Whatever you're working on right now, have you considered your intention?

You might not be consciously aware of it, but intention is always at work. Everything in our lives starts with an intention. It’s more than setting goals. It is a guiding principle for how you want to be, live, and your path that you want to be aligned with.

Intention guides thoughts, attitudes, and actions. It is, in short, the purpose for your actions.

Oprah Winfrey once (wisely) said:

“Every action, thought and feeling is motivated by an intention, and that intention is a cause that exists as one with an effect. If we participate in the cause, it is not possible for us not to participate in the effect. In this most profound way, we are held responsible for our every action, thought, and feeling which is to say, for our every intention.”

The purpose of these tools and tips are to help you find your intentions and, importantly, turn them into positive actions on reuse and sustainability - now and in the future.

Tools

Tips

Make them stick!

Vowing to do your intentions isn’t enough to make it stick, so make a commitment instead and check out these tips to integrate your intention into your everyday activities. Often, the vast majority of struggles in life come down to one simple problem: actions don’t match our intentions and this article nicely summarises how to overcome this obstacle. 

Similarly these three mindful steps we can take all for make our intentions come alive are useful while this insightful piece explores a simple secret that every entrepreneur uses to make resolutions stick. 

Use these intentional ideas 

Intentions can as expansive as you want to make them and you have the freedom to become whoever you want to be but, first, you need to get started. Here are some examples of clear intentions you can set now and it’s also worth considering these 21 sustainable intentions, as recommended by the experts of GlobalGiving’s Climate Action Fund.

While 2020 was a challenging year for everyone, don’t let that stop you from allowing yourself to set intentions for the future, and these ideas will help you do just that while these ideas for intentions are particularly useful after the difficult last year.

Measure efforts rather than results

Marshall Goldsmith’s book, Triggers, recommends creating a set of personal “Daily Questions” to measure our effort, not our results and track progress on behaviours you want to change. Interesting, he shows how we can overcome the trigger points in our lives that may make us forget our intentions. 

With all this in mind, do remember that it’s your choice to choose where you focus your energy, and to choose a better normal, a better life, a better future. This blog looks at the actions you can take to make a positive, lasting difference in everything you do and if you feel like giving up, and self-doubt and despair is taking over see this round-up of inspirational stories and ideas that shows anything is possible. We've also previously written about developing habits and you can check it out right here and some sound advice on beating the distraction demons is always a helpful read when looking to set intentions.

Now why not head over here and see why we love turning good intentions into ACTION!