Dec 30
Setting Your Intentions for the Best Year Yet
Hey there best friend, the OGs will remember Whering Goes Spiritual, and in our defense, it did take us an entire year to circle back around, but hey, we made it.
So as some of you may recall, we’re going to ask you to grab a cup of tea, or coffee (or a glass of wine), and maybe even light a candle. Come on, play along with us, set the mood. Welcome back to Whering goes spiritual.
The best of us will have already set their goals for 2022, updated their vision boards, color coded and dated everything they want to achieve in the coming year. The rest of us (myself included) are only just now getting around to beginning to think about them. In fact, as a master procrastinator, here I am writing this article on December 29th, when I should be enjoying my Christmas time off. Back to the point, whatever stage of your goal-setting process you’re at, we’re about to set you back a couple of steps (but only to actually bring you closer, we promise).
For those of you who weren’t following up on Whering a in 2020, we’re going to talk you through setting your intentions, as opposed to setting goals. Edirin Edewor, among many accomplishments, teaches Goal Setting, named intentions as the core part of goal setting.
Let us walk you through it with an example (feel free to interchange with an actual goal):
Your goal for 2022 is to balance your time better. You know, work-life balance and all that.
And while that’s pretty general, you know that to do that, it means to allocate enough time to doing things you enjoy, like, seeing your friends, staying active, relaxing, partaking in your hobbies, and of course, working. And honestly, pre-lockdown I could totally imagine fitting all of these things into one single day. Today, not so much. I swear I need a nap after just sitting through my morning stand up. Anyways, back to you.
But you already know these things, because this sounds a lot like your goal in 2021. Okay, maybe it was your goal for 2020, not like we were planning on seeing a lot of friends in 2021.
Anyways, eventually, you always find yourself prioritizing one thing over the other, and falling a little short of your goal. By instead setting your intentions, you’re interrupting the constant loop, and you might just get somewhere.
Using our example above, you know you need to allocate time to do all the things you’d like your life to begin consisting of. Now that you know that time allocation is key, what do you need to do to manage it successfully?
Some hypothetical intentions you could set are:
- I intend to allocate 3-4 days a week to doing the sports activity of my choosing. (Maybe it’s Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, or maybe it’s Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Whatever works best with your schedule.)
- I intend to keep Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays as days for me. (You finish the work you need to finish, and spend your evenings doing an activity which you want to do. Whether that’s trying out a new recipe, meditating, painting, or going to the gym, I leave the first half of my week to myself.)
- I intend to plan ahead for Fridays and Saturdays, so as to know what I’ll be doing with my friends. (Having everything planned out, will allow you to better manage the rest of your time.)
You get the gist, you need to know what you’re doing and when you’re doing it, to make sure you leave ample time for everything you’d like to pack your weeks with. The goal (pun intended) is to look at the results you want to achieve with intention, and understanding the small steps you need to take to get to them, and how those steps get you closer, as well as how they make you feel.
You can go even broader than that, and think of intentions on a smaller scale. It doesn’t have to cover the whole year, you can do them month by month, or even week by week, reflecting on the time which has passed. You can look at them as the energy you put forth in your daily life, not fixating on a specific goal or reward. If you’d like to take a look at the 4 reflexive activities we outlined at the end of 2020, follow this link.
The same can be said about your wardrobe, and your relationship to clothes altogether. I know you’ve heard us blabber on and on about this and that all year, but let’s get real for a moment. A better relationship with yourself, and an understanding of your goals, intentions and energy, will inevitably shift your relationship to consumption. With knowledge comes power, and knowing what you own (or don’t), how you feel about it, and exactly how you want the things you wear to make you feel, or portray you, will leave you with an intentional wardrobe you love. To quote ourselves from a year ago, how fun would life be if everything in your wardrobe was a favourite item?
So go forth little one, put yourself first this year like you’ve always meant to, and see the wonders it does for your life. We wish you the happiest 2022, and we’ll see you on the other side of the sun 😉
With lots of love always, and a very happy new year,
Team Whering 💗