Intention Setting: A Pathway to Personal Empowerment
Setting intentions is a powerful tool for developing personal growth. Learning how to set intentions is the ultimate “self-help” practice. Creating personal intentions help you clarify precisely what you want and how you want to live your life. In doing so, you’ll be more likely to take control of your life instead of letting life (and other people) control you.
- Clarifies your thoughts and values
- Reveals your wants, needs, and desires
- helps you focus
- helps build inner peace and tranquility
- helps build positive emotions
- directs your energy and attention
- helps with overwhelming situations
- builds an action plan or goals
- Works fast
The first step in setting intentions is understanding yourself, your needs and desires. But it also requires that you acknowledge what you’re thinking. Because ultimately, whatever you are thinking will determine how you feel.
When you decide what you want and make your intentions, this will clarify your values.
When you put your intentions into words or statements, they will be the catalyst to help keep you focused.
The result will enable you to set boundaries for the standards that you have set for yourself (your values and goals.)
Your intentions will be the guiding principles for how you conduct your life and your choices.
As you can imagine, it is very personally empowering when you are clear about your intentions.
Discover Who Benefits Most from an Intentional Living Practice
Everyone can benefit from intentional living, but as a highly sensitive person, This self-care practice may be even more helpful to others like me. In fact, sensitive people have some, if not all, of the other traits and factors listed below:
- Sensitive People or Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) – Sensitive people can easily get overwhelmed by life. This practice helps them to clarify their feelings and turn anxiety into a positive state of being.
- ADD or ADHD – People with ADD & ADHD have a lot of ideas but can’t always remember what they want to do. An intentional living practice helps with focus, energy, and attention by practicing. Reading, writing, or meditating helps with follow-through. A recorded meditation works like magic to focus their attention and energy.
- Introverts – Introverts typically like peace and quiet. They will benefit from this practice by clarifying their internal feelings, which will validate their choices. Introverts love introspection, so this practice is perfect for them.
- Empaths– Empaths are highly attuned to the people around them. They have difficulty not absorbing others’ emotions. Living intentionally can help empaths set boundaries and live more peacefully without taking on other peoples’ problems.
- ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) or Childhood Trauma – People who have lived through ACEs can be more sensitive because they are hypervigilant. Living intentionally helps us to create a life that feels more safe.
I recommend setting three types of intentions:
- Long-term “life” intentions (an Intentional Life Theme).
- Short-term daily intentions.
- Situational “as-needed” intentions for when difficult situations arise.
1. Setting the Course: Long-Term Intentions as Your Life’s Compass
Long-term Intentions will set the tone for your life. I like to call this an “Intentional Life Theme” or an “Intentional Living Theme.”
The value of setting long-term intentions or an intentional life theme is for you to clarify your values and then empower yourself to live by them. It’s like creating a mission statement for your life.
The best reason to create an “intentional life theme” is it gives you a framework for how you want your life to be.
Sometimes, people tend to get dragged into other peoples’ lives unintentionally. Or, we can feel obligated to uphold other peoples’ expectations because we want to be good friends, partners, brothers, sisters, sons & daughters.
But then, what if you find yourself listening to negativity, feeling judged, or trying to solve someone else’s problems?
When you have an ‘Intentional Life Theme,’ you are more likely to notice when things around you fit with your vision. If it’s not a fit, you are more likely to put some boundaries around it.
Having an “Intentional Life Theme” will help you decide things such as what you do for a living, who to hang around, and even what to do for fun.
Example: Long-term Intentions
Suppose you’ve done the work to understand yourself at this stage in your life. (Your intentions will change over time as you grow and change.) And you’ve decided that your overarching life intentions are to live a joyful, peaceful, and simple life. This decision gives you the foundation to choose your activities, the people you associate with, and other aspects of your life.
So let’s say you have a friend who calls you on the regular to tell you how much she hates her job. You’ve heard this story for years, and frankly, you’re sick of it. With your new intentional life theme, ask yourself, “Is this conversation contributing to my joyful, peaceful, and simple life?” If the answer is “no,” then you start to set boundaries around accepting calls from this friend.
Boundary setting is a skill that many of us still need to learn. We weren’t raised with the luxury of caregivers who led by example. That’s why it’s so important to create our personal intentions.
Knowing precisely what you want (in this case, to live a joyful, peaceful, and simple life) will allow you to start saying no to things and people who don’t fit. It is empowering to feel a sense of control over our own lives.
2. Empower your daily routine with Short-Term Intentions
Setting short-term intentions is a powerful way to add clarity and empowerment to your daily routine.
Have you ever thought about how often we go through daily life without even processing what’s happening? We’re living day-to-day, just getting through it and handling stuff. But then, suddenly, you may notice that you’re off your game. Your mind isn’t quite right, and you don’t know why.
That’s what can happen when we don’t process our emotions, and that’s why I recommend daily practice for checking in with yourself. I call this “Soul Care.”
By creating a daily writing exercise, you will stay on top of your emotions by checking in to see how you are feeling and what you are thinking. Ask yourself, what is happening today? or “What’s going on?” and “How am I feeling?
You can then process how you’re feeling and what you’ve been telling yourself about whatever is happening in your life on that particular day.
If this is your morning routine, write about something that happened the day before. Ask yourself, what is it that I need today? What positive statement can I write down? How can I have a positive outlook today?
Next, you can create positive intentions to get you back to feeling normal. Doing this will also help to keep the present moment in positive energy. This incredibly empowering practice will give you instant strength and motivation. It will also help you feel better about doing the task at hand.
Example: Short-term Intentions Or Daily Intentions Practice
Processing through life daily will keep emotions from getting stuck in your body without your awareness.
Example daily writing exercise:
What’s happening today? “Today I am stressed out because I have too many responsibilities to manage things like my taxes and other stuff that I “have” to do.
What quality do I need to help me handle this situation? Strength. Focus. Confidence.
What positive statement can I write down? How can I have a positive outlook today?
- “I have the strength that I need to get this done.
- I can focus my mind and energy until this is done.
- I have confidence in myself that I can accomplish this task.
3. Set Intentions: Situational – When Life Challenges Arise
As you are well aware, life happens. As much as we try to control things, it just isn’t always possible. When life challenges arise, emotionally processing them is helpful. This mindful practice will help you make new intentions to create a positive mindset.
The first thing that you need to do is to analyze the situation. Ask yourself the following questions:
- What happened?
- What are you telling yourself?
- How are you feeling?
- What did you do?
- How did it work?
- What did you learn?
- What new boundaries can I set?
- What new intentions can I make?
- Next, focus on a specific strength, quality, or skill to help you process the situation.
Example: Intentions for Difficult Situations and challenges
Okay, unfortunately, this is an example from my life. It was a legal situation, and I felt extremely out of control and almost paralyzed. It will give you an example of how I used this practice to process through a difficult situation and felt a lot better afterward.
As you read, you will see how I started off a bit irrational, but after processing the situation, I gave myself lots of positive messages.
This practice really works and helps you feel emotionally better very quickly.
What happened?
People came to my home and invaded my privacy. I was angry and stressed out.
What am I telling myself:
I’m telling myself that this is an invasion of my privacy.
How am I feeling?
I’m feeling really out of control.
What did I do?
I got angry and tried to control the situation.
How did it work?
I’m not sure. I could’ve handled the situation better.
What did I learn?
Sometimes, I won’t have control over situations.
What new boundaries can I set?
I would have to learn my legal rights ahead of time.
What new intentions can I make, or what qualities will help me?
“I need emotional strength and courage to continue through this “situation.” I am resilient. I can handle any situation. I have the self-control that I need to overcome my anger. I can find peace in chaos. I can find peace in forgiveness. I can find optimism through difficulties. I can heal myself through my thoughts. I trust that everything will be okay. I have the courage I need to face my fears. I can heal my mind and body.“
Note: I was able to generate those positive intentions using a technique from my Intentional Living Guidebook (see below). Otherwise, I highly doubt I could’ve done it, especially in my emotional state.
Simple steps to practice your intentions
How you deliver your new intentions to your subconscious mind will be a personal choice. Not everyone is open to mindfulness practices or understands the value of meditation. But the truth is, you’re brain needs a delivery method.
I like creating my own DIY meditation and DIY self-hypnosis when I need more reinforcements.
For instance, If I have a project that I have to do and I’m dreading it, and I just can’t bring myself to do it, I will create a guided meditation for myself. After mentally processing the situation, I write down positive statements to help inspire me to action. Then, I record my guided meditation or affirmations on my phone.
The most important thing for me is to listen to my guided meditation/self-hypnosis whenever I need it. It works like magic every time, folks. No joke.
Luckily, there are multiple ways to deliver messages to your subconscious mind. Listed are the following techniques:
- Writing – writing helps you process thoughts and emotions. Write your intentions in your favorite notebook, journal, or sticky notes.
- Reading – Read your intentions silently to yourself as needed. The more often you read them, the better they will work.
- Reciting – Read your intentions out loud.
- Meditation or Self-Hypnosis Practice – Create a DIY guided meditation or self-hypnosis to listen to your intentions while in a relaxed state of mind.
Any of these techniques will work to get those positive messages into your subconscious mind.
Deepen Your Practice: Get ‘The Intentional Living Guidebook’ today!
As you can see, setting intentions is a transformative practice that can bring clarity, peace, and empowerment to your life. But if you’re feeling overwhelmed or unsure where to start, don’t worry – I’ve got just the thing for you.
Introducing ‘The Intentional Living Guidebook,’ a short digital printable guide designed to help you get the clarity you need to construct your Intentional Life Theme and create positive messages to include in your Intentional Living Practice.
This guidebook is the result of my own journey with intention-setting and contains a step-by-step process to guide you on your path to intentional living.
With ‘The Intentional Living Guidebook,‘ you will be equipped with tools that you can use over and over again.
Whether or not you are a Highly Sensitive Person or just seeking to live a more peaceful and fulfilling life, this guidebook is for you.
This is the Power of Intention!
It’s never too late to start living your best life.
Wishing you Inner Peace and Empowerment.
