Mira · Guide
Vision board questions to answer before you start
The pictures are the easy part of a vision board. The hard part is knowing what they are for, and most boards skip it: they start on Pinterest and end up as a collage of things that looked nice that evening.
These thirty questions come first. Answer them on paper before you look at a single image, and the board for 2027 mostly picks itself.
How to use them
Take a notebook and give yourself half an hour. Answer quickly, in a line or two, and skip any question that says nothing to you. The first answer is usually the honest one; the third rewrite is usually the one you think you should give.
When you finish, read everything back and circle what comes up more than once. Those repeats are your board.
Looking back at this year
Start behind you. It is easier to say what you want next when you have said what this year was actually like.
- What went better this year than you expected?
- What did you keep putting off, and why?
- Which week would you happily live again?
- Who did you want to see more of?
- What did you spend money on that you are glad about?
- What drained you that you could have said no to?
More of, less of
These are the quickest to answer and often the most useful. Write the first thing that comes to mind for each.
- What do you want more time for next year?
- What do you want to stop doing?
- Where do you want to feel calmer?
- What do you want to be braver about?
- What would you do more of if nobody was watching?
- What small thing would make an ordinary Tuesday better?
Area by area
Go through the areas of your life one at a time. You won’t have an answer for all of them, and that tells you something too.
- Love: what would a good evening with the people you love look like?
- Money: what is the money for, in one sentence?
- Health: what does a week of looking after yourself look like?
- Work: what do you want to have finished or started by December?
- Home: which room would you change first, and how?
- Travel: where do you want to wake up at least once next year?
- Calm: when did you last feel unhurried, and what was different?
- Growth: what do you want to be a little better at in a year?
The honest ones
These take longer. They are the ones that stop a board from being a list of things other people want for you.
- Would you still want this if you couldn’t tell anyone about it?
- Which of your goals is really someone else’s?
- What are you afraid will happen if you get it?
- What would you choose if it had to be only one thing?
- How do you want to feel on a bad day next year?
Questions to come back to
A board isn’t finished when you make it. Keep these for the days you look at it again, every few weeks or at the end of a season.
- Which picture do you skip over now?
- What has changed since you made it?
- Which picture did you do something about this month?
- What is missing that you would add today?
- If you made the board again now, what would you leave off?
From answers to pictures
Now go back to what you circled. Each repeat becomes one card on the board: a picture and a short line.
- Pick the three or four answers that came up most.
- For each, find a picture of the moment, not the result: the walk, not the finish line.
- Write one line for it in the present tense, short enough to read at a glance.
- If one word sums the whole list up, keep it: that is your word for the year.
Answers first, pictures second
Half an hour with a notebook saves you a board that means nothing by February. Answer the questions, circle the repeats, and only then go looking for photos.
on your iPhone