How long is your New Year’s resolutions list? Does the list include more than half a 
dozen items? Or, do some of those items appear over and over again each year? If you answered yes to either of the last two questions, it’s time to do something different. So, let’s look at a better way to construct and engage with your resolutions and 2024 vision board.
With a more holistic and focused board design as well as regular engagement, you’ll up your chances of succeeding this coming year.
7 Key Vision Board Attributes To Supercharge Your Resolutions
1. Focus and Integrate Your Intentions
First things first, don’t try to change everything you don’t like about yourself or your life within just one year. If you’re like most people, that list of dislikes is long and includes a number of inveterate undesirable behaviors or pie-in-sky ambitions. More realistically, you’d need a singularly dedicated vision board for just one of those big challenges.
So, instead of including everything, make a focused board. Gather your likes and dislikes, prioritize your objectives, and craft a single 2024 resolution and board. The accompanying photo illustrates a board singularly focused on increasing self-confidence.
If the one resolution seems too limited, pick one or two more. But, make sure they’re related, complementary, or supportive to the original resolution because you don’t want to complicate the overall message of your board. You can see in the photo the words self-assured and authentic. These words are inextricably related to self-confidence. The same rule can be applied to a resolution regarding a difficult change. In this case, break that challenging goal down into at most three interrelated and manageable constituents.
For example, if your resolution is to get better sleep, you might commit to experimenting with and ultimately adopting one or two changes in your bedtime routine. Your board would then reflect these changes along with better sleep. You can always modify and add to the board as you successfully adopt good pre-bed practices.
One final note on intentions. They don’t need to be action-orientated. They could be about perspective-taking or gaining clarity on something. To this end, they don’t need to be fully resolved within one year. But, do define them according to what is doable in the coming year.
Once you’ve narrowed down your intentions, look for images and phrases that remind you of and focus your attention on what contributes to fulfilling these intentions. Include them on your 2024 vision board. Exclude photos and phrases that don’t quite represent what you want. That will only dampen the power of the board. This will keep you focused and build energy around those key themes for this coming year.
2. Use Images that Represent Your Version of Success
Use photos, illustrations, and other types of images or objects. Images stimulate brain attention and entrainment. In fact, images are more effective than words or affirmations because, according to Dr. Tara Swart, “the brain assigns a higher ‘value’ to images than written words on a “to-do’ list” and it imprints images onto your subconscious (your body-mind), filtering out any unnecessary information.
Add to this, the brain treats images as direct experiences, which capture the full sense or mind-body experience of the thing or concept portrayed on the board, and the brain doesn’t register the difference between actually seeing something and the image.
3. Use Words and Phrases That Orient, Reinforce, and Remind
Words and phrases engage your thinking brain or head-brain. They serve as reminders of your intentions and cues for you to form thoughts, ruminations, and beliefs associated with your desired outcomes.
Single words and oddly constructed phrases cause your mind to wonder, open up, and wander. This is because it has a natural tendency to want to make sense of incomplete or strange thoughts. This curious frame of mind helps you push away rigid limiting beliefs and pull in fresh ideas and beliefs about yourself and your situation. This is what you want from your vision board.
One final note on words and phrases. Always make them positive and representative of what you want your outcome to look like. Don’t use negations like “don’t lie to my partner” or “eat less sugar.” See my blog post Setting Intentions That Work for more on crafting your intentions.
4. Integrate the Board to Engage the Whole of You and Your Imagined Experience of Success
Because images and words interact with and stimulate the head-brain and body-brain differently, construct a board with a bit of both. And, create some overlap so you’re sure to engage both for a single theme. The attached photo provides an example. There is a picture of a young girl superhero next to the words self-confidence.
5. Keep It Where You’ll See It EVERY Day
Of course, the effectiveness of your 24 vision board depends on the attention you give to it. It can only remind you of your intentions and the sense of your desired outcome IF you keep it where you’ll regularly see it, preferably daily.
Furthermore, it’s critical that you also work with your board regularly. Make a habit of looking at it, imagining how you can bring your resolution(s) to fruition. This might be through meditation, crystal grids, or energy healing.
You can even create personalized rituals or ceremonies, which can enhance the significance of your board’s contents as well as more profoundly imprint intentions.
Don’t forget to take action steps regularly – even small steps – to help you achieve your intentions.
6. Practice Being Your 2024 Vision Board
Visualize and embody the results you want to see in the coming year. This means practice “being” the final result you want. To do this, take on the posture, mindset, and the whole shape of who you’ll be on the inside and outside. This behavior creates the emotional, biophysical, and biochemical states as well as the neurological networks that correspond to the new desired way of being. (See my blog for more on the importance of embodiment and embodied awareness.)
7. Change What Isn’t Working
Feel free to edit or change 2024 your vision board as move through the year. Typically, you learn and evolve along a journey. You want to make sure to incorporate this wisdom. You can change your board to incorporate what you learn, how you feel about the process, or new notions about the desired outcome.
