How Setting an Intention Helps you Achieve your Goals

Ever heard the term "Intentions" and wonder what it was all about? 

Before I started setting intentions, I constantly found myself floundering to reach my goals. I would make a goal, try to stick to it only to not reach it and end up feeling crappy about myself - making me associate goals with feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy. 

It was not until I started stetting intentions that I started making the LASTING changes in my life that I desired. 

If you are in a place where you are feeling a little stuck, a little unfulfilled and are needing to get some clarity and direction in your life, then I encourage you to keep reading and learn the power of setting intentions!

What Are Intentions?

An intention is a guiding principle for how you want to show up in your everyday life. It is rooted in how you want to live your life moment by moment, day by day, year by year.  

Intentions make you reflect and ask yourself what matters most to you? How do you want to show up each day? For yourself. For your Family. For your community. For the world.

Intentions help to guide your actions, your thoughts and your responses as you move throughout your day.

Intentions vs Goals

Goals

• Are always future focused.
• They often focus on a materialist destination or tangible achievement.
• They create self imposed deadlines, expectations and measurements of what "success" looks like. 

Goals are great for certain wants and desires in life, however they often leave us feeling guilty, unworthy or feelings of being ‘bad’ if we do not achieve the exact target or timeline we had set. 

Even if we came very close or achieved our goals, it is easy to get stuck in our self-depreciating inner dialogue that puts our choices and actions into ‘wining’ and “losing’ categories. They are a reward based system which often leave us feeling empty after we get that ‘prize’.

Whereas,

Intentions

• Keep you focused on the present.
• They do not emit deadlines, pressure or a ‘winning or losing’ mindset.
• They keep us aligned with our core values and what really matters in life.

Intentions allow you to be in the present moment. To make conscious decisions moment by moment in how you are choosing to show up each day.

Intentions are intertwined into who you are and who you want to be versus what you want.  

Intentions are about who you want to be in our world, how you want to contribute to your family, community and self.

Intentions focus on positive impact, daily moments, choices and actions. They keep you grounded while allowing you to grow.

 Want to Learn my Step by Step Process to Set Intentions for Your Life?

Get your Free Intention Setting Workbook here! 

How to Set Intentions for Your Life

1. Think of how you want to show up everyday. Go deeper than materialistic items that you want and really ask yourself who do you want to BE. 

2. Pick out a phrase or trait that resonates with you and use this as a guide for your intention statement. Do you want to be more present with your family? more confident at work? have better boundaries?  lead a healthier lifestyle? (Need Ideas? Click here!)

3. Set the intention and write it down. It has been shown over and over the power of writing things down. When you create an intention for your life - be sure to physically write it down - in your phone, in a journal or on a piece of paper that you put somewhere you will see everyday. 

 ***** Need a walk through to help guide you through this process? Discover this FREE Intention Setting Worksheet to get you started *****

Tips to Creating Intention Statements

↠ If you are having a hard time with this – think of someone you admire. What is one of their personality traits you admire – patience, presence, calmness, happiness, positivity, strength, courage?

↠ Your intention could be simply a word, a phrase or you can create a whole sentence of how you want to lead your life.

↠ Keep it simple, do not try and focus on too many areas at once. Pick 1-2 intentions and really focus on them for the next 6 months to a year. Remember it takes a while to make habits and change our thought patterns, so the more you focus on 1-2 intentions the more results you will see.

Looking to make the lasting change you desire?

Learn how to set intentions with this free identity based goal setting workbook

Want to go deeper?  Amplify Your Life with the following tools:

FREE INTENTION SETTING WORKBOOK

VISION BOARDING 101 – YOUR TOTAL GUIDE TO VISION BOARDING

INTENTIONAL LIVING 101- YOUR STEP by STEP GUIDE TO LIVING MORE INTENTIONALLY