Setting your intentions?

How often do we have the best of intentions, I will go for a run in the morning, stop eating chocolate delights at midnight and be kind even to the people who annoy me, yet those intentions disappear like the fairies at the end of the garden, gone in a moment whilst you were looking away. We want to be a better versions of ourselves, improved and generous of spirit, but the habits of old action pop up and take us over, powerful old ghosts that inhabit us and take over the show just when we were suppose to be on the stage despite our best heart felt intentions. It is almost as if our minds ignore our clearly stated intention like they are just words or mere thoughts, so how do we make our intentions clear and loud so that we stop discarding them, and instead listen, understand and act accordingly.

We have over twenty thousand thoughts a day, we do not notice the amount because they are mostly repeats, the same ones we had yesterday, and every day for the last year, just try and remember how many new thoughts you had yesterday, and if you are lucky you might come up with a dozen but not many more. The same is even true of intentions, you probably had the same ones yesterday as you do today and at the same time each day, in the hour before bed or just after having a donuts or whatever triggers your habit of trying to set your intentions, it is so much easier to change tomorrow as it never comes, your intentions have become a comfortable habit where you never have to act. Where ever there is a trigger, action and reward, there is a habit, and there are good and bad ones, but it is worth noticing the difference and when you acting from them.

Lets assume that your current habit of setting intentions is not working, it is time for a change and the first stage is establishing what your habit is now, identify what it is, when it is triggered, what the action is, if you are not changing, the reward is the feeling that you are going to change, even if you don't, it is a way of stopping the feelings of shame and regret, which feels good. We need to be able to recognise our patterns of behaviours before we are able to change them, what is not measured, can not be changed, it also helps you to understand how habits works, trigger, action, reward, which sounds simple and when you observe what you are doing it is humbling to discover how simple you are (I found it easier to be amused by this rather than insulted!). If it makes you feel better remember simple things give rise to complexity very quickly especially when there are thousands of habits interacting in a single day and that they exist to make your life easier.

We are not trying to get rid of habits, just to guide them towards good outcomes, taking a walk everyday is a good habit and easy when you do not have to think about it, that is why simple rules are a great tool for setting simple habits. My walking rule is simple, I go everyday no matter what mood I am in and I am rarely in the mood for a walk but afterwards I always feel better (indeed any resistance disappears once I am out of the house), and because this is an established rule, I can link others habits to it, like getting my food shopping done, practising a little gratitude, smiling at strangers, breathing mindfully. It is odd that the only time that it is stressful is when the wind is high (I have an exception to the rule that I do not walk in hurricanes or the English equivalent, where there is danger to life) and I have to decide to walk or not, then I have to figure out if I am just use a bit of wind as an excuse or not, which leads to more mental exercise than I want.

What having rules does is turn intentions into a linking action, it is the first stage of setting intention in a way that the mind has to respond to instead of ignoring your intention. To be clear whatever you have been trying has failed, it is time to try something different (indeed if rule setting does not work for you, try something different and keep on doing so until you find the thing that works for you), we are not identical beings, we work differently, we can only run experiments and we the results for you. When we hear statistics, they are never 100%, they are 90% of people, that means for 10% of people it is different, it only by personal experimentation that we find out which we are, though try the advice for the 90% first as that is the most likely to be true for you nine out of ten times.

What is clear is that intentions left as thoughts is not working and unlikely to work as we ignore thoughts all the times as there are so many of them, we need to have a process to make them unignorable. We can turn them into the written word through journaling them, you do not have to write an essay on them, bullet points are fine and easy to read back (remember you are the reader and writer when you journal, so make yourself clear to your future self, and serve yourself by actually later reading what you wrote, there might be patterns and useful information in there). There is the option of turning your intentions into mantras that you repeat, though it is best to be specific rather than general, “be a better person” in not useful, whereas “clean your room” is simple, achievable and clear. You can discuss your intentions with a friend as saying out loud makes it real, though again simple is better than general, and you can even agree to hold each other accountable if it is an area where you both want to improve.

It is important to start as small as possible, you want to get as many wins as you can, both overall and each day, that is why having a plan to follow your intention and doing it as early as possible in the day is vital to success. You need energy to make changes, good intentions fade as the day get longer, so start winning in the morning when you have the motivation (and if you have not got energy in the morning, the first habit to tackle might be getting enough sleep, it makes everything else easier!), and the plan does not need to be more than three bullet point (though one is better). Habits take a good forty day to sink in, so you need to keep new habit as small as possible, so that you can maintain them on the days you do not want to do them, and if you can link them to another habit even better.

The reason for considering how to implement your intentions is because we want our intentions to be meaningful, we want a clear relationship between intention and action, so that when you have an intention your mind knows this leads to action. The mind looks at what actually happens, if you set intention and then do nothing, that is how the mind expects to react to intentions, it treats them like daydreams, nice to have but nothing to worry about, you want to break that link. Intentions should be treated as a promise to yourself, you should only make promises that you keep, that is why we set such a low bar for our intentions, to make sure you keep them, under promise and over delivery is the aim of these intention, a promise is a responsibility that you take on voluntary but once you do it should become an absolute obligation. By taking away excuses you become a believable person especially to yourself, your mind will start to believe your intentions and know that the easiest option is to hold to your intention, as you are going to do it no matter the resistance.

This is what character looks like, doing what you say you are going to do, you have a clear intention and follow it up with the action to achieve that intention, and the person you have to prove it to is you, once you have the confidence that comes from competence you will have grown as a person. That is why it is so important to be clear with your intentions, it is not an idle thought or a shopping list of nice things to have, a true intention needs to articulated in the real world and with clarity so that everyone is certain about the action that needs to take place. You do this so that you have a clear mission and by fulfilling your mission, you do not just complete the mission and enjoy the benefits but more importantly you become a person who can set your intentions and expect those intentions to be fulfilled, which makes life a lot simpler and straightforward, and when that happens it takes less energy to do the things that you care about, it becomes part of who you are, a person who lives up to their responsibilities, which starts with the intention to do so.