed: The 90 Day Joy Solution, I help my coaching clients create a vision board and know what to do with it after it is created to bring about lasting change.  Schedule a time to meet with me by phone for FREE to see if this program would be right for you.