I’m honestly not a fan of New Year’s resolution-making as I am more of a intention setting type of person. It’s easy to break a resolution, but for intentions or goals, you can tweak your strategy or plans to achieve them. If you haven’t thought about what you want to happen in your life this 2023, it’s not too late. Treat intention setting like planting seeds, setting something into motion to help you create the life you want to manifest.
Diana Raab, psychologist and author, affirms. She says “An intention is something you want to manifest in your life or some guiding principle that you want to live by. While resolutions are hard and fast goals that are either achieved or broken.”
I’m sharing an intention-setting exercise to start for the New Year coming up.
This coming Chinese Lunar New Year is on January 22, which falls on a New Moon (at 1 degree and 32 minutes of Aquarius). Find a quiet spot, sit down and ask yourself how you see your life this 2023.
Ask these questions:
– What is it that you aspire to achieve in 2023?
– What do you want to see more (or less) to manifest in your everyday life?
Let’s take it a step further and reflect on how you’ve changed in the last three years since the pandemic in 2000:
– What do you like about yourself?
– How have you evolved and transformed these last few years?
– What would you want to bring forward to the future?
This meditation for self-renewal may help you reflect and dig deep for clarity to what you truly want:
Sit straight in a cross-legged position. Raise the arms to shoulder height, parallel to the floor, and bend the elbows so that the hands are in front of your chest, palms facing down, right over left, 4 inches apart. Eyes are closed. Breathe long and deeply, inhaling through the “o” of the mouth, and exhaling through the nose. Use the diaphragm. Continue for 11 minutes. To end, inhale deeply, hold, and squeeze the spine. Exhale. Inhale deeply, hold, and squeeze your elbows as much as you can. Exhale. Inhale deeply, hold, pull the chin in and make the neck tight like steel. Exhale and relax.
Aim for the mindset of the permanent beta.
The permanent bet term was coined by Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of Linkedin, who said, “In the same way entrepreneurs are always improving and investing in their products, you need to always be improving and investing in yourself.”
I’ve been listening to Jason Feifer, who said that this was the key to success. He describes change in four phases: panic, adaptation, new normal, and “wouldn’t go back.” He said, “The first three are about being forced to make changes we wouldn’t have previously considered. That last phase is when we realize how valuable these changes were. We start to say, ‘I wouldn’t want to go back to the way it was before’.”
Be mindful that change is indeed happening, and not changing is not an option. It’s a good exercise to do intention setting, write down how you truly are and clearly understand what you are asking for this 2023 for yourself and those around you.
In loving service,
Rosan
