Intention Setting 101

Letting the current underneath your goals carry you to acting more yourself.

What’s the difference between goals and intentions?

That’s how I start the room off when I teach corporate goals & intentions workshops.
(You’re welcome to include your answer in the comments before you read on)

Personally, I find the key difference is this:

• Goals are About Your Destination: You can identify where you are, where you want to end up, and get turn-by-turn instructions from here to there

• Intentions are About the Journey: Maybe you’re not sure where exactly you want to end up, but you know you want to go explore. You’ll learn things along the way and set the tone for the nature of the experience you want to have.

Both have value.

But most of us are only taught about goal setting.
We live in a Type A, high-achieving, tracked society. Depending on if you did pre-school or day care, somewhere between the age of 2 and 5 you were put into a school setting. You were given the expectation of going to school, getting grades, graduating, college, a job, etc. Those are all outcome driven. They’re about the destinations at each rung of the ladder.

I often encounter people in my workshops who reach the end of one ladder and wonder how they got there. Without another ladder auto-magically set up by the systems of our lives, they flounder.

We know how to achieve through goals.
We struggle to explore, have open-ended experiences, or savor in the moment.

Intention setting is about crafting the experience - whether you know where you want to go or not.

Goals are SMART | Intentions are FED

Most people have heard of SMART goals by now:

Having a system for your goalsetting can be invaluable to planning and accountability. It drives our sense of achievement and provides a framework where goals can be broken down into doable chunks.

Unfortunately for us overachievers:

What happens when you’re unsure of what you want?
Or, it’s a hobby or something else you don’t want to pressure yourself about?
What if it’s something immeasurable, like being present or grateful?

Or, like happened with many of my clients during the onset of the pandemic: the rules keep changing and all the goal setting in the world isn’t going to fix that.

Have you FED your intentions?

FED refers to Feel, Explore, Do:

• Feel: What kind of emotional experience do you want to prime or remind yourself to carry into and through this situation

• Explore: What are you curious about that you want to detach from a specific outcome?

• Do: What specific activities, skills, or opportunities will you attempt for the experience alone?

With this framing it’s helpful to remember, it’s not at all about achievement. It’s about living in the moment you’re in, savoring your experience, and learning more about you and what you bring into the world.

Mindful Consumption (Article & Workbook)

Of course, the two can go together:

To continue the road trip metaphor, the best trips are those when we know where we’re heading and we let ourselves explore, be in the moment, and craft an intentional experience that suits our wellbeing.

When you’ve got both goals and intentions set up you can ask yourself:

1. Do my goals and intentions align with one another?

2. Do they align with my current understanding of who I am, my values and beliefs, and what I want?

3. Have I set myself up for success in planning?

4. Am I excited about them?

Behind the paywall you’ll find a workbook for goals and intentions.
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