6 steps to setting powerful intentions
Kate Darbyshire Evans
“Our intention creates our reality.” Wayne Dwyer
We often talk about our goals in coaching but what about our intentions? As Wayne Dwyer’s quote states you create your own reality through intentions. Intentions are also a very important powerful tool to help you achieve your desired outcomes. An intention is a way of being rather than a specific goal and a guiding principle for how you want to live your life. They are the conscious and unconscious motivations behind our actions and a catalyst that starts a chain reaction of events that leads to your desired outcomes. It is the first step to clarifying what you want in your life and it can be lived everyday independent of achieving your goal. It is more about enjoying living in, and experiencing the moment and encouraging you to embrace uncertainty, possibilities and opportunities and to feel more fulfilled and connected to your values. Intentions are powerful and they can increase your accountability and help strengthen your belief in your own potential. Writing a statement of intention and setting it out as part of your morning routine can help you achieve your desired outcome by focusing on what really matters most to you.
Intentions can be to do with anything from life in general, your relationships, health and wellbeing, work or finances. Here are a few simple examples of intentions to help inspire you to write your own and make your powerful intention a reality:
- I intend to make time to develop my interests as well as my work.
- I intend to have a healthy and positive relationship with my body and mind to feel nurtured, strong and confident.
- I intend to be financially independent to enable me to pay my bills, travel and enjoy my life to the fullest.
Here’s how to set your intentions today:
- It is important to write your intention based on how you want to feel. Choose something that is positive and reflects your values, beliefs and perspective on life.
- Intentions are more powerful when they come from a calm and centered place. Take a few relaxing breaths and when you feel calm listen to your inner self, be present and ask yourself ”What really matters most to me today?”
- Keep your intentions simple. Be clear and concise and use powerful words. Write your intention down as if you already have what you want. Write the intention as a statement and focus on the feeling using a couple of adjectives to help you recall the relevant emotions when you read it.
- Write your intentions down on a card or sticky note and keep it in a prominent place where you can focus on it, repeat it, and be inspired throughout your day.
- Back your intention up with action. Consciously guide your thoughts and actions during the day to be aligned with your intentions. List the actions you are going to take today to achieve your intention. Your actions will reinforce your intention.
- Make it a habit and share your intentions with others. It helps you to keep focused, accountable and also encourages others to set their own intentions.
I hope you enjoy creating your own intentions. By expressing how you genuinely feel about how you want your life to be positive things can happen and you can create your reality.
Kate Darbyshire Evans
Helping women entrepreneurs and designers in the fashion industry who struggle with overwhelm and anxiety to thrive
I help women entrepreneurs and designers who struggle with overwhelm and anxiety to rethink their response to stress and learn how to accept, embrace and utilise it to become more resilient, happier and more successful. Stress is inevitable but by changing your attitude to stress you can transform your challenges and difficulties into opportunities and possibilities. Utilising stress can be liberating and empowering by choosing to see stress as your friend, rather than seeing it as your enemy. By building your resilience you will be able to remain flexible in your responses to your thoughts, behaviours and emotions when under stress. Learning how to transform stress and make it work for you is exciting and liberating. As a result you will feel more empowered, confident and resilient and be able to: • rethink and change your attitude to stress • know what it means to be good at stress • embrace challenges with confidence and positivity • persist in the face of setbacks • use anxiety to help you rise to your challenges • see effort as the way to mastery and achievement • turn nerves into excitement • how to turn a threat into a challenge • turn adversity into a resource • turn self focus into bigger than self goals As an experienced coach, with over 20 years in the fashion industry at director level, I love helping and supporting women to explore and understand the real underlying causes of their stress that undermines their resilience. My aim is to bring clarity, motivation and purpose by helping them challenge their attitude to stress and move from a fixed mindset towards a growth mindset. To learn the skills to respond to their thoughts, feelings and behaviours in a positive, powerful and sustainable way. This enables them to strengthen their resilience and increase their self-esteem so they can more confidently deal with the challenges that life throws their way. Running a business, whether or not you employ people or not is often isolating and very challenging at times. You can easily become overwhelmed by the workload, constant change and the responsibility it involves. Stress and burnout can creep up on you. I understand what burnout is like that having personally experienced severe stress in my twenties. I have also experienced some major challenges and changes in my life, including redundancy, severe injury and divorce so I appreciate and value the importance and benefits of developing resilience and self-care. Women want to manage their lives better, both practically and emotionally and achieve their goals and aspirations. As an owner and manager of people it is important that you create an environment where you, your people and the business can flourish and thrive. This requires focusing on becoming resilient by developing a growth mindset and accepting and embracing stress rather than trying to avoid or reduce it. In addition to I speak on how to rethink and transform attitudes to stress to empower women and build their resilience. I also write articles on the subject. www.finerthinking.com
