How to Create Intentions for Success

Happy New Year! Have you made your resolutions and set your goals? More importantly, what do your resolutions and goals “feel” like? Do they feel like mountains ahead of you? What is the energy of your resolutions and goals? Heavy? Weighted?

This year, consider ditching your resolutions and instead set an intention, a sankalpa.

Sankalpa roughly translates as a vow, a commitment, to one’s highest truth or self.

Unlike resolutions which are usually black/white goals (i.e. exercising 5 times/week) and contain metrics of some sort, a sankalpa has infused within it a connection to grace. The language of sankalpa, much like the energy or essence of it, has an element of loving kindness to it. Using the Buddhist language “May I be….” rather than “I will….” calls forth compassion to oneself rather than shame or constraint. A sankalpa might sound like this: “May I honor my body with movement and strength-building.” (rather than “I will go to the gym 5 times per week.”) Try this as a practice of setting a sankalpa:

1. What does your highest self want and wish for you? Is it time to surrender a habit, a behavior, a way of thinking and adopt a new habit, behavior, way of thinking?
2. Close your eyes and feel your intention create itself.
3. State your intention silently to yourself. “May I………” Take a few deep breaths and let your sankalpa settle into your soul and your bones.
4. Repeat your sankalpa to yourself everyday with grace and compassion and most importantly, love.

By Liz Skarvelis; All Rights Reserved @2019