Core Intentions
Happy New Year! I hope you have had an amazing start to 2016!
Did you notice that as soon as the flood of electronic Christmas wishes ended, a flood of electronic “New Year Resolutions” took over? My email and Facebook was taken over by posts and articles on how to make resolutions & how to stick to these resolutions. But now, towards the end of the month, I’m getting a few on how to ditch the resolutions altogether and how there’s no point anyway! What’s going on here? Are we all aiming too high? Are we being unrealistic? Are we just lazy? It’s pretty interesting (and a little funny) to see how we can raise the bar at the start of the month and 3 weeks into it, take that bar down and beat ourselves to a pulp with it.
No, I’m not going to give you a motivational speech about getting back up and sticking your resolutions on a new and highly evolved vision board. I’m going to get really real on these resolutions and every single decision we make in our lives. And I mean every decision, from the seemingly unimportant ones, like, whether to tie your hair up or leave it out today to whether you are going to hand in your resignation and travel for the foreseeable future.
Our lives can be broken down to tiny moments. We may think we have no way of controlling these moments and for the most part, we are oblivious of these moments. Becoming aware of how we choose to live in the moments can make all the difference. Let’s just take one of these small moments and look at the 2 ways of being able to experience them. Yes, there are only 2 ways.
One way is through a path of avoidance or fear. When walking down this path, you would be making choices based on the fear of “lack” or “effect” or “regret” etc. Looking at our hair example from above, you may choose to tie your hair up today because you fear the humidity and you fear it will make you look ridiculous. You may fear the heat will be unbearable.
The other way you can experience this moment is through kindness, goodness or love. When walking down the path of love, you will be making choices for the “good of” or for the “benefit of” or through the “abundance of”. You may choose to tie your hair up today for the benefit of keeping your body cooler or because you feel it would be better for you (and everyone else around you) to keep the mane tamed. (Can you tell this is a personal example?)
I realise this example is very basic, but its purpose is to show you how a simple adjustment in your Core Intention can make a big difference to the experience of that moment and the final result. Although the end result was to tie your hair anyway, the intention driving it impacts your attitude, your motivation and ultimately how you feel about yourself, the weather and whomever may comment on your hair today!
Knowing that moments turn into other moments which expand to days, to years, to decades, to habits…wouldn’t it be wise to pause for a bit and really get to understanding your Core Intentions?
These Core Intentions also impact how you connect with yourself. They determine how you connect with your external world – your partner, your family, children, colleagues, friends, the environment…what is the quality of your interactions?
Finally, these Core Intentions determine your level of motivation. Your intentions determine what you focus on and if it is fear based, then how motivating is it to keep driving towards it? How much more energy does it take you to do something you have negative emotions and beliefs around? How much more empowering would it be to work towards something that would be for the good of you or someone else?
So I say, before you set any more goals or resolutions this year, get clear on your Core Intentions. It is pretty simple because there are only 2 to choose from. Start your day with a little reflection, incorporate a lot of pauses throughout your day and be mindful of how you choose your experiences.
