Daily Intentions.

Balance your goals with intention

Rachel Kenyon
Aug 28, 2017 · 5 min read

Almost everyone has goals. You do, I’ll bet. I know I do. We all have some form of work/career goals or physical/body goals or health/nutrition goals or relationship goals or culture goals or education goals. The missing component to happiness may be as simple as setting regular intentions.

Setting an intention is like putting legs on a wish or goal.

Daily intentions are incredibly effective because they are close — those legs don’t have far to go to make good on the intention. And that success is an ultimate positive reinforcement.

Here’s a straight forward example:

I have a rather large goal of having a book traditionally published. By itself, that goal is a doosey. According to social phycologist Emily Balcetis, goals exist at a psychological, social or special distance from us. In the case of my book goal, I’d say it is a good marathon or two away. Because the psychological distance is so great I have a hard time envisioning it as real. I know the finish line is out there somewhere, but when I focus on it I feel overwhelmed, as if I’ll never get there. It becomes not only a daily marathon, but one run through mud.

Insert daily intentions here!

I set a daily intentions every morning. Sometimes more than one. I write them down. For my book, I may set an intention on a day to “be open to new ideas” or “share my idea with someone today” or “spend one hour outside brainstorming new chapter ideas today”. It sounds suspiciously like a to-do item on a list, but it’s more than that. It’s a promise to myself to not only do something, but do it a certain way. Intentionally. Paying attention. If I include “write new material” on my to-do list, I can just not do it, leave it for tomorrow, or do it with no enjoyment or positive energy. But if I set my daily intention, today’s the day. Today I will. And not only will I, I’ll feel good before, during and after.

The difference between intentions and goals:

Goals are ‘out there’, ‘then’.

Intentions are ‘right here’, ‘now’.

Setting goals is planning for the future and that is really good. I’m a small business ally and I work with clients often to set both short- and long-term goals. After 20 years of helping businesses stay organized and profitable, I realized the problem with being completely goal-oriented.

You stop living in the now. You stop paying attention to how you feel right now, today. Instead you focus on how you (think you) will feel when you reach the goal. The psychological effect is that you are not happy with what you have and are today. You’ll be happen then. You’ll be content out there. Often that results in unhappiness and stress in the right here and now. If you are always focused on your goals, you are never there. When you set a daily intention and do it, you are there immediately. And by ‘there’ I mean right here, right now, acknowledging how you feel.

Daily intentions are about how you want to be while you travel the road toward your goal. I want to publish a book, but in the mean time, I want to be happy. For those two things to happen, I need to be happy doing the things that lead to my book publication. That means I need to decide how I am going to do things, not just why. The why is already set — to finish and get published. The how is up to me. I can do it buried under a mountain of clutter and stress and anxiety, always thinking about what’s next. Or I can do it with an open mind and heart and positive energy, enjoying each step. I can decide each day what is really important. I may have “write 1,000 words” on my to-do list, but my daily intention will be “have fun writing something new today”.

Move your goals closer by setting intentions that compliment them. If you want to grow your business, set financial, sales or strategic goals, and then set daily intentions that explain how you want to feel along the way.

Write your daily intentions down each morning. Then put the paper next to your bed or on your pillow. Take a minute at the end of the day to reflect. Were you able to stay on your path? How did you feel?

And of course, it all comes back to balance!

Work toward your goals with joy, care, passion, hard work and gratitude. How you get there is just as important as where you are going.

I was on a really dangerous path for a while. I was rocketing toward financial and career status goals but I was unhappy, missing out, and losing some of things I most loved about myself. So I re-routed. I am still moving toward financial and career goals, but at the end of every day, I can reflect on what I did and how I did it, and feel really good about myself and the culture I am a part of.

This article was written with joy, care, passion, hard work and gratitude. Thanks for reading it!

Here are links to a few of my articles about work-life balance:

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Rachel Kenyon

Written by

Writing books. Balancing books. Giving often. www.happywithabook.com www.happyquickbooksgirl.com

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