Setting Intentions And Goals

Intentions. I am truthfully finding them quite difficult to communicate. For a concept so simple, they are quite complex and can encompass so many different things that it's quite difficult to pin it down with words but I will try anyway.

I think it would be best to start out talking about why we set intentions in the first place. We set intentions with our lives as a way to move forward, to bring something into our physical realities. I see it as a spark for a creative force that will come in and help you create something in your life. 

What kinds of things can you bring into your life with intention you ask? Well truthfully, just about anything. It can be something physical like a job, a person, an object, or it can be something more conceptual like an emotion or way of being.

Personally I like to focus on the emotion. With the way our current western society is laid out, we are very focused on the logical mind. Knowledge is very valuable and the more we know it seems like the more we are valued by the world. This isn’t inherently true and as a result a lot of us try to rationalize our emotions. We are naturally quite emotional beings and when we really separate our emotions from our minds, we get caught in this weird in-between where we can understand why we feel the way we feel, but can’t quite seem to figure out how to actually move the emotion out of our bodies. 

I am a believer that our emotions are very strong manifesters. So when it comes to setting intention it can be powerful to focus on how you want to feel in the situation.

For example, lets say you want to find a new job, that is a physically tangible thing, but rather than focusing on the where and what of the job, focus on how you want the job to make you feel. The feelings really communicate to the universe stronger than a logical argument will. 

The universe/God, whatever you want to call it, it’s all the same thing really, is made up of energy, and our emotions are little chemical reactions happening in our body that consist of different kinds of energy. When you focus on the feeling of a situation, and focus on how you want to feel in that situation, the situation will manifest.

As you sit back and begin to think about the way you would like to feel in your life, and begin to visualize what that would look like for you, you are setting the stage for an intention to bring direction into your life.

The visuilizations and imagining the kind of life you would like to live are step one, it’s something that exists in a different space and time than you currently are physically. The thing about our imagination is that we have been convinced that it isn’t real. It’s some fantasy place that only children are allowed to go to and that adults must live in the real world. I see a lot of people blocked from their imaginations, feeling like it’s silly and childlike.

I think this is something that really prevents us from living in our authentic truth. I think most of us can agree that as we get older, our bodies age but our minds dont. We might be more mature in many ways, but we are still goofy, and silly, and most of us can really appreciate a good fart joke. We are kind of like kids trapped in adult bodies, and this is wonderful. Our inner childs really run a lot of our lives, this is a whole conversion for a different blog post. When we can access our imaginations, access the fun and play and fantasy in our minds, we can really manifest anything our hearts desire. The universe loves a good play sesh, and it’s really important to not take ourselves too seriously in this process.

The intentions come in when the imagination has been done. When you have visualized and fantasized the life you want to live. The intention is like setting the coordinates for the fantasy into google maps and letting the car drive itself there. It is the point of action, it is where you are aiming yourself to go on the journey.

The thing about the journey is that it’s never as straight forward as you think it will be. There will be road blocks and detours along the way. The road blocks for me have been intentalized programming that doesnt belong to me that pops up and tells me im not going the right way. There are a lot of other peoples voices in our heads. Our parents, society, etc. that tell us what we are supposed to be. There’s a long list of things that society tells us we have to be and in reality none of that is real. When we are young often times we get told what to expect from theworld and they way we must show up and these can conflict with the true self that lives within us all. The tension and stories we make about why we can’t go for something is a good indicator of when these internalized programs are popping up. The good news is that we can deprogram them and get closer to expressing our true self each time.

If you are facing a program that doesnt work for you, begin to get really curious about it. Start asking it why, and follow the trail it takes you on until you get to the heart of the situation.

Setting intentions once you have your end goal in your mind is easy. Think of the most simple essence of the kind of life you’re calling in. If you’re someone who is trying to wake up at 5am and meditate every morning, begin by considering what time you already wake up. If you’re waking up at 10 every morning, jumping to 5am right off the bat might be really challenging. If you’re up for it and can face failure with ease do your thing, trust yourself over everything else. But I suggest starting small and begin to build trust with yourself. Remember this is a journey and one that can not be done perfectly. I recommend starting by waking up 2 hours earlier for a week or two, meditating and going about your day. Slowly work your way towards waking up at 5am and trust the process along the way. Sit with what comes up along this journey. There might be something that pops up to tell you you can’t do this, etc. but just sit with it, this is that internalized programming I was talking about.

Intentions are like an inspired spark for a goal. They kind of go hand in hand. When it comes to setting goals I find it best to do them one at a time and start small.

A lot of us never really learned how to trust ourselves. We give a lot of our power to external forces be it institutions, people, gods etc. It is what it is, but it often leads us to not really know what is best for us and the journey to learning to trust yourself is one that needs to be done with a lot of compassion. You will fail. You will stumble, but you get to decide how you react. Just because you failed once doesn’t mean it’s over. As you go along this journey you will have begun with small steps and as you accomplish them, you will begin to trust yourself. You will have proven to yourself that you can set an intention and follow through with it and that is the fuel that begins to build your confidence. Confidence is earned. You can fake it until you make it, but the making it looks like faking it and proving to yourself that it is in fact possible, thus earning your new found confidence. 

Now that we know about intention and goal setting, we can start off just going for it, or using a tool to help us along the way. I always recommend a journaling practice. Writing down your thoughts, feelings, dreams etc is an excellent way to make that inner child and inner self we talked about feel heard. 

We can also use physical objects like a gemstone, or piece of jewelry, or little trinket to infuse our intentions into that serve as a physical reminder for the intention and goal we are working on. 

To end this I will leave you with a small ritual you can do to set intentions with your object of choice.

The ritual:

First you need to find your object. Because I sell and wear a lot of jewelry, i think that having something you can physically put on and interact with throughout the day is quite powerful, but choose your favorite rock, trinket, jewelry etc and go from there. 

Next you will want to energetically cleanse the object. This is a way to say to clean the piece of any negative energy and to tell your mind that this object is free from anything that isnt the intention you will be infusing into it.

You can cleanse it in multiple different ways. You can visualize your object being cleansed by a bright light of all impurities and previous energies. You can spray your object with holy water or florida water and depending on the object you choose, you can even clean it with soap and water. The goal here is to be intentional about it. Intend for the object to be cleansed and it will be so. 

Next you will begin to infuse the object with your intention. I like to imagine a bright white light coming out of my dominant hand. For me this is my left hand, but use your own intuition to decide that for yourself. What comes to mind first is the correct answer for you. Hold your object in your chosen hand and imagine a bright white light coming from your palm.

Imagine the light infusing into every molecule of your item and speak your intention into the piece. You don’t have to physically say it out loud, but I find that the energy moves into the object stronger if I physically say my intention out loud. As always, listen to your own intuition and do what feels right. 

Speak from the heart. Say your intention fueled by the feeling and emotion that you have been visualizing in preparation for this ritual. Speak those feelings into your object. If you’re new to this, you can find prayers online, there are many many catholic prayers that can be said. You can edit them and change them to your needs or say them as is. Speak from the heart and really more than anything, get into the feeling of it all. Again, follow your own intuition and do what feels right.

Now that your object is infused with your intention, find somewhere special for the object that you will be interacting with a lot throughout the day. I prefer to set intentions with rings and necklaces because I will see and interact with them a lot throughout the day. Put your gemstone in your pocket, put your trinket in your workspace. As always, follow your own intuition and do what feels right. 

You can do this ritual as many times as you see fit. I like to do something like this on the New Moon. I choose to cycle out my intentions based on the moon but you can find a cycle that works best for you. The first of the month is another great place to start but if your intuition is telling you something different, always listen to that. There is a power deep inside you that knows exactly what you need at all times and that will hold more wisdom than some stranger on the internet every single time. 

For my daily intentions, I set those through small prayers in the morning and through my journaling practice where I check in with my emotions and where I make decisions for where I am in the moment that day. 

As always, I encourage you to be kind to yourself. If you are still in the process of finding your true self, we must have a lot of flexibility and hold spaces for the different hats we will want to try on until we find the ones we like. It is perfectly okay to try something out for 15 days and decide its not for you and set another intention and keep moving forward. We are not defined by one single thing we do but rather the combination of things we do and the way we interact with the world. And you always get to define yourself for yourself. Be kind to yourself and others always.