Hi! I’m Max, a professional life coach.
I have been asked many times about ideal morning routines, productivity hacks, and powerful habits – essentially, shortcuts to the next level of one’s development. I am a huge advocate for acupunctural changes in one’s life. Being a former martial artist, one of the concepts that resonate with me is “leverage”, meaning what is the most effective physical result I can gain from the least physical effort? And there is a colliery to our experience of life here – ask yourself this “What action could I take that would have the biggest impact on my life that is the least amount of effort and would yield maximum results?”
Intention. The simple power of setting an intention.
Below are the following areas of application
Level One – Setting Intentions For The Day.
No matter what time of day it is that you are reading this, ask yourself this question: “What would make today a success for me?” – and open yourself to the answer. Notice, that even by asking this question, it creates an opportunity for the rest of your day to become focused, pointed, and directed.
To begin running with this, you can ask yourself this at any time, “what would make this ____ a success for me?” insert the blank with whatever you like! A conversation, a meeting, a trip, a gym session. Even just by beginning to ask this, you may begin to notice a certain pointedness about cutting away the fluff and getting to the heart of the matter. It’s often said that we get 80% of the results in our life based on 20% of our actions, and the other 20% of our results we get from the other 80% of our actions. And by asking ourselves this question, we give ourselves the opportunity to cut right through to the 20%.
If you’d like to take this a step further, at the beginning of each morning, write in a notebook next to your bed “What would make today a success for me?”. And try to keep it to no more than three targets. By only having room for three targets, a framework is created that directs our actions. Doing this day after day builds compounding results.
A behavioural pattern creation tip that will make this easier: When you do this the first time, take a moment to congratulate yourself – positive reinforcement helps neural pathways develop faster.
Level Two – Setting Intentions For The Year.
Ask yourself this question “What would make this a successful year for me?”. A key distinction to make when setting longer-term intentions is this – a target that is set one year in advance must still be a target to pursue in three months, six months, and ultimately, in a year’s time!
“Would hitting this target really make my whole year a success?” is a valuable question to ask.
Once you have your top three intentions for the year, write them down somewhere that you can see, so you are reminded of them each day. Now, the daily question to answer becomes “What steps can I take towards these yearly targets today?”. And so, each day serves a purpose towards your yearly intentions.
Some of my clients have reported discouragement when working in this way, citing frustration and impatience when setting a target far in advance. The key is to continue to congratulate yourself for the daily steps – this is a really critical step to create consistency over longer-term pursuits.
Level Three – Setting Intentions That Honour Your Values.
Knowing your values in life is really like having a cheat sheet in life.
Understanding your values creates a framework that ensures set intentions are honouring your absolute highest potential. For those unsure of what I’m referring to, let me give you an example from my own life and my own personal alignment ratings with my values.
Below are my Top Three Values and my current alignment ratings with these values:
- Consciousness – Alignment Rating: 8/10
- Wisdom – Alignment Rating: 8/10
- Communication – Alignment Rating: 7/10
Of course, this is just a personal example from my own life. For my clients, their values will inevitably be different. By having your top ten values on hand, our intentions then become about two things:
Number One: How can I get my Alignment Ratings as close as I can to 10/10 for each of my values?
Number Two: How do I create short, medium, and long-term goals that reflect my values?
By finding meaningful answers to these questions, we create powerful certainty that all actions taken are serving you as powerfully as possible.
Ultimately, whether you run with level one, two, or three from reading this, you will become a far more effective human being by creating intentions in your life.
If any of this resonated with you, I’d encourage you to reach out and have a complimentary 30-minute conversation with me here.
Max. Life Coach.
