Intentions
I know some people struggle with the idea of resolutions or setting goals. It can feel that change is too big, too daunting, too difficult, that it will take too much time or too much energy.
An idea I’ve been toying with more and more is setting intentions. How do I want to be today? How do I want to show up over the next week? If I fast forwarded to the end of the year, what one word would I like to use to describe the type of year I’ve had? How would I like others to describe spending time with me?
I have found thinking about a particular intention for the day, week, month or year does a few things for me:
It isn’t overwhelming - an intention seems lighter than a goal to me. It is something I hold gently as a guide but if things don’t align to this, or I don’t show up in a particular way I don’t berate myself, I just notice, learn and move on.
I am a human being, not a human doer - thinking about who the best version of me is in a particular situation, to be of service to myself and others, feels nicer and more authentic than always having to think about the what I have to say, or what I need to do. By focusing on who and how I want to be, the actions tend to take care of themselves.
Things tend to align to my intention - I would argue that sometimes it is very tenuous and something I’m almost trying to convince myself of, but the point is that by setting the intention, I’m looking for ways to align to it, and by looking I will find ways and act in ways that do align to it. The science behind this is we have a reticular activating system (RAS) where our brains filter out what isn’t relevant and focus on what is. It is like when you decide on a particular make, model and colour of car you want, and you then start noticing them on the roads - it isn’t that there are suddenly more of them, it is just because it wasn’t important to you before so your brain filtered it out; now it is important to you, your brain is noticing it. When we set an intention, we are telling our brains what is important to us, so it tries to help by noticing these things. (This short video explains this in a bit more detail and how to link this back to building confidence.)
So, what intention would you like to set yourself? How would you like to show up for yourself and/or others today? What word would you like others to use to describe what it’s like spending time with you? What would you love a guiding principle to be for how you live your life over the next few months?
