The One About Setting Intentions

Hello there. Welcome. Welcome to another episode today. We’re gonna take a look at intention setting. I’m hoping that you’re gonna find this useful and interesting. If you do, please remember, give us a like, a comment, a share, a subscribe, a review. It all helps. Subscribe on your favourite platform.

Give us a review on your favourite platform. Share it far and wide. Helps to get, the podcast spread to other people as well. So we’re gonna take a look at intention setting, as I said. So the first thing we need to do is take a look at what’s the difference between setting a goal and setting an intention. Because, often, when I speak about intention setting, people assume we’re talking about goals, which we’re not. Goals and intentions are 2 different things. They’re different.

But as you’ll see in a in a few seconds, they do work beautifully together. So a goal. What makes up a goal? Well, it’s normally very specific. It’s a specific thing. There’s this specific thing we want to achieve. Achieve. It’s measurable. So you know how you know you’ve achieved it because you can measure it.

There is excuse me. There is usually a timed nearly always a timed component to a goal. In fact, if you don’t have a timed component, tends not to be a goal. That’s where you say, I’m gonna achieve this particular thing by this point. And it a goal relates to a particular action. It’s it’s a particular thing that you’re doing. One particular thing. Basically, a goal is focused on an external outcome.

I am going to achieve this by this time. This is what I’m gonna do. This is when I’m gonna have it done, and this is how I will know that it’s been done. That’s what makes a goal. We we know about SMART goals. SMART, specific, measurable, and all all that sort of thing. That’s a goal. We today are talking about setting intentions, however.

Now, an intention, it’s less specific than goal. It’s Blakemore abstract. And it’s also broader. It’s it’s a more general statement. It can even be open ended. An intention setting the int you set your attention for for the day, for the week, for for whatever. It’s it’s more abstract. It’s more general, open ended, and it’s usually a deeper purpose driven, thing.

So an intention is focused on an internal outcome. What’s what’s happening inside for you? So, excuse me, a goal might be, my goal is to achieve this weight by this time. Or my goal is to have this amount of money in my bank by this time. Whereas, an intention might be more I intend to enjoy everything that I’m doing in life. I intend to make people happy. I intend, my intention is to learn as I’m going along. So goals are focused on an external outcome, whereas intentions are focused on something inside. What’s going on for us inside? As I said, they are different, but they do work beautifully together.

We might set an intention, and then set various goals which help us to fulfil that intention. Or we might set goals, and then set intentions which create the framework and the environment, particularly inside inside our mind create that environment to enable us to pursue and fulfil those goals. Excuse me. So we have spoken in the past about how to create a goal. So, how do you create an intention statement? What are some things to consider when you’re creating an intention statement? Your statement of intent. I’m gonna list here, we’re gonna go over 6 different things for you to to consider. And the first of these is, what are your values and your aspirations? Now values, we have spoken about Blakemore. We will speak about again.

They’re a key part of of mindset. Your values are things which are important to you. They’re normally 1 or 2 words, but they’re things which are important to you. Some examples might be health, wealth, happiness, loyalty, friendship, growth, fun, development, environment, family, safety, all of these things and many, many, many more. There are countless things that could be values. These are things that are important to you. So when you’re creating your intention, make sure it aligns with your values, aligns with things that are important to you. Or when you create an intention, bring your values into alignment to fulfil that intention.

Because if your values and your intention conflict, your intention is not going to be fulfilled. Same with goals. Your values are a very important driver. And your aspirations, what what to what do you aspire? What would you like to be? What’s What are you driving towards? These are great things to consider to help you create your intention. And an intention could be a lifelong intention, or it could be an intention for a shorter time. For example, when I go on a training course, I set my own intentions for that course, my intentions. What do I want to learn? How do I want to be showing up? What do I want to be? How do I want to be? What do I intend to do and to get from from that training? Also, a great thing with intention statements, connect with your inner desires. What drives you? What do you most want? What do you want most want to to have, to do, to be? Particularly things to be.

It’s a great source for, inspiration for your intention statements. Now when you create your statement of intent, use positive, empowering language. As with goals and as with all change, we’ve we’ve explored this many times in the past. We will continue to explore this in the future. Make it positive and empowering towards what you do want, not away from what you don’t want. Reason for this is there are 2 kinds of motivation. There’s away from motivation, where we’re motivated to move away from pain. And there’s toward motivation, where we’re motivated to move towards what we do want.

With away from motivation pain, that could be when you put your hand on the on the cooker, for example, and the cooker’s on. Your hand burns. You are very motivated to move away from that source of pain. You move that hand away very, very quickly. So away from can get you very quick results, but it’s also short lived. You move your hand and then stop. Motivation, as motivation, as soon as we moved away from the pain, the motivation’s gone. Whereas, when we have toward motivation, it can be slower, it can take more to get us going, but it keeps pulling us until we’ve achieved the thing that we want.

So use positive, empowering language. Set the intentions for what you want to be, not what you want to move away from. Because when you move away from something, you you create a vacuum. And, as we know, nature abhors a vacuum and so does our mind. Our mind abhors vacuums. We move away from that. It’s gonna replace that with something random. On the other hand, if we are moving towards, then whatever we get away from is replaced by what we’re moving toward.

This making sense? Hopefully. Hopefully, it’s making sense for you. Also, with your intention statement, make it personal. It’s your intention. Not anybody else’s intention. It’s your intention. Make it personal and make it meaningful. Make it something which means something to you.

Because if it doesn’t mean anything to you, what’s the point? Right? Keep it concise and memorable. These are two really important things. Sometimes people will create a great long rambling intention, which is very nice. But if it’s not concise and memorable how are you gonna remember it, right? You want something short, concise, memorable, snappy, something that can you can recall to mind very quickly, very easily, so that it stays in your mind. It’s something you can perhaps pop on, on a post it note on your computer or have us a nice picture on your backdrop or write on your on your whiteboard or whatever. Keep it concise and memorable. Short and memorable makes it very easy for your mind to process, makes it very easy for you to, to focus on it. If it’s a great long three pages of a 4, forget it.

There’s no way your mind’s gonna be able to focus on all of that. Get concise and memorable. And embrace flexibility and openness with intention statements. It’s alright for it to be open, to be open ended, to to, to be open to bringing other things in. To be flexible. To to change and adjust as you’re fulfilling that tension. That intention. And as you’re growing and developing, you may find that intention evolves and and blossoms into something so much bigger.

Be open to that. Be open to embracing that. Why do you wanna create an intention? Because if you’re gonna be doing something, even if you don’t create an intention, you’re still gonna do stuff anyway. You might as well make sure that what you’re doing fulfils an intention, fulfils a a need, a desire. You make sure that, when you when you’re doing stuff, it it fills your values, meets your values. It’s driven by your aspirations. It does connect with your inner desires. And it is personal and meaningful because you’re gonna be the time is gonna pass anyway.

You’re gonna be doing stuff anyway. Create the intention to drive everything that you do to fulfil those things. Once you’ve excuse me. Once you have created your intention, how do you get started on the journey to fulfilling that intention? Bearing in mind, some intentions can be open ended. It is a journey. It’s not a destination. And that’s the great thing about intentions. It is the journey.

It’s what you’d how you grow and develop along the way. It’s not a not necessarily an endpoint. Beautiful things. So break it down. Break the journey down. My intention is this. Okay? So what makes up this? My intention is to have a fulfilling life. Beautiful.

What is a fulfilling life? What does that look like? What are some things that you could do which would count to, as fulfilling? So break it down like you do with goals. Break it down into those smaller steps. Also, really important is a growth mindset. We explored this in a previous episode. I’ll link to that in the show notes, which you can get. Go to Keith Blaynerdahl.com/show. Look for the one about intention setting. I’ll get you the show notes for this episode.

Have a look there. I’ll have a link to the episode we did about growth mindset. But have a growth mindset. So you’re you’re focused on possibilities, focused on growth, focused on what you can do, what you can create rather than focusing on what you haven’t got, what you can’t do. But having a growth mindset helps create this journey to fulfil the intention, because you are gonna have to grow from where you are. Okay? Makes sense. Right? Because if you already had everything to fulfil if you didn’t need to grow, you would already have everything you need to fulfil that intention, which means you’d be fulfilling it already. So why would you create an intention statement? Accountability can be a really good way to help.

Tell people. Maybe close friends, maybe colleagues, maybe people who can help. Tell them what your intention is. Ask them to help you stay accountable. Or tell them, hey. I’m gonna be doing this. I’m I’m, my intention is is for this. If you see me straying from path, please do point it out to me.

Give me that proverbial kick up the backside to get back on track. And celebrate. Celebrate every time you achieve something that that brings you closer to fulfilling that intention. The more we celebrate our successes, the more successes we create. Because when we celebrate our success, we’re drawing our own attention and focus to that success. And whatever your focus and attention goes, that’s what you’re going to get more of because that’s what you’re, training your mind to focus on. You’re going to create more of of whatever it is that you’re focusing on.

So celebrate! It helps you to focus more on the successes and to create more of them. So with all that said, you’ve started on your you’ve created your intentions statement. You have started on your journey. How do you boost your chances of success for full for fulfilling this intention? I should have set the intention to be able to speak properly before recording this, shouldn’t I, thinking about it? Hey. There we go. So what are some ways you can boost your success toward fulfilling your potential? Visualising. Creative visualisation. It’s a great way to do it.

There’s a few different ways you can do this. Doesn’t have to be visual as such. What do I mean by that? Different people have different ways of of visualising stuff. Some people just a small small percentage of people just cannot get a mental picture of of anything. So they can’t visualise it. They assume, well, that means there’s nothing I could do. Not at all. There are many different ways in which you can visualise your fulfilling your intent intention.

Create vision boards. They work different ones work for different things work for different people. Some for some people, vision board’s a complete waste of time. For other people, they work beautifully. Create this vision board of what life looks like fulfilling that intention. Have a bit of fun as you as you create it. And when you do create it, create it with text, create it with with, with pictures, images. That’s the one I’m looking for for, images that you’ve got from the Internet or that you’ve got from magazines or papers or even ones that you’ve drawn yourself.

Once you’ve created this, place it somewhere where you are gonna see it all the time or as often as possible. You might make it your backdrop for your computer. You might pop it on the wall just above your monitor so it’s always there. Whenever you whenever you look up, there it is. Pop it on the fridge. Pop it in your bathroom mirror so that you see it almost first thing every morning. Great way to help drive you towards fulfilling that intention. You might do some creative visualisation if you’re able to to picture things nicely and clearly with your eyes closed or hear.

And when you when you do your visualisations, especially your creative visualisations, see what’s what it looks like, but also hear what you would hear in that situation, and feel what you would feel inside. Really amp up the emotional response. Really ramp everything up. It’s like turning the dial up to 11. Just to really, really, really feel it all. Similar to vision boards, use post it notes, pictures. Little reminders. Remember we said earlier, make your intention concise and memorable.

Make it concise. You can write on a post it note. Other forms of notes are available. And stick it stick it everywhere. Stick it on your monitor. Stick it on your mirror. Stick it beside your bed. Stick it on the fridge.

Stick it on your TV. Use it as a bookmark for your favourite book. Stick it everywhere, so you’re always seeing it. Write it down. This, this is a really good way because it it brings in several of our senses, including kinesthetic, the the feeling and moving sense, as well as our visual Noble, and our auditory digital as we’re as we’re saying it to ourselves. So this can fulfil many of our different senses at once. Write it down. Write down what your intention is.

Also, get creative. Write down what that looks like. Write down what life looks like as you are living that intention. Get really creative about this as well. This one, it’s absolutely fine to write reams and reams. The more you’re more you write about it, the more you get into it, the more it creates that drive within to to achieve it and succeed. So once you’ve done all of those things, what are some other things you can do just to help you fulfil your intention? Review and reflect. Period periodically review how you’re getting on.

My intention is to have fun. Am I am I having fun? Is life fun? Well, yes, there are gonna be times when it isn’t. And life can’t always be fun. But if your intention is to have fun, am I broadly, overall, having fun? If I am, brilliant. Celebrate it. If I’m not, okay. So there’s no fun in my life. What do I need to do to start creating that fun? And reflect upon what you’ve done.

What worked? What didn’t? What changes might you make? So re periodic review and reflection. And, also, is this is this intention still right for me? Because sometimes our intention might have been good when we first set it. But as we’re as we’re we’re, growing and developing, we might want to adjust and even grow this intention. My intention to be different to be different. It’s absolutely fine for your intention to grow, for your intention to adjust, to change, because we all change through life. And as we start experiencing more things, it might be we need to fine tune it. Also practice gratitude, particularly when you’re when you’re reviewing how you’re how you’re doing fulfilling your intention. Practice gratitude.

What are things you can be for which are taking you closer and closer to fulfilling or to continuing to fulfil your intention? If your intention is to be healthy, for example, my intention is to have a healthy life, Express gratitude for everything that happens that helps you along that path. Perhaps, if you if exercise, going to the gym is, part of your regime to help fulfil that intention, be grateful every time you go there. Be grateful for the equipment. Be grateful for the for the support, for the staff there. Or whatever is find things to be grateful for because the more you’re grateful for, again, the more you’re gonna start spotting those things in life and the more it’s gonna help you fulfil your intention. And one final thing with fulfilling your intentions. We said at the start when you create your intention statement, check-in with your values and your aspirations. What what are things that are important to you? What what what do you want to achieve? As you’re going along, just reconnect with these values.

Reconnect with these aspirations. They will help to reinforce the intention statement. Help to help you to find more ways to to truly fulfil that intention. That is pretty much what I wanted to wanted to cover today. Hopefully hopefully you found that useful. Hopefully you found it, interesting. Hopefully you’re gonna start, creating intentions That’s everything for this episode. Again, if you like it, That’s everything for this episode.

Again, if you like it, please do give us a like. Give us a comment. Share share this. Post it. Share it far and wide, subscribe on your favourite platform. Give us a review on your favourite platform, that really helps. And above all, whatever you do, take care, look after yourself, and I will see you in another episode very soon. Bye for now.