Putting Fun Back Into Fundamentals: Creating Vision Boards
What are your career goals? Are you excited about doing what it takes to achieve them?
Some Optimum Performance Institute participants come into the program with specific objectives related to their career path, while others are unclear. The Department of Volunteer and Career Services works individually with each participant towards reaching their short- and long-term goals, providing supporting throughout their entire process.
Such goals may include career exploration, obtaining part-time work or becoming a volunteer; when goals take longer to achieve than expected, participants can lose confidence and become disenchanted. To assist with that burnout, we decided to put the “fun” back in our department’s fundamentals by giving participants the opportunity to create vision boards during our regularly scheduled career workshop.
The purpose of this activity was to give participants a chance to conceptualize, clarify and/or maintain focus on their specific departmental goals. The vision boarders chose images that represented the current goals that they are working towards, as well as words, phrases and/or sentences that affirm their intentions.
We discussed various types of work positions, work environments, locations, desired lifestyles, inspirational people and quotes. Participants enjoyed the opportunity to be creative and re-energize their individual goals through this fun, artistic activity.
Whenever you feel like you’re in a rut, why not create a vision board? Grab a stack of magazines, canvas or paper, glue and scissors and start flipping through the pages looking for things that inspire you. Consider what you want in your career, images that represent your dreams, inspirational words and your definition of achievement. It does not matter what you choose as long as you remember the underlying intentions of each item.
Have fun with this! Put your vision board in a visible location to help encourage and motivate you while serving as a reminder of your short- and long-term goals.