The Power Of Setting Your Daily Intention

I can 100% honestly say that setting a daily intention for myself has been the biggest game-changer in my life personally. This is a practice of asking myself every morning how I want to show up for my day.

No one actually begins their day saying they are going to be grumpy or angry or annoyed or frustrated

I am going to venture a guess and say that no one actually begins their day saying they are going to be grumpy or angry or annoyed or frustrated or offended yet… are there not moments in our day that we often wish that we could take back? Particularly when we reacted in a way that we wish we hadn’t? So, we don’t begin our day with the intention to react and say things we didn’t mean to say but what if as we begin our day, we make a point of purposely setting an intention for ourselves to show up a certain way, or ask ourselves what our theme of the day is going to be, or what energy do we want to broadcast out to the world? How profound would that be, for us to be able to get “ahead of our day” by setting an intention?  

Pause and consider your day

What this is going to require us to do, is to:

1. pause in the morning for a few minutes and take a snapshot of our upcoming day,
2. we then ask ourselves what is something I could do today, to help my day run smoother?

• Maybe you have a job interview or an important meeting and you want to show up with confidence or with an ability to speak honestly and truthfully.
• Maybe you want to bring some gratitude into your day, or you want your theme to be kindness and everywhere you go you practice kindness to everyone.

The most important thing to remember is YOU get to define your intention for the day every morning.  In other words, setting an intention for your day or setting a theme, allows you to take a few conscious minutes each morning to think about your day on purpose and set an intention to show up in a certain way. 

Sticking With It

When you first start to do this, it will require awareness. In my experience, when I first started to do this my objective was to stick to my intention/theme all day long, however by afternoon I often either completely forgot about the intention or if I even tried to remember what my intention was, I often forgot what it was. What I can tell you though, is that I didn’t get frustrated.

Some days I did really well and other days I completely failed but every single day I still set an intention and did my best to apply it to my day.

Over the years, as I continue to practice this daily intention setting ritual, I have found I can not only remember what intention I set that morning, but I can also follow through with it!  To my amazement, my ability to respond to my days now as they are unfolding (in often unexpected ways) is a powerful change in my life. In the past, I reacted to everything unplanned with stress, worry, and frustration. My new habit of setting my daily intention was proving to be a very worthwhile addition to my day! 

Every one of my relationships was improving and most importantly this practice of intention setting was changing my relationship with myself! I was learning to love myself, I was learning to appreciate myself, I was learning to be proud of myself and most importantly, it was helping me to figure out what was important in my life.

I will share my morning practice…

1. I get myself up a few minutes earlier in the morning,
2. I take a few moments to sit and review what I know of my day. 
3. I think about a positive attribute that would work very nicely in my day, and then finally,
4. I write it into my Daily Journal. 

I write (and say out loud) “Today I….” and then I fill in the blank. I strongly recommend putting it in the present tense, as that makes it so much more real. So if I’ve chosen to set an intention to bring kindness into my day I would write something like “Today, I am kind” or maybe ”Today I choose to bring kindness into my day.” 

Interchange my intention of kindness with whatever you want to define your theme or energy of the day to be! 

Figure out what works best for you

Of course, you work this in whatever way works for you, I am just sharing what has worked for me and many of my clients. I have one client who likes to write her daily word on the top of a journal page and then she programs it to pop up on her phone a few times a day as her reminder of what her intention is.

Set your day up right and start it with the power of your intention – then whatever the day hands you – you have your intention to ground you and support you. How empowering is that!!!!