Set Intentions, not Resolutions.

At this time of year, we see lots of new faces at the Studio .. people eagerly walking in to try something new and make good on resolutions set on the first of the year. But as I’m sure we have all experienced, resolutions are hard to keep and when broken often times make us feel guilty - intentions on the other hand are simply a way of being in the world, that embodies a mindset to life. 

While I think resolutions are good in terms of taking time to review and take stock of one's life, the simple act of making a resolution feels big and lets be honest, a lot of the times resolutions we make can be unrealistic. ​

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This year as an experiment I set a soft resolution to take a daily walk. I came out of the gate strong, 4 days in a row, and then life got busy - we had friends come and stay, there were extra social commitments - and I subsequently just stopped… I didn’t even make it to “Quitters Day” January 10th, the day research shows that many people (some 80%) abandon their resolutions by.

Resolutions tend to come with a tremendous amount of pressure to do the thing we resolve to do, and when broken come with a sense of failure & guilt.  After my failure to maintain my daily walking practice, I subsequently found it hard to get started again, as a little voice rang out to say ‘whats the point, you’ll just stop again’.

Personally I think a much more effective strategy for implementing change and focusing on what you want to achieve is the practice of setting Intentions.
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Intentions allow us to focus on what you want to achieve and make better decisions. They help us align our actions with our values and the things that are important to us. And lastly they help create a roadmap to help you achieve your goals. 

In other words, you make a ‘macro-intention’ then you make ‘micro-intentions' to support this.

For example, my resolution above to walk daily, could be reframed to be a micro-intention to my macro-intention to want to live a healthier life. Had I set this macro-intention instead, I may have forgiven myself for not going for a walk every day, and noticed that there were other things I was doing to support my macro-intention of wanting to create a healthier life. 

Intentions have a much softer and compassionate energy about them and broader in their reach, because they don’t tie us to an outcome but spread out and ripple to many aspects of our life. They simply ask that we bring mindfulness of our actions and make efforts to change.

When you practice the 26+2 hot yoga sequence, you understand that every pose is an opportunity to start the class again. The first few poses might have not gone well, you might be feeling tired and overwhelmed, but instead of getting stuck in this space, you get to choose to start again.

That's the beauty about intentions, when knocked off course you can start again without getting caught up in self judgement and criticism, you can simply move on realising that the next moment is a brand new moment, tomorrow is a brand new day to start over again.