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The Daring Author
The Daring Author
From Dreams to Reality with Vision Boards for Authors
Want to unlock the power of vision boards and turn your 2025 aspirations into reality? Discover how these creative tools not only help you visualise your dreams but also keep them front and center in your mind, setting the stage for your subconscious to get to work. We'll explore the benefits of refreshing your vision board to align with evolving goals and share my personal approach to digital creation using Pinterest. Whether you lean towards digital or physical formats, you'll learn how to craft a compelling visual representation of your aspirations that keeps inspiration alive all year long.
In this episode, we delve into practical strategies for harnessing the motivational power of vision boards. Using tools like Canva, you'll find out how to craft boards that resonate with your dreams and inspire daily action.
The key to transformation is consistency; taking small, daily steps that align with your vision is crucial. We'll also discuss the synergy of using a planner to align daily tasks with long-term goals and invite you to share your creations on social media for communal inspiration and accountability. Get ready to transform your dreams into tangible realities, one day at a time!
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Website: https://thedaringpress.com/
Hello and welcome back to another chapter of the Daring Author podcast. Happy New Year, happy 2025. This is the first episode of 2025, and what better way to kick off the year than talking about vision boards? Now, if you're a visual person like me, you love to see, like all of your goals, your visions, your dreams, everything that you want to achieve for the year ahead. You want to see it visually and I was creating my vision board last week and I was talking to a fellow author friend and I was helping her create her own vision board and then she shared it with me and I thought, oh, I better do a podcast episode on this, because I'm sure a lot of people are in that new year, new energy, and what better way to really kick it off with, yeah, doing a vision board? So I want to kick it off with, you know, talking about why vision boards actually work. Now, before we get into the how-to, what I really want to focus on is what you focus on expands. That's the idea behind vision boards, so they really help you to visualize your goals, really reinforce your dreams daily and keep you aligned with what you truly want and when you see your goals and your visions in front of you, your subconscious mind starts working to make them a reality. So if you really want to like set these big goals for the year and you really want to achieve them, creating a vision board is really like, for me, the first step in my framework that I do to really get the vision moving and have it there visually and start collating the data and then bringing it to life from the vision board, which we'll talk about later.
Speaker 1:What happens after you've done the vision board? Because there has been years where I've done the vision board, I've got the goals, and then I just go on with other stuff and don't actually follow the vision. So or I get distracted, which is fine, like sometimes throughout the year we can go, you know, off the plan, off the rails and be somewhere else, but then, like realigning ourselves with the goals and sometimes I will say a disclaimer sometimes your vision, sometimes your goals might change throughout the year. So it's always good to do a little refresh, maybe even each quarter refreshing and seeing if everything on your vision board actually aligns still or if there's some things that you'd like to tweak, because maybe you've already hit that goal and you want to have some stretchier further goal or the goal that you did set. It just things. Certain opportunities have come and it doesn't feel right for you anymore. So it's no set thing that you know. Whatever you set is what it is for the year ahead.
Speaker 1:All right, so we're going to get into how to create a vision board. So the very first thing that I love doing now I'm going to be talking through digital version of vision boards, but I have in the past also done physical ones. So back in the day before before not even before we had computers, but like back in the day when magazines were a huge thing I would always do a physical board. So I would collect all the magazines that I loved, that were very inspiring, and I'd cut out everything from the physical magazine and start putting it on the vision board. So if that still tickles your fancy, go ahead and do a physical one. It's still the same process, but I'm going to be talking through digital version of your vision board so that we can put it on our desktop backgrounds, we can put it on our phone, we can actually print out a copy and put it in our office home office and that way we can be looking at it all of the time, right? So the first step is collecting inspiration.
Speaker 1:Now, the best place that I love to do this is on Pinterest. So if you don't have a Pinterest account, make sure you do, but I'm sure most of the listeners will have a Pinterest account Now. Create a free account and then start creating a board. That is your 2025 vision. Then what I want you to do is really go start searching in Pinterest. Pinterest is like an SEO, it's like Google. It's an SEO place. So everything that you put into the search engine will come up with your inspiration there. So if you want to put something in the search box that sparks your interest so for me, I sort of started with putting in he was like author life or writing, or I think I started with that and then sort of got clear like found was scrolling through images and this might take some time. You can do this on your phone, you can do it on the computer, wherever it might be. This can take like a week, a couple of weeks. Just find your inspiration and start pinning them to your board. So I always like to have like a heap of images collated on my Pinterest board from like on my vision board.
Speaker 1:I had a lot of writing like I want to this year. I really want to write in a lot of different places, so that means getting outside of my house daunting, I know, getting outside of my house, writing in a lot of different spaces. So I found images that were like the computer and notebooks in a cafe and different places. So for me, that was one vision. Then I also mix it up with quotes as well. One of the quotes that I did have on my vision board is the thing you are most afraid to write write that and that was a quote. So your vision board might you might be really inspired by a lot of quotes and a lot of words. So start pinning those things on there. You might like different quotes, like another one of mine is like trust your creativity, and that's the one I love to put on there. Another one that I have on my vision board it was a little, I don't even know how I found this, but this is with Pinterest.
Speaker 1:You'll start like just searching all these different things and the images that feel really good and that like light you up and that make you feel like, oh, I want that. Well, that's what I envision myself having, and one of the things for me, it was a locket, a love heart locket, and it was opened up and it had a little bit of paper in there and it said you, and for me that really that like the visual for me of that was like loving yourself, and that was one of the things that I really want to focus on of like putting myself first and really working on myself every day and feeling good, and for me, that envisioned that as an example. Another one for me was a lot more reading at the beach, a lot more hanging out with friends at the beach. So I did, did some images of like there was a beach and it was like friends and playing volleyball on the beach. Another one was like in the water just swimming, things like that. So I mixed it up of business, pleasure, pleasure, um. What else do I do Like? Yeah, like personal stuff that I want to feel and focus on, and then, yeah, a lot of like the business, business focused stuff.
Speaker 1:So a lot of my focus this year is online store, growing my online store, my direct sales. So I did some. I found some photos on um. It was a picture of a heap of online orders and you know the shipping labels machine and it had a heap of rolls of orders coming through. So that is like the visual for my goal of growing my online store, my direct sales. That was the visual for me that represented that goal and that vision that I have for myself, and I want to share these examples with you so that you understand what type of images that might really align with your goals. Another one was to go in line with the online store is. There was a picture of a warehouse and it had boxes and boxes and boxes on crates, and for me, that's like visualizing, you know, online orders, having a heap of online orders and bringing lots of stock in of books, and that visual like when I see that, I'm like, yep, I know the goal that is related to that. So another one is like bookshelves, um, collaboration, um.
Speaker 1:There's another thing on mine that just says write, write, write. Which is a big thing of mine in 2025 is focusing on, um, obviously, writing and releasing, which we all have. And then there's the other side, like doing your craft, and then there's the other like business side of it as well, and then there's a lot of, yeah, the personal stuff, and I've got um, I've got a money bag on there and I've got quotes on there, and then I also have, yeah, little little sparks of um, imagery, um, like symbols and stuff like that. That means something to me. So, to sum this up, when you are collecting inspiration on pinterest, find yeah, find things that really make you feel good, that make you feel a lot joyful, that are stretchy goals, that you know are your goals and your vision and imagery really inspires that. That's what we want, all right. So once you've got your Pinterest images and just keep pinning, have as many as you can on your Pinterest board. It doesn't mean that we'll be using all of them on the vision board, but the more you have, the better you can pick and choose for your vision board when it comes to making it. So that's the next step we are going to be designing your vision board in.
Speaker 1:I recommend Canva. Totally up to you. You can create it. You know a physical version of it on a piece of paper, on a cork board, whatever it might be. There's no right or wrong.
Speaker 1:Where I create mine is in Canva, and the reason I do it in Canva is because they've got really cool templates. They've got all the images. Canva is what I use to create graphics and all of that stuff. So I like to keep everything sort of in the one place and that's what feels good for me. So in Canva you can search templates for literally search templates for Vision Board 2025. And then that's what I did with mine.
Speaker 1:And then I found a template that really felt good for me, that you know had had the layout. It's all about the layout and basically that, the layout of it. And then you'll be like plugging and playing and changing the colors, changing the imagery, changing everything in there. But the template that feels really good for you select the imagery, changing everything in there, but the template that feels really good for you, select the template. I like to have mine in landscape first, like I'll create it in landscape so that I can save it on my desktop and save it in my like Notion boards and everything like that. And then, once you have created in landscape, you can actually resize it on Canva to portrait as well, so that you can have it as your phone background, so you can actually resize it to portrait and landscape. So whatever you choose to start with, you can change it in that format.
Speaker 1:So once you have picked your vision board template in Canva. What you want to do is start yeah, you, I recommend like, if you've got two screens, it's really good to have the Pinterest board set up on one screen, you know and then on the other, have your canvas template, canva template, and then start downloading the images from Pinterest and then start uploading them into Canva and then start plugging and playing. So, whatever your template looks like, you can have, yeah, drag images into certain sections and then you can add a word that, like matches with that. So one of mine is like believe. The other one is like take up space, passion, do what makes me feel happy, have fun. And the right one, right, right, right. So just start, yeah, playing with it, bringing over the images, start adding the words.
Speaker 1:You might even want to put your goals on the thing, and there is no right or wrong of how this looks, okay. So one of my author friends we were talking the other day and I sent her mine and then she sent me hers. She's like, oh, mine's a lot more wordy than yours and yours is very visual. I'm like, yeah, but that's okay, because I, for me, what feels really good is to see the visuals of it and words that spark my interest and that's the way that I want it to look, because that's what inspires me. And then, whereas she wanted more words and wanted to have the actual written goal there, and that's what feels really good for her and sparks her inspiration and sparks the vision for her. So there is no right or wrong or how it should look, or there should be X amount of images or X amount of words, like, literally, this is your little playbook, I like to say like a play board almost, and yeah, it can look any way that you like.
Speaker 1:So, add whatever words you want to add in, add whatever images you want to add in, add little symbols in, if that's what feels good for you, and just, yeah, just have fun with it. Put on the music, just feel really good creating it. I know when I created mine, it just felt really good and and I really had fun with it. And then by the end of it, I was like, yes, this really sparks my passion, it feels really good, it inspires me, this is the vision for 2025. So just have fun with it. Let go of all the expectations of how it should look or what you know, if there is anything that comes up, just let that shit go and like, just have fun with it. Have fun with it. Then you want to download it Once you are done, download it onto your computer, onto your phone, in the landscape or portrait, and then put it everywhere that feels really good for you, that you're going to see every day. So on the desktop, as I said before, maybe print it out, put it in your office, put it on your phone as your background, wherever you want to see it every single day. That's where you want it to be.
Speaker 1:Now the vision board is done. So the next sort of thing like what do you do after a vision board? So the next sort of thing is like taking action on your vision. So like the vision board is a powerful tool on its own, but just really remember that visualizing is just the first step. The next step is really taking action. So each day, I want you to ask yourself what small step can I take today to bring me closer to this vision? You know whether it's applying for that, for a certain book bar, but whether it's, you know, putting yourself in a certain position or signing up for whatever it might be, and take that step. First step on the vision. So I'll give you an example of this. So one of mine was to get out more right in different places. So I'm going to ask myself today what small step can I take to bring me closer to that particular part of my vision board? And it's putting on a nice pair of clothes, getting my laptop, walking out the front door, walking to a cafe and actually doing it?
Speaker 1:Taking action we can have the vision, but if we don't take the action, then we're going to get to the end of the year and just complain and be like, oh, 2025 was the shittest year ever, didn't get anywhere. And I've seen this time and time again on my feed and it makes me so like angry and a bit annoyed. And I get it. Things happen. Things will derail us. There's no doubt about that. Things will come up, things will change and all of that.
Speaker 1:But we are in control of what we want to make happen. We're in control of the action that we take. We can't just sit here and be like, oh, it's not happening and I'm not making any sales or I'm not getting towards my vision. If you're just sitting there looking at your vision and not taking any action, then you're not going to get anywhere, and that's the hard truth. Like, that is a hard truth. Don't sit here and suck if things aren't happening, if you're not taking the action steps towards them. So that's what I want you to do every day.
Speaker 1:Be like okay, what step am I taking today to bring me closer to this vision?
Speaker 1:And it might be writing in your daily planner and being like okay, today I'm going to do this, and then you could even put a little thing in there of like okay, how does this relate to the vision?
Speaker 1:Like, is this an action step that is taking me a step forward on my vision board?
Speaker 1:And looking at vision board and like, yep, this goal, this is what I'm focusing on, and this small step today is going to help me in the step system, getting closer and closer to that end goal. All right, I'm going to leave it there. I will do another episode on doing some more planning stuff after the vision board and even looking at some programs and apps that are really good for planning out your quarter, which is what my next stage is planning out the first quarter of 2025, and then breaking it into the month and then the week and then the day. So knowing what daily tasks I'm taking towards that bigger vision. All right, I hope you've loved this episode and please tag me at the Daring Press with your vision boards. If you create a vision board, if this sparks your inspiration and you really want to create a vision board, make sure you share it with me. I would love to see them. And, yeah, I hope you really enjoyed this episode and I'll see you in the next chapter.