Day 4: Identify Essential Intentions

Now that you have practiced setting intentions, let's dive a little deeper, and work on setting some fundamental intentions for how you want to live your life.

Your list of core values and principles (that you wrote in Week One) includes big concepts like love and simplicity. The question is, what exactly do these values mean to you, and what do they lead you to do and to be? What right action or good deeds do you intend each day, or how do you intend to live, to support and demonstrate your values?

Values by themselves lack commitment. You might value honesty, but never fully define what that means to you, or commit to leading an honest life. One could write a book about honesty - it's a complex subject, and it means subtly different things to different people.

When you turn your values into intentions, they become a pledge for action, in the moment- they remind you of your deepest, most essential, most passionate reasons for leading a valuable life. It's vital for you to define your values and principles in a way that touches you at your core, and hone each one down to a phrase that can be useful. 

Today you will begin to articulate what your values mean to you, and the actions that support them. Start small - this is a challenging exercise:

• Definition: Begin by defining just one or two of your core values and principles. Some examples (how I define these values for myself):

-Having equanimity means that I can stay calm, not agitated or impatient with people or problems. 

-Living with simplicity means using only my share of the earth’s resources (leaving a footprint that is fair and sustainable).

• Deepest reason: Next, consider why these core values are so important to you. This is harder than it seems - you might find yourself feeling like it's self-explanatory, but try to put it into words; and try to find the words that grab you at the deepest level. Examples:

"I want to have equanimity because I want to be ruled by my heart and soul, not my impulses."

"I want to live with simplicity because each person and being in the world, and future generations, and the earth itself, deserves to live with basic needs met.

• Intention: When you have a succinct definition of what a core value means to you, and an explanation of why it's so important, you can easily turn it into an essential intention that captures the possibility of daily right action and will be useful in any situation that arises in daily life. 

Write your intentions in present tense, using the action + definition + deepest reason model. Examples:

-I intend to have equanimity and stay calm, not agitated or impatient with people or problems, or obsessed with any thought, because I am ruled by my heart and soul, not my impulses.

-I intend to live with simplicity, using only my share of the earth’s resources, and leaving a footprint that is fair and sustainable, because each person and being in the world, and future generations, and the earth itself, deserves to live with basic needs met.

Extra effort: Over the next few days or weeks, write essential intentions for each of your core values, principles, and beliefs. print these out and put them into your Map Book.