Day 3: Remember Your Intentions

Your daily intention review ritual is valuable, but you still need to hold your intentions with gentle awareness all day long. Picture each intention as a gem you are carrying in a safe place - your pocket, or your heart: Take each one out to look at several times a day, then carefully put it back. Remembering your intentions throughout the day is a mindfulness practice, and it will create energy and excitement for your priorities.

Take care to hold your intentions gently, not obsessively. If you begin to worry about whether or not you will complete your intentions, or think about them in an aggressive way, back off a little. Even though you fully intend to take these actions, life might shift under your feet; and it is not anyone's intention to feel anxiety or self-loathing - or to be resentful of your loved ones for thwarting you. 

Here are a few ways that might help you to remember your intentions. Choose the ones that interest you, and try them out this week:

• Turn your top intentions for the day into a short, catchy mantra to repeat throughout the day: "Write a chapter; Sew a bunny; Visit a friend".

• Take your intentions for a walk and speak them out loud to the trees.

• Write your intentions for the day out on little pieces of paper and put them in a bowl to randomly pick and read throughout the day.

• Set alarms and review your intentions at regular times each day.

• Wear a bell around your neck, and when it jingles, think about your intentions.

• Wear prayer beads on your wrist and use them to review and count your intentions.

• Share one or more of your intentions with a friend; choose a friend who will remind you in a gentle, loving way.

• Make a list of intentions on an app on your phone and check it whenever you have down time, or need to re-group.

You only need one or two ways to remember, if they become habitual. My own remembering goes like this:

-I have my Priority Plan for the week on a Google Sheet on my computer. I finish my writing, committee work, or lesson planning early in the day, because that's when my brain works best, and make them bold to show they are done.

My Priority Plan - Sunday is done, Monday is started.

-I walk my dog at about 10 a.m., and I go back over the rest of my priorities in my head, one by one, and remind myself of my intentions, and my deepest reasons, and commit myself to action. This is an ingrained habit that I’ve practiced for years.

-Then I check my Priority Plan often; I can access it on my phone, so it has become a habit whenever I am just sitting around to scroll through my calendar and my plan. I am highly motivated to fill in charts, and just seeing the half-done chart will spur me get up and complete one more important action.