What if you could craft your life each day as if it is a work of art?
Let me tell you, you can.
We are living in a rather frantic world right now, with many demands in our time, more distractions than ever before and more restrictions and control than we’ve ever seen in our lifetimes. This makes it all too easy to feel out of control and like life is happening to us rather than it’s something we are masters of.
We can either feel like a ship being rocked about on the ocean at the whim of the sea and weather, or we can take hold of the tiller and start balancing our ship and directing our course. And we can do that on a daily basis.
I’ve created, discovered and shared hundreds of tools over the years with my client but the one that is ironically the simplest but also the most powerful, is the simple act of setting intentions each day. Let’s talk about the power of intention.
The Power of Intention
Picture for a moment walking into your kitchen and all over the bench are ingredients out of the pantry and fridge – eggs, milk, flour and a few dozen other items that can go into making various recipes. All these items sit there until they are used and while they are just sitting on the bench they are only single items. Until somebody decides they’d like to make pancakes or a chocolate cake that is; then those ingredients get channelled into an entirely new manifestation: a delicious cake!
Our inner resources and the world around us are a lot like all of those ingredients sitting around in the kitchen. We have our mind, our creativity, our knowledge and skills, our experience and the divine intelligence that flows through all of us. We have the people around us, our networks and the resources available to us at a material and practical level. That’s a lot of ingredients!
The moment we decide we’d like to make something happen, these ingredients automatically begin coming together in the best possible way. The natural law of cause and effect and law of resonance mean that those things that match our intention start to come together. This is why a situation can suddenly happen so effortlessly (and sometimes quickly); because we made a decision and set an intention in an aligned way and the rest is just housekeeping!
You’ll see it when you believe it.
Wise Action
When I say “the rest is just housekeeping” I don’t mean that’s it, you can throw your hands up and just wait for it happen. I mean that it can happen with such an inevitability that it all falls into place very easily.
Wise action is always a key component to making our dreams come true. You live in a physical three-dimensional world, so taking practical action is part of making it work well.
When we set an intention for our day and then act out of alignment with that intention then it’s obviously not going to help. Taking aligned action will always support us to get what we want.
What does aligned action mean? It means action that you feel congruent or aligned within yourself, and that’s in line with and supportive of your intention.
Here’s a simple example. Let’s say one of your intentions today is to stay calm and be unflappable. Now, if you begin your day with a to-do list you already know is too big for the time you have in front of you, it’s going to be harder for your nervous system to stay calm – particularly because it’s very hard to bullshit your nervous system. Your body‘s intelligence is very well aware when things are amiss. It knows when you’re trying to get 10 hours worth of work done in an eight hour day.
So, in this instance, wise action would be to take stock of your to-do list, see what you can simply delete off it, see what you can delegate to someone else, see what you can delay, and in so doing, clarify what you will actually deal with yourself. And your ‘deal with’ list becomes your to-do list for the day. (These are the four D’s – Deal with, Delegate, Delay, Delete.)
Another example is if you’re looking for a new job or want to hire an employee. Defining your Ideal Role or your Ideal General Manager on a piece of power is an incredibly powerful step. But so is contacting a recruitment company!
Set your intention. Take wise action.
My actions are my only true belongings
Directing our consciousness
This simple act of thinking about what we want to have happen in our day has the powerful effect of directing our consciousness. We are consciously and unconsciously acting and thinking right through our day. How purposeful or intentional that is is entirely up to us. I often joke about the difference between a single-celled amoeba that is simply reacting to its environment and our capacity as human beings with our fancy executive-functioning frontal lobe brain to actually respond rather than react, and in fact, to even initiate. This capacity for initiation is truly powerful. But are we using it every day? Or are we being random, reactive? A victim to circumstance?
In the end, it’s much easier to be intentional.
It continues to delight me that even when I set an intention for the morning and then forget about it as I go into my day, at an unconscious level I haven’t forgotten about it at all. My unconscious mind still knows that there is an intention I hold for the day and is automatically directing resources toward that outcome. It will spot a piece of information on a page, or the most important email in my inbox that is tied to the goal I had for connecting with a particular person, for instance. It’s already pre-programmed to help me create what I want in my day and is working in the background the whole time.
Often at the end of the day or even the following day I realise how well the day turned out or how effortlessly something came to me – because I had set an intention for it.
It’s a truly fun game to play because you get pretty immediate feedback on what difference it makes, and you get to reap all the rewards. It feels great!
You can’t do anything about the length of your life. But you can do something about its width and depth.
Creating powerful things for others
Of course, it’s not just you that gets to reap the rewards. When you go into your day with positive and powerful intentions for how you want things to go, it’s also often benefiting others. If you want to have successful meetings today resulting in positive outcomes and happy people, then obviously when that happens it benefits all the people involved. If you have a sales target you want to meet on a particular day then in meeting that goal you will also have satisfied customers who have also got their own needs met by purchasing something. If you set an intention to be calmer and more focused in your day then you’re likely to be a calmer steady presence for those around you which is always useful – and much needed in this stress-heavy world!
How do you do intention setting at a practical level?
There are a few ways to do this but as you will already have a sense of, simply becoming more conscious of what you want to have happen makes all the difference. For example, how you want your day to go, what you want to achieve today, who you want to collaborate with, what outcome you’d like to see for a meeting or project, the list goes on. Simply pausing to think about how you want it to go and then seeing that in your mind’s eye is the essence of living more intentionally.
I share specific practices around this in my classes and individual coaching so feel free to reach out for more information or explore my offerings.
Also catch my post about setting intentions for holidays and trips. This is one of my favourite tips around intentions!
Right now you’re welcome to watch the replay of my recent masterclass, In-Powered and On-Track where I share one of my core daily practices for setting intentions.
Here’s to your highest intentions and your fullest life,
Karen x
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