Intention Setting or Resolutions, What’s the Difference?

Intention Setting or Resolutions, What’s the Difference?

It’s that time of year again—the start of the new year. This is when many people feel motivated to prioritize themselves by establishing goals for the year ahead. While this strategy is effective for some, it doesn’t resonate with everyone. For me, the start of the “new year” aligned with the beginning of the school year. I tended to set vague objectives such as: eating healthier, exercising more, staying connected with friends, practicing yoga, and waking up earlier... you know what I mean. I’m sure you can relate, and I hope you fared better than I did in sticking to those resolutions. This method of self-improvement proved ineffective for me; it was too ambiguous and ultimately led to disappointment. 

Then one day during yoga practice, my attention was caught by my instructor's phrase, “Set your intention for your practice today.” and it got my mind thinking about setting intentions like I did in yoga rather than resolutions.  What’s the difference you might be wondering? The biggest difference between New Year’s Resolutions, goals, and New Year’s Intentions is how success is defined. With a New Year’s resolution, success is pretty black and white: either you did exactly what you said you would do and succeeded, or, more likely, you slipped up and failed at your resolution. There’s not a lot of room for error. But with a New Year’s intention, it’s okay if things don’t work out one day. You get to decide to show up for your intention again the next day. Where resolutions focus on checking the box, intentions focus on making a decision that aligns with your core values.

Once I started thinking more about this way of creating change in my life, it made more sense to me and aligned with how I felt about the process of change - we can always choose to start over any time we need, there is no timeline other than our lifespan. This article can help you decide if intention setting would be more beneficial for you if you are serious about making lasting shifts in your life.

I want to conclude by sharing one of my intentions for the new year: to produce meaningful blogs and publish them promptly for readers. I would love to hear about your intentions, so feel free to email me or message me on social media. I hope that one of them includes practicing more yoga with Audrey's Yoga.

Happy New Year!