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Over dinner, I asked friends what is it that they want most right now. Hong Kiat wanted to own his own business and Joseph “an unlimited supply of money.”

Most of us have a good idea of one or two things we want most in our lives. However, other than the occasional query by friends like me, most people don’t really think about it much.

If you know what you want and you want to do something about it, you can create a ‘vision board’.

What is a vision board?

It is simply a poster board which you paste a collage of pictures and images that resonates with the thing that you want.

The image above is my vision board for “financial independence.” Towards this goal, I have come up with 6 markers that will determine when I am financially independent:

1. A networth of over $10 million
2. Multiple streams of income
3. Living in a home that’s fully paid
4. I can choose to do whatever I am passionate about (read: no more day jobs)
5. I travel to 4 new places every year
6. I am debt-free

For each of these markers, I would look for pictures that best symbolizes the goal. The idea is to pick images that remind you of the markers of your goal. For example, the image of a running river shouts out “multiple streams” at me.

If you make a physical vision board, put it up in a place that you can see everyday. If you feel like it, you can use the 68-second alignment exercise and focus on the board.

For me, I work at different venues on my MacBook so the best place for me to put my vision board is on my desktop as a wallpaper.

My limitless source of images comes from Flickr.com. Since I’m sharing my vision board, I’ve selected images that are under the Creative Commons “Attribution License”. This means I would have to credit the rightful owners when I use them.

Once I’ve selected the images, I’d head off to www.scrapblog.com to create the board. ScrapBlog is an online scrapbook-making website with a very intuitive user-interface and free of charge. Scrapblog also features a beautiful collection of themes and images (like the pens, clips and photograph frames) that rivals Apple’s iWorks themes. If I’m going to look at something everyday, I want to make sure it’s beautifully done.

When you’ve tweaked your vision board to your content, screen-capture it and add it to computer’s desktop.

Why does a Vision Board work?

I’ve started using my vision board for over a week now.

During this time, I’ve come to recognize an increasing number of ideas, events and people who in some way contribute to my moving forward on this goal.

Every time this happens, I’d be wondering how coincident that this should come to me and marvel at its unraveling. My energy level goes up and people will notice it and respond more positively.

If nothing else, I am enjoying my daily interactions a whole lot more than before.

But that’s not all. The fact is that my habituated reactions has brought about more focus and a higher level of engagement - simply put, more of the good things are happening to me and I am feeling fully confident that I will achieve my goals.

It’s really amazing what a simple collage of pictures can do for you.