You have created your goals and identified what you want to achieve this year. How can you remind yourself to take effective action every day? Do you re-read your goals daily? Have you considered setting daily intentions?
I am currently experimenting with both re-reading my goals and setting intentions each day.
It's about being proactive, not reactive. When you start your day with a clear intention, your attention naturally follows, helping you stay focused and aligned with your goals.
If you practice yoga, you may be familiar with the term Sankalpa, which means intention and can support you in fulfilling your Dharma (purpose). The word Sankalpa can be broken down as "San" (with) and "Kalpa" (that which follows). During quiet practice, you may have been prompted to identify and concentrate on your Sankalpa for that session or day. Hopefully, this practice has yielded positive results for you.
Setting your intention acts like a spotlight on what truly matters to you. It serves as your GPS, guiding you through the day. By committing to a clear intention, your brain’s reticular activating system becomes engaged, helping you notice opportunities and stay on course.
I love the quote from Tony Robbins: ‘Where focus flows, energy goes.’
This used to be my go-to quote, but I've since added more wisdom to this concept.
When setting my intentions, I now incorporate my values—essentially, who I am and who I aspire to be. I believe that effective action needs to be taken daily, and it's important to review my progress at the end of each day.
Perhaps T. Harv Eker's quote is even more applicable: ‘Where attention goes, energy flows, and results show’.
Let’s break these three thoughts down.
1. When setting your intention for the day, consider the values and virtues that reflect the person you need to become in order to achieve your goals. Act as if you are that person and align your actions with your future self. Once you have identified who that person is, you can adopt their beliefs, actions, thoughts, and standards in the present.
For example, for my ‘Energy Goal,’ the values and virtues I commit to daily are being vibrant, strong, and disciplined.
2. It’s essential to know which effective actions you will take each day and to follow through. To turn our goals and dreams into reality, we need to take action rather than simply wish for what we want.
For my example above, the daily actions I commit to include exercising, following my nutrition protocol, going to bed on time, and meditating. (There are more specific SMART details behind these goals.)
3. At the end of each day, I suggest a simple and effective review. Reflection transforms action into growth. Take time to reflect, learn, and refine your approach for the next day’s actions.
Ask yourself the following questions:
1. What went well? Celebrate your wins and progress, as this helps reinforce your values and virtues—reminding you, ‘This is just like me.’
2. What needs work? Identify areas where improvement is necessary.
3. What will you do differently? Plan one adjustment for tomorrow.
I want to highlight a pattern I used to fall into: getting hard on myself when I couldn't achieve my goals. I would typically review my experiences through a fixed mindset, which held me back. Now, I've realized it's much more beneficial to adopt a growth mindset. I understand that our abilities are just a starting point; we can improve if we put in the hard work and stay curious about the feedback we receive every day.
I like to imagine that I'm donning an experimenter's lab coat. Inspired by David Brooks' book The Second Mountain, instead of attacking the data with a hammer, I now choose to shine a flashlight on it to identify areas that need improvement. In other words, we either win or learn.
So, can you set your intentions daily?
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