Today’s article comes to us from Laura Weldy, a Women’s Leadership Coach who works to help women create their desired lives.
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If you tend to start the year with a “new year, new me” mentality but fall back into your typical routine by February, you probably find resolutions frustrating. Maybe even pointless. I’ve worked with hundreds of professional women over the past eight years as a leadership and life coach, and I can assure you that not following through on resolutions is rarely because we’re lazy or incapable of change. The truth is that most resolutions fail due to a misalignment of intention — or a lack of intention altogether.
The words “intention” and “resolution” are often used interchangeably, but I view them as two different concepts. Your resolution is a specific behavior you commit to in the new year. Your intention (the “why” behind your goal) is the underlying feeling or experience you want to create — or what you believe you will get in exchange for completing this resolution.
For example, let’s say you set the goal to get a raise at work. Is your intention to have more money to spend? Or is it to feel more valued and respected at work? Do you want to live a different lifestyle, or is there another problem you believe the raise will solve?
In this case, you won’t feel fulfilled if you get the raise but it doesn’t meet the underlying intention or desire. On the other hand, if you don’t achieve the steps needed to get the raise, it could be because your goal wasn’t aligned with your intention. If your underlying purpose was to feel like you have more authority in your role at work — not the actual monetary figure — you may not be motivated subconsciously to pursue the raise.
Being clear about your intentions will help you set goals that will achieve the result you’re actually looking for and help keep you motivated in the long run.
So, how do you determine if a misalignment or lack of intentions is keeping your resolutions from manifesting?
The process I walk my leadership coaching clients through is simple but effective:
- Make a list of all the changes you would love to make in the year ahead.
- Group together any changes that seem like they support one another by theme. For example, a “health” theme may encompass exercises, mental wellness practices, or anything else you feel supports your overall well-being.
- Read through the goals in each theme and ask yourself, “What do I want all of these things in service of? If I achieve all of these things, what will I feel?”
- Quickly audit. Are the intentions you’ve uncovered aligned, or do the goals need to be tweaked? Often, I see people with the intention of stepping into their most powerful selves in the year ahead, but their specific resolutions reflect a lower level of responsibility. Alignment is critical to making the achievement of your goals inevitable.
If you have zero idea what your deeper intention might be, let me share a few more examples to get your wheels turning. If 100 people set the same goal, there could be 100 different intentions behind it! Here are three common New Year’s goals and the potential intentions that could be behind them:
- Focusing on your health and wellness: The underlying intention could be changing your body in some way, feeling more energized, practicing self-care by paying attention to your own needs, or even counteracting the effects of a specific illness or condition. If this is one of your goals, I recommend you clarify the intention and then specify the goal further.
- Being a better communicator at work: The underlying intention here could be wanting to be heard in your workplace, becoming a better manager for your team, or improving a specific working relationship. Bonus: If you have goals around improving your communication skills in the new year, grab my free communication guide, Say it Powerfully: The Ultimate Guide to Communication for New Women Leaders!
- Finding fulfillment in your day-to-day: The underlying intention could be feeling engaged in your job again, giving back to your community, or looking to find a new community to build friendships. What does fulfillment mean to you?
If you genuinely wish to make your New Year’s goals successful in 2024, give the above exercise a spin. Remember, there are no wrong or right answers. Uncovering your hidden intention is just a practice for understanding yourself more deeply and ensuring you’re set up for success with goals that fulfill your intentions.
Happy New Year!
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