The Power of A Purposeful Intention.
Written By: Taylor Hatfield, Edited By: Taylor Hatfield, Date 12/31/2024
With the new year a few hours away, now is as good of a moment as any to begin to ponder the next evolution in your journey! For this blog post we will be talking about what I believe is the difference between creating new years resolutions and creating mindful purposeful intentions. It’s this difference that has helped me to create shifts in my life over the last 2 years and I hope will help us all in the year to come. It was from this shift that I was able to mindfully observe my conscious and subconscious progress that occurred following setting my intention and visualizing my shifts from a centered place. I have also included a practical application that you can try now without any added products, subscriptions, or services. This application will take 30 min+ and you can make it as simple or advanced as you would like. Allowing you to customize it for your specific schedule and needs.
We hear every year about setting your new year’s resolutions. Things such as losing weight, eating better, being more productive, making more money, finding true love going or going on adventures are shared, marketed and then seldom fulfilled. If you are anything like me you set the same new year’s resolutions, never follow through with it for a whole host of reasons, dump money into products just to forget what you set out to achieve by March. I would look at these resolutions and wonder why I was not good enough to meet my goal or succeed but never acknowledge that I set goals throughout the year that tended to have more success. I realized this was for two reasons the first being that the resolutions I was setting were not authentic to my journey. They were not goals that I wanted to set but ones that were socially set for me. I was not looking to evolve or shift into a truer version of myself but to complete a social narrative of self. The 2nd reason I discovered my resolutions fell flat was the expectation of unrealistic results. I would expect huge changes within a brief time frame believing my yearly resolutions should be completed within a month or two. I would become disheartened by lack of progress and slip back into normal routines.
It was not until I began to understand purposeful intentions over standard resolutions that I started to see a real difference in my journey. Purposeful intentions are shifts not timed goals with an expiration date. For me a Purposeful intention could look like; I wish to shift my exercise routine to one that maintains my optimal health, I wanted to build healthier financial mindsets to create more security or abundance, or I want to shift to allow for more creativity in my life. These intentions leave room for time, to allow the vision of that future to develop, and can be easily brought into the moment to help guide your choices without creating exceeding pressures or unrealistic expectations. It is in this space of purposeful intention where I was then able to see the ways in which we move towards our intentional shift is both conscious and subconscious in its nature. This was beautiful to discover and still to witness because it further removed pressure while highlighting the power of our mindset. I noticed when I prioritized setting authentic intentions and visualizing the evolution over implementing new routines or strict time constrained results my brain opened to finding more moments to make these intentional shifts. Also, when life becomes overwhelming and I would lose mindful focus, my subconscious still help the vision and make subtle shifts even when I was unaware. I would then look back at the end of the year and discover that the results would be greater than years prior when I would set resolutions instead of intentions. It is in this space that I hope to make more incredible and authentic shifts this year.
This year I want to lay out a challenge for you that I have previously done a version of myself. It is a practical application you can use that requires no subscriptions, products, scheduled routines, or services. This application is a combination of information from the first 3 chapters of “The power of focus” by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hanson, and Les Hewitt as well as some tips I’ve developed along the way. If you have not read this book I highly recommend it as it has been instrumental in helping me create more mindful focus and peace within my daily life. I want you to answer the following three questions. I recommend doing this in a journal, digital document, or in your notes to help keep your thoughts organized and to connect mindful intention (mind) to the physical body (witting, typing, or texting) to create a deeper connection.
1) List 4 habits, goals, or changes you are most proud of from 2024?
2) List 4 habits, shifts, or changes you would like to see in 2025?
3) Turn each 4 items from questions 1 & 2 into 8 purposeful intentions.
To give an example for myself my answers would look like the following. Question 1) I am proud of myself for learning better money habbits, developing healthy coping mechanisms for overstimulation, improving my communication skills with my husband, prioritizing more time for fun. Question 2) I want to create more opportunities for sole self employment, I want to open up more time for family and friends, I would like to build better communication skills within large groups of people, I would like to build a better yoga practice. For question 3 one of my shifts may look like I want to reinforce the good money habbits I created in 2024 or I wish to create a healthier relationship with yoga to help support consistent practice.
Once you have answered your question I want you to take you 8 purposeful intentions and set them up in a bracket-style system. This system will randomly assign 2 intentions against each other and as one intention is picked it will move too the next round. By the end of this system, you will have one single intention. How do you know which intention wins? Well, that is the fun part because all you do is go with your gut. Look at the two options and ask yourself which intention I feel is most important to creating the life I want. Go with the first answer that pops into your head, rinse, and repeat. Once you are left with your intention take the next week to really visualize what your life will look like after this Purposeful Intentional shift. Visualize how you would like to feel by year’s end and maybe even a few steps you can take to begin to make the shift. This will help to lock in with your brain to begin taking the journey through conscious and subconscious progress and set you up for the year ahead.
Throughout this year we will check in with our intentions through future blog post, Facebook lives, masterclasses and more to help you mindfully make your way through this shift. Once you are done with this exercise if you would like visit The Mindfulness Aid Facebook group and post your intentions. Here the community can help support each other an create friendly accountability buddies which will also help to create holistic shifts in a safe environment. For now set your intention, trust in timing and remember these are purposeful shifts for the next year, you have plenty of time so don’t feel rushed and center into the present moment.
If you have made it this far thank you for taking the time for yourself and for supporting this blog. Please feel free to share this with friends who may also want to make Purposeful Intentions for this new year and comment any changes you see over the coming months.
As always darling,
Go In Love
Until The Next Time.
