What is intention setting and why is it so important to live with intention?
Do you ever feel like you’ve been on autopilot lately? Does your mind feel a bit foggy and unclear? Deep down, do you crave to live every day more fully, with more purpose and meaning?
If you’re currently feeling this way, then practicing living every day with more intention is super important. When you have a reason and an intention for doing something, going about your day just makes it feel so much more meaningful and worthwhile.
What Is Intention and Why Is It So Important?
According to dictionary.com, the word intention means: An act or instance of determining mentally upon an action or result.
Being intentional is a mental state that represents a commitment to carrying out an action or a set of actions in the future. You are acting from a mental state with the end or goal in mind.
Having an intention makes you more aware of your thoughts and actions during the day, and it also creates something for you to actively work for and look forward to.
Instead of letting life happen to you, you can choose to be intentional about how to live every day.
Ultimately, I strongly believe that being more intentional can give you hope. It can give you a sense of purpose, belonging, and acceptance of where you are. lt gives you a reason to keep living and keep moving forward.
The good thing is that being intentional is not difficult at all. Anyone can be intentional.
It is a consistent practice and choice to be more intentional every day.
Here are 3 easy ways you can set intentions and live more intentionally every day:
1.Start Your Day Right
Creating a Morning Ritual
I like to call my morning routine a “ritual,” because that’s how sacred it is.
Starting your day how you want it to be can be the catalyst to determining how the rest of your day will turn out. That’s why you see so many famous people out there talking about having a morning routine as part of their important habits to “success.”
A consistent routine every single morning overtime can be the anchor that will ground yourself throughout the day.
I also use this time as “me time,” when my phone is off, I’m not talking to anyone, I’m just spend the time with myself, for myself, by myself.
If you’re someone who is very busy and always interacting with people, having the time in the morning prioritizing yourself can be so nourishing.
Remember, a morning routine does not have to be big and extensive lasting for 2-3 hours. Especially for busy working professionals, you simply just don’t have the time. When you are creating a routine for yourself, make sure it is realistic and actually doable for you.
For my routine, I focus on cleansing 3 things: my mind, my body and my space, which is a routine I learned from Lewis Howes.
> Related Post: Easy Morning Routine to Start Your Day Right
> Related Post: Actionable Tips to Wake Up Earlier
Choose How You Want to Feel
Toward the end of my morning ritual, I will choose one word of how I want to feel that day.
This is a great way to be intentional as you choose one word to hold on to as you carry on with your day. Because what you think about, you will attract more of. After you have chosen that word, throughout the day it will be a lot easier for you to look for things and find reasons for you to feel that way.
For example, two words I like to choose to feel in my days are: “joy” and “motivated”
Remember, you have the ability to choose how you want to think, feel, and act every day.
2. Creating Your Ideal Life Vision
If you want to live every day with more intention, it’s also important to discuss about how to be more intentional with your bigger picture life direction. Having that long term perspective in mind will also really help with your daily decisions and actions you choose to take.
You can do that by creating a life vision for yourself.
Journal Your Intention for Your Ideal Life
This is called scripting. Basically, you are imagining one day in your ideal life and how it would look like. You will “script” out the day from when you wake up to when you go to bed, in present tense, with as much detail and as vivid as possible.
When you can be very specific and be very intentional about how you want your ideal life to look like, it is a lot easier for you to take actions (both consciously and unconsciously) to create that for yourself. Because again, you are setting an intention to create that into your current reality.
> Related Post: How to Create Your Ideal Life Vision
3. Check-In With Yourself Daily
Often we create goals and plans but we do not follow through. Why do we do that? Because we have steered off track without even realizing, and we simply forgot about it. Slowly, we feel like life has no meaning and we don’t really know what we’re doing because we are not aligned with our original plans and vision anymore.
It is so important to check in with yourself regularly.
Checking in can be as simple as doing a regular reflection or audit of your mental, physical, and emotional state. It can be as simple as asking 1-3 questions each time just to make sure you are doing okay and that you are on track.
3 questions I like to ask myself through my day/ week are:
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How am I feeling right now?
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What do I need?
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What is my focus for the rest of the day or week?
This is why I consistently create regular check-ins with my audience on my Instagram stories every week. Besides daily and weekly check-ins, I also do a monthly, quarterly, and yearly check-in with myself. This is how you can practice to be more self-aware, intentional, and be more in tune with your mind, body, and spirit.
I hope you find these tips helpful!
Download the free daily intention planner to start living more intentionally today:
Rooting for you,
Do you set intentions for yourself? What’s your experience with setting intentions?
Shirley Huang is a Certified Life Coach, Podcast Host, and online educator. She provides weekly resources to help people become leaders in their life, while loving themselves and having fun a long the way. Check out her Life Coaching Programs here.