Everything Begins with Manifesting Intentions
Important questions to ask yourself when planning for the new year
Happy holidays!
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This issue is both practical and philosophical, explaining the simple ethos behind Fewer Better Things when planning the intentions for a new year.
PS. I’m planning for a webinar – paid subscribers only – after the holidays on how to turn off your iPhone and only use the Apple Watch and iPad. Stay tuned!
Per Håkansson (follow on LinkedIn), Publisher and founding editor
If you would wind back the idea with fewer better things, it’s all about living life with clear intentions, yet open to emergence. Once we know who we truly are, we can also allow the beautiful unknown into our lives without fear.
When you know who you’re – a never-ending and continuous process of self-discovery – you know what you need and don’t need multiple options or lots of stuff. Once you get your own essence you only need the true essentials.
To get there you need to die a little to learn how to live a little more like yourself. Behaviors, habits, and thoughts that you have collected throughout life that lacks real meaning to you need to be detached and let go of.
“Find out what it means to die - not physically, that's inevitable - but to die to everything that is known, to die to your family, to your attachments, to all the things that you have accumulated, the known pleasures, the known fears.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti
It’s a rebirth on your own terms, a reinvention that most people have to go through to let go of involuntary indoctrination and education to create themselves in whatever shape and form they need and desire.
It’s a messy process, chaotic at times, most often difficult and turbulent. We are fed with comfort while we really need to accept discomfort. No change is going to happen in a state of comfortable ease. And change we need, we do.
And even if we didn’t, we have to accept that everything is temporary, nothing stays the same but also that all things shall pass. An emotion lasts for 90 seconds, what we then do with it afterwords is of our own making.
“It takes 90 seconds from the time we have a thought that is going to stimulate an emotional response. When we have an emotional response it results in a physiological dumpage into our bloodstream. It flushes through and out of our body in less than 90 seconds.” – Jill Bolte Taylor
We can muddle in despair and self-pity or we can dust ourselves off and keep on truckin’. We can stop the futile quest for sense-making, overthinking, and endless story making in our heads, shake it off, and keep on keeping on living.
But setting clear intentions is one thing, living by them another. It demands time, focus, and creative energy. It needs clarity and simplicity. It’s hard, sometimes inconceivably hard, where hope and love is the only real way out.
It’s easy to say “Do what you love!”, but much harder to get there. It’s trials and errors, mistakes and learnings, insights and breakthroughs. But most importantly, it’s making decisions that you can stick with in thick and thin.
I’ve a very simple decision and practice model to guide me in life:
How do I want to relate to and show up for myself every day
How do I want to relate to and show up for people every day
How do I want to relate to and show up for the world every day
The first is about what kind of relationship I want with myself. And I want a deep, healthy, and meaningful relationship – every day. That means I need to show up on those terms, and with that as my clear intention.
Daily journaling, reflections, workouts, meditation, water sports, reading, writing, learning, growing, kindness, self-care, self-respect, forgiveness, and awareness.
The second is about what kind of relationship I want with people. And there also, I want deep, healthy, and meaningful relationships. That means with everyone I interact with, online and offline, casual and close, new and old.
Listening, understanding, seeing, practicing kindness, learning from, laughing with, smiling, sharing, helping, collaborating with, loving, exploring, and challenging.
The third is about what kind of relationship I want with the world. It incorporates the first and the second, as I’m part of the world, but it also express how I want to contribute to the world through my work.
Helping, inspiring, contributing, collaborating, role-modeling, pushing, challenging, poking, provoking, smiling, discovering, failing, mentoring, laughing, and sharing.
What are the things – physical, mental, and intellectual – that I need to meet these terms? What are the skills I need to acquire, practice, and sharpen my being with in this world? What do I really need to live the life I want to live?