Electronic Vision Board

I am so excited! I was thinking about the Vision Board (or Treasure Map, or Visual Explorer) I wanted to create. It dawned upon me that instead of going driving around to find old magazines, or worse yet, buy magazines, that I could just take advantage of the free images provided on Google Images. I could just print those out and paste them to a poster board.

But that would mean that I would have to go out to buy a poster board (can you see I am trying to limit my time in the car wasting gas for the betterment of our planet?) It would also mean that I would have to print color pictures. Which wouldn’t be a problem, if I had a color printer. There is always the option of printing them at Kinko’s or some other copy place. That could run you a pretty penny, though (I am not trying to minimize the benefit of a physical vision board, I would probably create one of these, also!).

Concurrently, I was looking around my room trying to think of the place that I spent the majority of time “looking.” In other words, the best place for me to put my vision board. I spend the greatest amount of my time on my desktop computer and my small laptop (which I often take with me when I leave the house.) Then it dawned on me, I spend the majority of time “looking” at my computer. Wouldn’t it be cool, I thought, if I could have my vision board as my desktop wallpaper!

Now, I had used wallpaper that I had found ready-made on the Internet, I’d once used a picture of my son as wall paper, but I wondered if there was a way for me to create some kind of collage of the items I would like on my vision board. So I Googled the idea. Sure enough, there were a ton of products available for making collages that could be turned into wallpaper on my desktop. Including one that I already had on my computer – Picasa! The best part about Picasa is that it is FREE!

Below is a sample Vision Board that I created:

What is Vision Boarding?

(This next section if for those who do not understand clearly what a vision board is. If you already know what a vision board or treasure map is, then you may want to skip down to the directions for creating one to use as your wallpaper.)

Okay, I am a total novice when it comes to vision boarding. I have never made one work. That only means, to me anyway, that I haven’t really tried. I have, however, met enough people that I trust to know that it is something that works. I made this post not because I am an expert at vision-boarding, but because I thought of a great idea for creating a vision board as wallpaper on your desktop. Those directions are below. If you would like to learn about vision boarding from an expert, by all means, Google it and find someone who can explain it from a professional perspective. That said, I am going to provide my understanding of what a vision board is and how it works.

The mind is a powerful organ. You can trick it into believing what you want it to believe. In doing so, you actually create that which you tricked it into believing. Along with daily affirmations, a vision board can be used to trick the mind into believing that which you desire. This is the gist of what I have understood from such powerful books as Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, any of Catherine Ponder‘s dozen or so prosperity books, and, more recently, Edwene Gaines book The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity. You can read any number of New Thought related material and find more information about The Law of Attraction.

A Vision Board is one way of tricking your mind into believing you are prosperous. When your mind believes you are prosperous, then you actually begin to see it manifested in your life.

As a pretty significant example for me, I did not find my perfect career until my mother gave me the space to “find my perfect job and we’ll cover you until you do.” She gave me the freedom to say, okay, this is it, I am going to find my perfect career. When I started my search, foremost in my mind was the question, “Is this my perfect career?” If I said, “No,” I didn’t give it another thought, and I moved on. Because the only thing that was acceptable anymore was my perfect career. By golly, I manifested it!

Now, a vision board could have helped me in that process. But affirmations were enough in that case. Imagine, if you will, seeing the pictures of those things you wanted to manifest as well as affirming with positive statements that this is what you wanted. The people I have met have told me that this is extra powerful. That is why I have created my vision board that you see above. I see it every time I boot up my computer, and anytime I go to my desktop. It is also my screensaver, so if I leave my computer, when I come back, it is there for me to see again.

Steps in Creating a Vision Board

So here are the steps you take for creating a vision board using Picasa:

1. Download Picasa for free here;
2. Once you have uploaded Picasa, open it from where ever you saved it. It will automatically store many, if not all of the images on your computer into Picasa. It may take a few minutes (This is a nice feature which centralizes all of your photos in one place without changing how you already have them set up on your computer);
3. In Picasa, click on File –> New Album and name it (I named mine “Vision Board”). You will notice that there is now a folder with your new file name in the left column. This is where you want to drag all of the pictures you want in your Vision Board;
4. If you already have photos saved on your computer that you would like to use, then drag them to this file;
5. If you don’t, or if you want to add more, go to Google Images to find more. You can type anything. For example, if you dream of going to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, then type in “great barrier reef.” Take your pick!
6. Click on the picture, then click on “See full size image” at the top to see the larger version of it. Now, if you hover over the picture and it has a magnifying glass with a “+” on it, then you have not reached maximum size. I would click on it again until you get maximum size.
7. Then, right-click and go to “Save Image As…” Make sure to save it in Picasa in the specific folder you created for you collage (Note: If you seem to be having trouble saving pictures to a particular folder, just save them into any folder and drag them all to the correct folder later);
8. Once you have 9-12 images or so, make sure they have all been dragged into the file in Picasa that you want to use for your collage;
9. If that file is not highlighted on the left side, make sure you do so;
10. Now, look at the bottom of the page of the Picasa window, you will see a variety of options, click the one that says, “Collage;”
11. On the left side, there will be a drop down arrow right under where it says “Settings,” I prefer the option “Picture Pile” but feel free to pick whatever option works for you;
12. If you do pick “Picture Pile,” you will see a jumble of pictures which you can now organize on your own. You can make them larger or smaller, you can turn them at different angles. Play around with the images until they look the way you want them to look (don’t worry, it will look bigger as your desktop wallpaper);
13. Finally, click on the “Desktop Background” button at the bottom of the left column – Voila, You are done! If you are like me, you will try a few different ways before you get one desktop image that makes you happy.

Additionally, you can create captions for the pictures as you are creating them. I’d imagine there is also a way to add a list of affirmations, as well. I think that is the next thing I am going to try to figure out.

I hope you enjoy this way of making a vision board. I know that I have!