Setting Intentions for the New Year
Another trip around the sun, another batch of New Year’s resolutions. We all know the cycle. We promise ourselves X, Y, Z and once these wishes are attained our lives will be magically transformed - our lives will become easier, we will be happier, fitter, more successful, more beautiful, etc. The list of “if only I was…” can go on and on. But studies show that only 8% of Americans who make a New Year's resolution actually end up keeping them. In fact, by the start of February, 80% have already abandoned their goals. Clinical Psychologist, Joseph J. Luciani, Ph. D, says most resolutions fail due to self sabotage. So this year, we are turning to intention-setting and self-discipline to beat the odds. Here’s how The Astral Planner will help you achieve your goals while keeping yourself positively accountable.
Motivational speaker, Mel Robbins, puts things into perspective best. “In the scheme of life, none of us wake up one day and say today is the day that I destroy my life. What happens is we check out because it feels overwhelming; or we check out because we are afraid, or we check out because we start listening to self-doubt, and then we make these teeny-tiny decisions all day long - a decision to not get up on time, a decision to not eat the right thing, a decision to not speak at a meeting, a decision to not look for a job, a decision to not deal with your finances, whatever it is - these teeny-tiny decisions that take us so far off track that one day we wake up and wonder ‘How did I get here?’”
Our life comes down to our daily decisions and choices. If we want to improve our lives, we must build self-discipline. To create sustainable self-discipline, Clinical Psychologist, Joseph J. Luciani, suggests starting off by “thinking small”. Motivational speaker, Les Brown, has a similar approach to incentivize action without psyching yourself out by simply saying the phrase “It’s possible.”
One of the most defining qualities of The Astral Planner are the daily pages. The Astral Planner’s daily pages have been designed in a very specific way to help you make every day count, live more intentionally, and use every day to its fullest by consistently tracking your life in all the major life areas.
Take a look at the habits that are holding you back in life. Find one that’s simple like “drink more water” or “go on more walks” or “move my body more” or “go to bed at x time”. Make a commitment to yourself that you are going to do this one simple thing every day. As you check off this one task in your planner day after day, you will begin to build self trust. Self-trust is important to building self-discipline. Once you are able to trust yourself in completing smaller challenges, bigger challenges like long term objectives won’t seem so unachievable. The Astral Planner is a reminder to shift our perspective beyond life's challenges to the stars. Looking at the stars each night is a symbolic way to want to know the unknowable and the desire to explore, discover, and achieve the unreachable.
Resolutions are goals but if you’re yet to discover a goal setting method that works for you, resolutions don’t work on their own because they don’t have a clear plan of action. At times like this, intentions are more impactful because they ground you in the present and nurture your “why”. Intentions can decrease the overwhelm from seemingly unreachable goals as they stem from our desired state of being. Desired feelings are life affirming, positive, and all-embracing. They are your heart's longing and they pull you towards the direction of your Highest Self. The goal setting pages in the 2021 Executive Daily Planner guide you in clarifying each major life area into clear, specific, actionable steps, as well as, identifying how you want to feel in each life area.
Making our goals measurable and trackable shows us how consistent we are in our day to day. Writing things down and keeping track of progress brings understanding and perspective to our patterns. It also ends up building up our self-discipline and nurturing our self-trust, self-esteem, and self-belief. By tracking the progress in our business, or our passion project, self-care, daily productivity, nutrition, fitness, or spiritual rituals, you will be able to see your progression or regression towards achieving a specific goal. It’s also important to remember that your progress should not be dependent on other people cheering you on. We are all living at the pace of our own clock.
Resolutions hardly work without intentions. Similarly, intentions end up being only wishes without a specific, measurable plan of action. The scale of our goals and dreams also directly correlates to how capable we think we are. The more self trust we build up through self discipline, the more confident we feel pursuing grander goals.