How do you want to feel?
On setting powerful intentions
Happy Friday dear ones! In this week’s letter, I’ll share with you …
✍️ What powerful intentions are
⚡️ Creating your own (daily) intentions
📖 Intentions, having them, creating them, setting them
If there’s something I never failed, it was setting intentions. However, more often than not they were not that strong. There’s a difference between setting conscious and unconscious intentions and setting intentions versus setting strong & powerful intentions.
The first one is something we all do. Whether we are aware or not, we all set intentions as soon as we wake up. When we do this on autopilot, we are setting unconscious intentions.
Then we have conscious intention setting; we intend to do some things for example, but then there’s the difference of whether they are strong & powerful intentions or not.
So, what is an intention?
Cambridge Dictionary: an intention is something you want and plan to do
Setting intentions is an active act, we intend to do something about our current situation for the better by changing the way we (want) to feel inside. If we feel good and our life is well, we’ll intend to keep it that way actively.
If we feel stuck in our current situation and we are unhappy, then we’ll intend to actively change that situation by changing the way we feel.
An intention is a promise we make to ourselves. With an intention, we promise ourselves how we want to be and feel and what we willingly will do to become that person. We become the person we feel inside.
What I think gets most in the way of ourselves and our intentions, is that we confuse an intention with a goal. However, they’re not the same.
Example
How do I want to feel? I want a deeper relationship with my body so I know and feel when I’m most energized and productive.
Desired feeling: connect with myself and my body
Intention: I intend to get to know my inner rhythms and keep track of myself from now on until I feel I know my energy and productivity levels.
Goal: keep track of my rhythms for at least three mo(o)nth using a tracking system. For example, using the phases of the moon as a tracking system.
A goal is always part of an intention but an intention doesn’t need a goal.
Putting intentions to work
Here, I give the structure I use when working with intentions. Feel if this line-up works for you and tweak whatever feels intuitively in better alignment with you.
Dream
Meditation & check-in
Brainstorming
Permission to dream
With dreams, I combine my dreams for myself and my life and the actual dreams that happen on an unconscious level while asleep. One goes in my seasonal life binder and/or daily journal and the other I keep in a more magical type of journal.
(un)conscious dreams say a lot about what we need, what we need to work on, and how we want to feel. However, they can take a long time to decipher, especially night dreams, so they require time and patience.
Daily short meditations & check-ins
Meditations don’t need to be long or complicated. Just taking five minutes and sitting in stillness is enough. The idea here is to quiet the mind and listen to our body and our heart. It’s okay if thoughts keep coming in - this happens a lot in the beginning or when we have too much going on - but instead of fighting the thoughts I like to thank them and tell them it’s okay to go for now. Then, I try to tune in with my body:
What sensations do I have in my body? Is there discomfort or pain present?
What am I feeling?
What do I need? This is on a holistic level
What is my heart saying?
Daily meditations help me to check in with my intention for that day.
When I want to do a brainstorming session - which I don’t do on a daily base - I like to take more time meditating or I’ll choose a longer and guided meditation.
Brainstorming sessions
Most of the time I see an image or see/hear a word while meditating. Next, it’s up to me to ‘know’ what this means. If I’m setting an intention for the day, I intuitively and without giving it too much though I’ll let that image/word in, in my intention for the day.
If I’m working on my seasonal or mo(o)nthly intentions I like to have a brainstorming session. Both are done when a new moon cycle has started or at the early beginning of a new season.
I also do brainstorming sessions when I feel called to do them.
These intentions go also in my seasonal life binder and I check in with them daily to see if I still align with them.
Lastly, I’ll combine all of the above I ask myself:
How do I want to feel?
How do I want to feel right now, later today, tomorrow, and in the season ahead?
What do I need to do to achieve that feeling?
A powerful intention is knowing and feeling on a daily basis how we want to feel
It’s not about what we want to accomplish externally - like material things and experiences - but how we want to feel inside, and this goes internally.
Knowing how we want to feel not only makes of more aware of who we are and what we need but encourages us and empowers us to create direction in our lives.
If our intention requires goal setting, creating projects, and adding tasks then this is the next step. We need to set an action plan in motion. This is where planning comes in handy.
Write the steps down in your planner or calendar and make sure you do them.
Write it down
Whether we are setting daily, mo(o)nthly, or seasonal intentions, they all have something in common, a tool in common, and that is journaling; writing them all down in our journal(s) or at least a notebook where we check in daily.
By actually writing them down, with a pen in our hand and allowing the ink to flow through the paper, we make the intention tangible, and more real. It takes on a physical form and energetically it is open and free to work its magic in our current and tangible reality. I know this sounds incredibly woo-woo but whether we believe in magic, or are more of practical beings, or a combination of both - like myself - scientifically and metaphysically it all comes down to this:
Everything is energy
… and so where attention goes, energy flows.
When we know how we want to feel we can take responsibility for our own lives.
So, will you be setting your intentions from now on?
I’d love to hear your stories and opinions, so please leave a comment down below 👇
🌬️ Sending you magic & healing your way,
-Vane