Set Your Intention, See Your Intention

Setting a clear intention is one of the most important parts of mindfulness practice. At the beginning of the day, you might set an intention to act respectfully toward everyone you interact with, be grateful for what you have, or exhibit generosity.

Frankly, setting an intention is often the easy part. Remembering and sticking to your intention is the hard part. How many times have you set an intention only to have it flee your mind within a few minutes, never to return until you lay in bed at night and kick yourself over your failure to stay true to it throughout the day?

Regular mindfulness practice can help bring your intention back to the forefront of your attention more frequently so that you can reset your intention between formal meditation sessions.

Here’s how you can use technology to give yourself a gentle reminder of your intention before it has slipped from your consciousness for too long:

• Display your intention on your lock screen, screen saver, or desktop background. Would you be more likely to reset your intention if you saw the words “act respectfully” every time you picked up your phone? I think so. And it only takes a few seconds at the beginning of the day.
• Set a reminder to remember your intention. Create a to-do to “act respectfully” with a repeating reminder. You may need to experiment with the number of reminders throughout the day to strike a balance between helpful and annoying.
• Anchor your intention to a technological trigger. When you set your intention, also pick a “trigger” to remember that intention (ex. the phone ringing). Practice hearing the phone ring and letting that sound remind you of your intention. Then when the phone rings throughout the day, you can use that sound to trigger you to reset your intention.

Give these tips a try and see if they help you return to your intention more frequently than before. Have you found other ways to use technology to help you remember your intention? Let us know!