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Tag: Setting Intentions

Setting intentions is a more powerful tool than setting goals, for it puts you in a frame of mind that empowers you to make positive choices at all times.When you’re setting intentions you’re telling yourself and the world 1) who you want to be, 2) what you wish to contribute, and 3) how you choose to touch the lives of others. There are no limits if you consciously base your intentions on positive choices. In the process, you’ll find that you become much more productive, especially if you voice your intentions out loud to an accountability partner or coach. It puts the power of change back in your hands.

How do you set intentions?

Perhaps your intention is: “I want to feel nurtured today so I have abundant energy to fulfill my purpose in life.”

So you forgo your usual coffee laden with sugar. You eat a nutritious breakfast and pack energizing snacks for later. You plan on having a delicious salad at your favorite restaurant for lunch, but your co-worker says, “Why don’t you come with me and we’ll go to the local taco stand.”

Your internal dialogue connects to your intention to be nurtured by asking yourself, “Will I feel nurtured if I eat a meal that’s full of carbs and grease? No, it’s going to make me sleepy this afternoon and bloated. I’ll have a terrible time getting through that meeting. If I want to feel nurtured, I’m going to stick with my plan to get a salad.”

So you turn to your friend and say, “Why don’t you come with me to my favorite restaurant. We’ll grab something to go and sit in the park and enjoy this wonderful sunshine?”

Do you see how your intention empowers you to say “no” to what doesn’t serve you and at the same time you make a positive contribution to your co-worker’s health?

What are some of the benefits of setting intentions? Setting and living your intentions allows you to:

  • Focus on who you are in the moment.
  • Get past your current problems and struggles by focusing elsewhere.
  • Recognize and live your values.
  • Raise your emotional and physical energy as you build momentum.
  • Create a reminder for how you want to live each day.
  • Live in harmony with your purpose at all times.
  • Receive inspiration and motivation to achieve your purpose.
  • See things you may have otherwise missed.
  • Be receptive to new ideas and opportunities.
  • Make lasting changes in your life.

Goals tend to be structured and one-dimensional. Intentions are as expansive as you want to make them. You have the freedom and the power to become whoever you want to be.

 

How to Set Mindful Intentions — Make Your Goals Successful and Achievable

Setting goals isn’t as effective as learning how to set mindful intentions that help you tune into your innate superpowers for guaranteed success!We all know that every year people set goals, yet relatively few of them actually make significant changes in their lives. Why is that? I’ll let you in on a secret…when you’re setting goals you’re not fully engaging your power. Learning how to set mindful intentions instead allows you to tune into your innate superpower! And here are the reasons why I say that…

Goal setting is often based on a negative premise…”I’m not skinny enough,” “I’m not rich enough,” or “I’m not organized enough”. Do you see how each of these thoughts tells you that you’re “not enough”? How could something that says you’re a failure result in anything good? It just can’t.

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Overwhelmed? Gain Clarity of Mind with One Simple Yet Powerful Practice

Feeling out-of-control, with thoughts racing and jumbled? Try this powerful practice that helps my clients gain clarity of mind and inner peace. “I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” ~ Anne Frank

Chris (not her real name) came to me feeling out of control. She described herself as always being in a hurry. She had to hit the ground running every day. Chris had minimal self-care. She had no time for deep relationships. She never got enough sleep and couldn’t remember the last time she sat down to eat a decent meal. A vacation? What’s that!  And at the end of the day, she couldn’t say what meaningful things she had accomplished. She felt empty and lost. She needed to gain clarity of mind. 

As we talked, I could see that her mind was ablaze with new ideas, which were quickly being extinguished by her many self-imposed obligations. She spent a lot of time just trying to retrieve information from her brain, notebook and computer files. She often didn’t know if she’d completed a project, because she was already on to the next. Then she’d have to retrace her steps and recreate mentally what had been done. Can you relate?

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What Is Your Legacy?

To live a meaningful life is to consider what is your legacy that you’ll pass onto others now and in the future, in a way that makes a difference. “All good men and women must take responsibility to create legacies that will take the next generation to a level we could only imagine.”  ~ Jim Rohn

When most people are asked, “what is your legacy?”, they immediately think of something they leave behind once they die — money, a business, a strong stock portfolio, or even a benefactor’s name on a hospital’s wing. Their focus is on leaving something as a legacy, but very few people think deeply about building a legacy. 

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Start the New Year Off Right — Chart Your Course & Follow Your Compass

Are you ready for 2021? The practical way mariners sail through stormy seas shows us the way to put 2020 behind us and start the new year off right. “Someday, everything will make perfect sense. So for now, laugh at the confusion, smile through the tears, be strong and keep reminding your self that everything happens for a reason.” ~ John Mayer

Usually this is the time I begin to take stock of my year and make sense of my losses and victories. I look for what worked and what didn’t. Seeing what I predicted and what I got. However, I think this process needs to be very different this year. 

2020 has been a year like no other for many of us. It came quickly and with no warning and it has left us confused, disoriented, lonely and exhausted. It’s like we were sailing on already turbulent seas that changed quickly into huge waves that may have at times plunged us into depression, or swelling to peaks of anxiety and pushing us to places we never imagined going.

In order to start 2021 with the right frame of mind we need to first fully acknowledge the impact this year has had on us on these four levels:

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Set Mindful Intentions. Add Sustainable Actions. Create Lasting Change.

You can learn how to turn mindful intentions and sustainable actions into your Recipe for Lasting Change, as you answer these six very important questions.“Integrity is when your good intentions meet your actions — on a consistent basis.” ~ Amy Chan

Have you caught yourself saying, “I intended to __, but I just didn’t get around to it”?  We’ve all done it. In the 60’s and 70’s there was even a wooden Round Tuit coin created to help us end procrastination. It didn’t work so well. I find that setting mindful intentions work much better. But that’s not the whole story.

To get to the bottom of the problem, it’s important to identify what stops our intentions from becoming reality. We all have the same amount of time, so we can’t really use “not having enough time” as an excuse. If you’re like most people, there are 5 basic things that get in our way:

  1. You lack clarity on what your intended results were meant to be.
  2. You had insufficient planning or no planning at all.
  3. You lacked knowledge or skills.
  4. You became sidetracked or distracted, with too much information.
  5. You gave up because an obstacle arose and you didn’t seek an alternative method for achieving your intention.

Do any of those reasons describe what you go through? I’ve discovered that my practice of mindfulness reinforces my ability to set intentions and follow through with the action required to create a lasting transformation in my life. But this skill didn’t come to me overnight. I’ve been practicing for a number of years. Now, however, each time I set mindful intentions, it’s a lot easier to make them become reality.

How can you set mindful intentions that overcome the five previously mentioned obstacles?

Don’t kid yourself that setting mindful intentions will magically create lasting change. That is only half of the process. Without follow up actions, your mindful intentions will not serve you. As a quote from E.F. Schumacher reminds us,

“Our intentions tend to be much more real to us than our actions, and this can lead to a great deal of misunderstanding with other people, to whom our actions tend to be much more real than our intentions.”

Let’s take a trick that great writers use…in any good story, writers answer the questions: Why, Who, What, Where, When, and How? (Yes, I rearranged the order of questions they normally ask. When you set mindful intentions, Your Why should always come first.) We can apply those same questions to our Mindful Intentions + Sustainable Actions Recipe for Success. Here’s how:

Find Your Why. Why are you here? What one thing energizes you, challenges you, and helps you live up to your full potential? When you clarify this, you blow the door to possibilities wide open!  

Find Your Who. There are some things you’re skilled to do; other things you can delegate to more experienced persons. Don’t be afraid to share your vision with others. The synergy you create together will be phenomenal!

Find Your What. Take baby steps to get you from point A to point Z. Perhaps it’s something you’re working on internally. Maybe it’s a skill you need to learn. Choose three important goals to work on and tell an accountability partner that you’re going to have them done by a certain day. By the end of a year, you’ll be amazed at how much you accomplish!

Find Your Where. Start from where you are right now. Don’t compare yourself to where anyone else is, because we are all at different stages of growth on our journey through life. You are enough!

Find Your When. Waiting for a better time or for everything to fall into place is a mistake. Your time is NOW, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this article! Keep asking yourself, “What one thing can I do right now that will inch me closer to my desired results?

Find Your How. Get very specific with outlining your tactics — what step to be accomplished by what date. Track your progress in even small things, because it’s so easy to forget what you have accomplished. Take inventory of all of your resources — monetary, emotional, physical, and spiritual — and spend them wisely on things that really matter. You can do this!

Now I’m going to throw in an extra point that ties together the preceding ones.

Find Your Zone of Genius. When the above items are aligned, the struggle will end. Instead you’ll greet each day with excitement and anticipation. Each day will be a celebration of who you are. You’ll fall in love with life all over again. That is the reward for matching mindful intentions with sustainable actions. It’s magic!

If you’re still searching for your zone of genius, please contact me and schedule an “Unlocking Your Potential” 30-minute complimentary consultation (in-person, by phone or via Skype). I’d love to help you achieve the life you deserve to live.

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