Setting Intentions for the New Year
Photo by Jaz Timms
It’s almost 2019!
This is one of my favorite times of the year, not because of Christmas but because I spend New Year's Eve setting intentions that frame the coming year with a totally fresh perspective. Setting intentions is like holding space for the year, energizing it and focusing it through a particular lens of desires and priorities.
This is very different than goal-setting or making resolution. Goals are the tangible results of a set of actions; resolutions are promises you make to yourself about specific things you want to accomplish; intentions attract a set of experiences and things that bring about a desired state of being.
When I set an intention, I use the present-tense. If I say it is going to happen in the future, then I'm actually affirming that it doesn't exist, which pushes it away. I claim it as if the experience or thing I'm intending already exists and I'm there with it. This affirms that what I want, I already have, and all that is needed is for me to allow it.
Goals have their place, but they feel like work and discipline, whereas intentions feel alive and dynamic, fluid and electric. Intentions have the power the shift the fabric of our consciousness in both subtle and radical ways. Once you plant the seed of intention, it activates an evolutionary process that moves us into new ways of seeing and being.
The key to ground our intentions is to listen to the signs, messages, synchronicities and intuitive nudges we receive and then act upon them. This will accelerate the manifestation of our intentions right away. Actions grounded in our intentions tend to keep us in the flow with life. We feel as though all is as it should be. This keeps the chattering of the ego-mind in check, because instead of directing our actions, it is now in service to our intuition.
It is our direct connection to the Divine, to our Muse and to our Highest Good. When we let this part of us lead, we are in alignment with Life. If you are in a habit of following your intuition, then your intention setting will naturally come from that deep soul place.
This is truly effortless living--the state of being in which work becomes play and we're able to notice the kisses of Grace that touch our lives.
I also choose a word of the year because it serves as a reminder to pay extra attention to something I want more of in my life.
In 2017, my word was grace. In 2018, my word was abundance. For 2019, my word is allowing because I want to release my resistance to all that wants to manifest in my life.