Your New Year Intentions
Brian Ford
Using personal development to fundraise for charity | Behavior Change & Life Systems Coach (20+ million podcast downloads) | Social Impact Leader (Founder of For Purpose Foundation)
Let’s get to work! The New Year is here and I hope you feel motivated to bring positive change to your life. Now’s the time where things are really being put to the test - You’re no longer in the fun and excitement of possibility and you’re officially in the trenches of making it a reality.
What must happen now is your intentions must shift into actions. Ideas don’t change your life, it’s the materialization of them that does. The world operates through activity and if you want anything to change, you need to get active. Fortunately though, intentions help to shape action. Our intentions create a subconscious priming and accountability that helps us feel more motivated, more inspired, and more committed. This then gives us the energy we need to follow through on taking action.
But intentions run out if they’re not acted upon. Your brain is constantly trying to find evidence to confirm what it believes to be true about the world around you. If you don’t take action on your intentions, that’s the proof your brain needs to conclude that it must not actually be a priority, and the motivation and inspiration slowly fades away. Or alternatively, if you get consistent taking action, it affirms to your brain that this new way of seeing the world is legitimate and it will sustain a positive relationship with the intention for longer.
Now to be real with you and to tell you what’s coming around the corner, even if you’re perfectly consistent, the inspiration from your intention will go away. That’s because another part of the brain is designed to actively resist change. This new way of thinking about the world is unfamiliar and therefore threatening, and it will make things harder than it has to be. This is self-sabotage, it’s a killer, and you certainly will encounter it as you attempt to bring positive change into your life.
So your goal for the next month should be to establish a routine around taking action on your intention. If you want to get healthier, make choices congruent with that in your diet and exercise until it becomes habitual. If you want to stop wasting so much time on social media, enforce time limits and make a habit of spending time away from your phone.
This is the landscape you’re entering! And I hope to support you through it so that you can make 2023 the best year of your life, yet! If you’re open to it, I’d love for you to share with me your New Year intention or resolution or commitment to the type of person you want to be. This will help you in a few ways:
1) an external representation of your intention will help it hold more value
2) It will require you to get really clear on what exactly your intention is
3) I can provide specific resources or recommendations that will facilitate you being successful!
So if you want to share, fill out the quick form here and I'll check it out!