I love yoga. I have been practicing for nearly twenty years. Besides the obvious benefits of yoga – having a stronger, leaner, more flexible body, there is the other side of it that I enjoy as much. The spiritual side of the practice offers a deep journey into one’s relationship with oneself. I believe yoga offers us a metaphor on how to live our lives.
One of the things I look most forward to in my practice is the very beginning of class, before we start moving. It’s during this brief moment that the instructor invites us to set our intention for practice. We pause and take a deep breath in as we consider what we need in that next hour.
The habit of doing this on my mat has trickled into every other part of my life. I have come to see the correlation between setting my intention and manifesting it in my life, both big and small.
To me, setting an intention is very different than hoping for something and then thinking that maybe it’ll happen and maybe it won’t. It’s about bringing a sense of clarity and commitment to who I want to be and then working on behalf of myself and others, to live my life congruent with my intentions.
I set intentions for the day, for what I will eat, how I want to respond to things, how I will show up with and for the people I love. It is the precursor for how I navigate my day and my life.
This week, I invite you to consider how life could change for you by really pausing to consider the power of this concept and how cultivating this way of thinking could benefit you and the people you love.
Action:
If you are not in the habit of doing this, start out small. Start like you are on the “mat” of your life for just one hour. Perhaps it’s a tough conversation you need to have with your spouse or someone at work, or you’re about to go out for dinner and you know you normally do a lot of damage at that restaurant. Stop. Think. Determine what you need to do or say that will allow you feel good afterwards. What does doing your best look like in that situation? Set an intention for how you want to show up, right then and there. And see how much better you navigate that terrain with that in the forefront of your mind.
Happy Monday!
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