A Quiet Vision Board for an Intentional Life
A softer way to create a vision board that’s rooted in calm, clarity, and how you truly want your life to feel.
SIMPLICITYINNER LIFE
Renée | Creating the Beautiful Life
3 min read
Most vision boards focus on the things one wants to accomplish or the material goods one wants to attain.
There is nothing wrong with vision boards in and of themselves. And yet, for some of us, they can begin to feel like another kind of visual noise, lingering in the background, urging us to do more and be more.
At this point in our lives, however, many of us are done with the constant striving that has us ignoring our hearts, our values, and the needs of our minds, bodies, and spirits. Instead, we are learning to treat those parts of ourselves with more care and respect.
So here, I would like to offer a softer version – a vision board that invites you to reflect not on what you want to accomplish, but rather how you want to truly live and feel in your life.
One that brings clarity and calm.
This quieter vision board is not about striving or achieving, but rather an invitation to live in truer alignment.
Begin With Reflection
Instead of asking, what do I want to achieve, we’re asking these questions:
How do I want my days to feel?
What do I value most in this season of my life?
What do I want my everyday routine to look like?
What environments make me feel most like myself?
Keep in mind that creating a vision board isn’t just about gathering – it’s also about editing. So let’s ask these questions as well:
What feels heavy in my life right now?
What area of my life do I want to simplify?
Where in my life am I living on autopilot rather than with awareness?
After you’ve journaled out your answers, note which words keep reappearing for you. They are clues as to what you’re being guided towards.
Curating Images With Intention
To begin collecting images, create a new board on Pinterest and set it to private (if you’d like).
Then put on some of your favorite music (the kind that makes you feel most like yourself), pour or brew yourself a drink, and start pinning.
At first, I usually pin everything that I’m drawn to, without asking myself why. After I get a good collection of images, I then go back and ask myself:
What was it about this image that caught my eye?
Does it align with my answers to the reflection questions?
Keep in mind, this is not about being someone else. Rather, it should feel more like coming home to yourself.
As you curate, notice the emotional patterns that emerge from the images you're pinning. Do they speak of calm, connection, home, solitude, etc.?
The patterns you’re noticing are your heart and soul leading you toward the life you want to live.
My Vision Board
My vision board is at the top of this post. I collected my images on a Pinterest board and then edited them down to the most important ones. I then placed them in a template on Canva. Now I have it on my computer desktop screen, as well as printed and hanging above my desk.
My vision board represents the words I kept noticing while journaling. It has my favorite colors, and each image represents either a feeling I want to have in my day-to-day life or something that I value and intentionally want to be a part of my life this year.
When I look at this vision board, I am inspired, as it represents alignment with my heart.
It’s a daily reminder of what I value, which helps me be intentional in my daily choices.
Shaping the Present, Not Chasing the Future
When we curate a vision board this way, it is less about planning the faraway future and more about shaping and embodying the present. We are not waiting for life to become beautiful; we are choosing beauty in how we live it now.
Our vision board is not set in stone either. It can evolve as our lives (and we) change. Return to it as often as you want to make small refinements so that it’s always ringing true for you.
As I wrote about in my Beauty as a Way of Living post, this culture most often equates beauty with perfection; however, choosing to create this quieter kind of vision board is our way of gently pushing back against that – and against following aesthetic trends.
It’s rooted in being reflective and deeply honest with ourselves.
And it’s quietly declaring that our lives are a living, breathing work of art shaped by intention.
Canva Template
If this way of creating a vision board speaks to you, I’ve made something to help you. You can download my free Canva Vision Board Template here and use it to gather your unique words, colors, and images into one simple, beautiful vision board.
It’s designed to feel calm and uncluttered, so it becomes a place of clarity rather than pressure. You can use it as your desktop wallpaper or print it to hang somewhere in your home.