You Want It? Then Make It Happen!
“Your life does not get better by chance. It gets better by change”
Jim Rohn
Two friends are chatting about their diets.
The first one says, “I want to be healthy and feel great.”
The second one says, “I intend to be healthy and feel great.”
Which one do you think is going to get healthy and feel great? Yep—the one who intends it!
Wanting is simply wishing you can have or do a particular thing. Intending means you’re committed to achieving something by making a plan for success—and sticking to it!
The Fuel for Desired Results
The key to intention is action – try this to build your intention muscle:
1. Get clear on what you want.
Create a vision board by gathering images and words that pertain to your goal, and gluing them onto a large piece of paper. Hang the collage in a spot where you’ll see it often. (Or, you can use an online service like Pinterest to create a digital vision board.) Have fun with getting creative!
We invited the ladies on our recent Wellbeing Day to get creative in designing their own vision board – we had glue and sequins, ribbons, magazine pictures and all sorts of other craft items. The look on their faces was a picture as we emptied our ‘creative box’ out onto the table and asked them to create!
It is fair to say that everybody in the room felt anxious when asked to create their vision board. ‘I’m not very creative’, they said! ‘I haven’t done anything like this for years, I’m not sure I know what I’m doing’, they said!
And guess which activity was rated the best of the whole day…yup, you guessed it: the creative session!
We didn’t have any great masterpieces created but we did have the most beautiful, personal creations that depicted their own goals for themselves and served as a visual reminder for them to take away with them.
You see they came to realise that it wasn’t about having the ’creative gene’ or about being ‘a good artist’. It was all about doing something different, letting go of all expectations they had placed upon themselves and just having fun, and they sure did that!
So we would encourage you to get creative- bring your vision to life through ribbons and bobbins and PVA glue!
2. Do something – even if it’s something small – to make your desire happen.
Let’s say you want to eat four servings of vegetables a day. Your first action may be to go to a farmers’ market and purchase a few veggies you can cook for dinner.
3. Celebrate your achievement!
Don’t forget to congratulate yourself for meeting your goal.This step is so often missed out. It’s seems far easier to find our negative inner voice, the one that says ‘well you did ok, but you could have done so much better’.
This serves no purpose; in fact it will actively trip you up and get in the way of achieving what you set out to. So, replace that negative voice with one of compassion.
This takes practice. When you notice the negative voice, just acknowledge it, remind yourself that it serves no purpose and replace it with a positive re-frame of the situation. ‘I ate 4 vegetables today and that is 2 more than I ate yesterday!’.
Food can often be used as a reward ‘I have eaten healthily all day so I now deserve to eat a family pack of crisps!’ Instead of making food the ‘reward’ choose something that actually does serve you. Combine your reward with an act of self-care (something else we are not generally very good at doing). Perhaps your reward, instead of a chocolate bar, becomes a long soak in a hot bath with a candle burning and gentle music playing in the background, having negotiated with your partner that they will give you 30 minutes (or more if you can get it!) when you are ‘off-duty’ and they will take care of the kids.
Now that’s a reward!
How to Have a Great Day… Every Day!
Did you know that you can even set an intention to have a great day?
Rather than diving into your morning and hoping you’ll achieve your day’s big goal, why not take a moment and set yourself up for success?
Try this “Setting An Intention to Succeed” exercise used by professional athletes, speakers, politicians, and performers:
- Upon waking, lie in bed and think about what you have planned for your day (or, find a quiet spot to sit and contemplate).
- Think about your desired outcome. Take a deep breath and visualize yourself succeeding.
- Replay your success several times in your mind.
- Next, add other senses, including sounds, smells, and touch. For instance, as you replay your success, you now also hear the director offering you the gig, or you feel the physical sensation of your finger hitting the “send” button on that report that’s been hanging over you.
- Lastly, replay the scene again, adding emotions. Feel your elation at getting the part, or your pride at finally finishing your work.
You can perform this Intention to Succeed exercise at anytime throughout the day as desired.
Get even healthier!
What is it that you want? Do you intend to lose weight, eat healthy, and feel fantastic? Make a plan to succeed by getting the support you need! Involve friends, tell them all about your intentions; friends can act as great accountability buddies as well as a great source of motivation.
Make it fun!
Getting healthy can seem like a lot of hard work and of course it will involve some commitment and effort. However, it doesn’t have to be all hard slog. Choosing activities that are fun, make you laugh and feel good will definitely make things easier, and you’ll have so much more fun along the way, meaning that your intentions will turn into actions which will turn into habits!
At Wellbeing4Life we specialise in helping people make their own healthy changes, whether that be related to exercise, diet or something else.
Ready to get started? We’d like to offer you a free Wellbeing Assessment to help you get clear about the areas of your life that feel balanced, and those areas where you feel that some action is required. Just get in touch to schedule your free assessment.