Set Intentions, Not Goals
Making goals for yourself is great. But, I’d like to challenge this idea of making goals as this perpetuates the guilt and shame cycle we fall into when we do not complete our goals in the timeframe or even in the way we imagined.
This is a great topic to discuss right now, especially with the new year, and the common question we are asked by others is: “what are your new year’s resolutions?” We normally follow up with a goal for the new year and we tend to be very driven with our goal in the beginning, only for it to wane and die off by the end of the month. This just creates guilt and shame for not completing the goal and while this might motivate you to push to start again, what it mostly does is perpetuate our negative self-talk and beliefs that we can not accomplish something or we are not good enough.
Instead, I’d like to propose for your new year is to set an intention. What is an intention exactly?
An Intention is defined in 2 ways: “an aim or plan” and “the healing process of a wound”. Both apply to this situation.
An intention is an idea or the focus we want to create that will ultimately impact our daily decisions and how we choose to act in our life. If we are creating a plan with how we want to challenge something, we are more likely to follow through with the plan.
When it comes to “the healing process of a wound”, we want to heal our innate negative self-talk, guilt, and shame towards ourselves from past failed goals and resolutions by setting an intention.
Let’s try an example:
If my “goal” is to lose weight this year, then I would intend to set on the plan to work on this “goal.” My intention might be being more conscious of food intake, monitoring my macros, or meal planning. Another intention may be a physical activity such as joining a gym, doing a workout program, or taking more fitness classes. I know we would normally want to say, “I want to lose 20lbs in 2 months” and go with that. But let’s say we only lose 10lbs in 2 months. Do those 10lbs not count for any loss just because we never met our goal? This is where we can get caught up in our shame and guilt because we didn’t meet the goal when instead we could have just set the intention of losing weight and by the 2nd month be proud of any progress that was made. We heal our inner self-talk and our core beliefs by setting intentions so we continue working on our “goal.”
Join us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest as we work on setting intentions for our days, months, and year together!
