Intention

I’ve been thinking about living with intention this month. The things I do, how I spend my time and money, what I eat. There is a lot of my life that I coast through. The brain likes to put things in boxes and there are benefits to that process. That’s why for a toddler every four-legged furry animal is the family dog. If we had to consciously take every breath or every step we wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything else. At the same time being mindful of our connection to our breath, ourselves, and others has a very calming effect and can provide the environment for inspirational breakthroughs.

I make new years resolutions every year. And every year they are more or less the same ones. Keep my room clean, improve my handwriting, eat right, exercise more, save more… the normal ones. But all of those come from a place of not being enough. That there is an ideal ‘self’ I am forever falling short. I write my resolutions and don’t look at them again until a year or two later to see how many I kept. I can’t think of a single one.

On the flip side are the goals that I make throughout my life, not from a place of shortcomings to be overcome but from a place of completeness with a motivation of being more. For example being 27 would be the best year of my life and I’ve worked at making it so. Then there is the goal to touch every continent by the time I am 30. Baring any unforeseen crisis, or even in spite of them, I have a loose plan to accomplish this. Getting involved in a voluntourism agency in some fashion (still working out the details of that one).

Why make goals at all? I like the idea of self-improvement and the idea of stagnation feels grimy. And goals are easier to keep if they are written out, spoken, or otherwise given authority. Just because the road is difficult doesn’t mean you should give up. I’ve started to be intentional even about what goals I set. Goals that you actually want to meet take energy and risk to accomplish. Even those goals made that you don’t want to accomplish still take emotional energy and focus away from other things. If the motivation comes from anywhere but me, I don’t bother making it.