how to set intentions for the new year, and why it's so powerful.

I’ve been thinking about and pondering 2020 for the past week. Perhaps it was the impending New Year, but I had this call to look back one final time and to think on it. I know the whole world suffered hard last year, I feel like I could almost hear the suffering as the months went on. Personally, so many challenging and heartbreaking things happened to me, and our family in 2020. If you had told me last January when I was full of hope and wonder at a new decade, exactly what God would ask me to walk through over that 12 month, I would have assumed I would end the year soul crushed and heartbroken. But I’m sitting here on January 4th filled with perspective and hope. 2020 was completely transformative for me. I did not exit the year the same person who entered it.

When I started last year, I had a lot of personal and professional goals, but the main intention for the year that I made was to strengthen my faith and my relationship with God. That intention, I can see now, was my saving grace me last year.

Several busy, stressful years had made my faith work anemic and I felt it hard in January of 2020. I needed to make a change and so my spirituality became my top focus at the start of last year, and now looking back I think that impulse must have come right from the top. If I had gone into spring as spiritually unprepared as I had been in late 2019, I would have buckled, but instead, I turned hard into my faith. When the trials of summer and then fall hit even harder than spring I would have broken, but the faith I had been working on all year sustained and strengthen me, it helped me see clearer, and allowed me to learn what God was teaching me. Because of that, I’m leaving 2020 a stronger person than when I entered it. The last time God asked me to walk through a year that difficult, I left it bitter and broken, this time I am leaving with more strength, compassion and perspective. And even though everything that made 2020 hard isn’t over magically now that it’s 2021, I have a perfect brightness of hope for a new year.

That’s the power of setting intentions.

What does it mean to set intentions?

The benefit in setting our intentions is that it gives our life a plan, purpose, and direction. Making your way through a day/life without intention, is like starting a road trip with no destination in mind. Just driving aimlessly and hoping that it all works out. But the truth is, if you don’t know where you’re going, you might not like where you end up.

The only way to truly live our fullest life, is to set intentions for it. True freedom comes from committing to a plan and a purpose.

This may sound counterintuitive, but think for a moment about what happens when no intention is set for things like our time, money, family, meals, or even our closet. Time without a schedule is often wasted, money without a budget gets spent mindlessly, family life without a mission statement is hectic, creating meals without a plan results in thrown together dinners or too many trips to McDonalds, and a closet without intention becomes a mess and the task of getting dressed a frustrating experience.

Approaching our life with intention helps us steer in the direction we want to go and gives us the freedom that comes with controlling our time and resources.

The picture of where you are trying to get happens first in your minds eye before you make it happen in real life.

Living with intention is about deciding beforehand the way you want to live your life, the kind of decisions you’re going to make and the direction you are going to go. That way, each day you are able to move forward with clear direction and purpose and it’s much easier to keep yourself from deviating from that path. (It’s also a huge relief from decision fatigue.)

Why intentions are much more powerful than Goals.

I’m not a big “goal setter” in the typically sense of the word. I think goals and resolutions are easy to fail at or give up. They are ineffective. The difference between a goal and an intention is that a goal is more about doing and an intention is about becoming. For example, let’s look at a typically New Years-y type goal: Lose Ten pounds. This goal is often a meaningless number, without a purpose, and for that reason, it’s easy to discard after a couple weeks of half-hearted effort. Instead think about setting this intention: My body is a gift that enables me to live a full and active life so I will cherish, nourish and care for it. How do you behave towards your body when you set this mindset and intention? Are you starving and punishing it? No. Are you more likely to feed it nutrient rich foods, exercise for strength and health, get enough sleep and drink enough water? Yes! When you set that intention it helps guide your daily actions and teaches you how to show up effectively in that way.

Goals are arbitrary, intentions are the root and principle behind the goals, it’s more about who you are trying to become, not what you are physically doing. It is a bigger and more meaningful why, and it makes it much easier to take the right actions on a daily basis that move you towards becoming who you set the intention to be.

How I set intentions.

How I set my intentions for the year, always starts with a deep dive into self-visualization. The power of self-visualization cannot be understated. I sit down and ask myself: Who do I want to become this year? What does that version of Cori look like at the end of the year? How does she feel? What is she doing each day? What does her bank account look like? What do her family relationships look like? How is her spirituality? How does her house run? Etc. Etc.

I get really detailed in this part. That is important. I give myself a strong powerful vision. And that vision gives me a direction. Then I get specific. I look at where the discrepancies are between me and my life now, and the woman I envision myself becoming. It’s like a scaffolding to build around. It shows me where I need to set my intentions for my health, relationships, faith, and business. It helps me understand in what way I need to show up each day to make that vision a reality. I am brutally honest with myself, and if I need to make pivots, the vision I have for myself gives me the strength and motivation to start.

Each day, I sit down remind myself of who I am working to become, and so in those moments when I feel like doing something that moves me further from the vision I’m holding, I am able to remember that I already decided and I have the strength to make the harder choice now for a better future later.

Tips for setting your intentions.

Schedule a few hours of meditation and pondering just to create your vision. I’ve found setting intentions is only effective if this is done first. Don’t rush it, and get super-insanely detailed. You should be so dang excited about this vision of your life that you can see and taste it.

Reverse engineer your intentions. It helps me to start way out with the vision and then work backward. If I want to be to a certain place by the end of the year, then I work backward, what needs to be happening six months from now, 3 months from now, this month, this week, and today. Start big, and work down. Always keeping the long-term vision in mind.

Find a planner that has space to map out your vision and intentions and can help keep you on track during the year. (It’s important to be able to start with the big picture and then break it down into smaller increments). I take a few minutes every morning and review my yearly vision and intentions before I start the day. It empowers every day with that sense of purpose and vision. If you are looking for a faith based planner this Faithful Life the one I am using this year and it is amazing. You can create yearly intentions in all areas and then break it down quarterly, and by month. There are also spaces for spiritual study, notes, thought, and a daily gratitude practice. It’s the best planner I’ve ever owned. The owner was kind enough to give me a discount code for you all, if you use DRESSCORILYNN at checkout you can get 10% off.

Give yourself grace. The process of becoming is not a perfect one. You will make mistakes, get off course, need to make adjustments. Don’t expect perfection. When you get off course, remind yourself of your vision and intentions, give yourself grace and get back on course as quick as possible.