How to Put Intention Setting into Practice: An Success Story

How to Put Intention Setting into Practice

In this article, I’m going to tell you how I recently put intention setting into practice — because stories are a great way to illustrate the power of intentions.

The practice of intentionality prompted a couple of questions. One, in particular, is: How have I stood in the way of my success? Which led to another question: What sort of barriers are getting in the way of what I really want to manifest in this life?

My response wasn’t exactly off the cuff. The question had been swirling around in my mind for several weeks.

Do I…

• Veg out because I’ll be alone without responsibilities? Super tempting!!
• Sit by the pool with a good book, decompress and enjoy myself? Damn, that would be fun!
• Spend my time getting work done? If so, what should I do?

We talked through the various options while relating them back to those core desired feelings.

The core desired feeling I wanted was to feel Energized!
In order to create the energy I was craving, it meant I’d focus on work while in Eugene.

Here’s why: Last month I had alone time at home to veg out. And, while reading next to a pool hadn’t happened recently, that was more of a would-be-nice situation. In other words, it wasn’t exactly the thing I’d been craving for two years. 

After sitting with the idea of wanting to feel energized, I realized something:

Having quality, uninterrupted time was the one thing I’d been longing for the past couple of years — but hadn’t been able to get as much as I wanted.

You might be wondering, why are you craving quality, uninterrupted time to write? 

Well, the expectations of daily life can be hard to ignore. I’m sure you understand what I mean. In my world, this has recently shown up as short work days to pick up my youngest from school (school gets dismissed at 2:10 pm — WTF?!). And, since I would be in town to pick her up from school, this meant I’d also need to run errands (we live ~20 minutes outside of city limits). By the time we’d get back home, it was usually time to start getting dinner ready (yes, we eat early!). This meant the rest of the day was basically lost, as now I needed to do all the mom-life things.

Why such short days? Well, my days are basically split between working on my business and being a stay-at-home mom. Here’s the thing, I never wanted to be a stay-at-home mom (no disrespect to those who do. It’s just not for me — and my ADHD; I’m terrible at sticking to routines). However, I’ve had to make concessions as a new-ish business that has faced obstacles due to the pandemic. That means I’ve had to take on more homemaker-related duties.

Hyper-focused & I can’t stop!

ADHD stands for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. A common misconception about ADHD is that those who have the condition cannot focus on something for a long time. While that is true in some situations, there are some circumstances where it’s not the case. Here’s what I mean —

When I’m engrossed in a project, such as writing a blog post, it often falls under the hyperactivity segment of ADHD. In other words, I am hyper-focused on the task. This hyper-focused or hyper-fixated state is like being in your own world or dimension. You are not bound by the same laws of time and space. You get sucked into this black hole that involves only that task. There are no other thoughts. There are no other people. And, your body doesn’t need food, sleep, or bathroom breaks.

Being in this hyper-fixated state is like being in a time warp doing the one and only thing you want to do at that moment. It’s addicting which leads to frustration when you have to break that concentration.

Quality, uninterrupted time (AHA hyper-focused time)

The whole reason for telling you this — it plays into why I want to have quality, uninterrupted time. I want to be so engrossed in a task that time and space come to a stop. For me, this is where the magic happens! But, it’s hard to replicate when juggling the many expectations of mom life (especially during a pandemic).

This shines a light on the dualities of my daily struggles:

• On the one hand, I can’t get focused (primarily because of ADHD and I’m thinking about other life obligations).
• On the other hand, I don’t regularly have the time/space to allow myself to become so thoroughly engrossed in a task to enter my own time warp (because I have to engage in those daily life obligations).

It’s a vicious cycle that feeds itself — and my frustration.

All I want to do is work on things that will level up my business, I find myself pulled into so many directions I have difficulty focusing on what needs to be done. This brings in another conundrum…

Have you ever experienced the inability to complete tasks because you are too worried about an appointment or event later in the day?

As in, you are so worried about it, you can’t do anything else beforehand? Even if it is like 6 or 7 hours away?! Yea, that’s me.

Knowing I must finish a task by a particular time often results in a productivity nightmare. Until recently, I thought this was something that was unique to me. As in, I was the only weirdo that felt utterly paralyzed because of something on my calendar that doesn’t happen until — several hours — later in the day. Well, thanks to Reddit, I know I am not alone in this struggle!

When I came across this Reddit post, it stopped me in my tracks. I knew it needed to be saved because it’d come in handy later. It is also super helpful in describing this inability to focus…

This is exactly what I’ve been trying to describe. Not being able to focus on what needs to happen — right now — because of some appointment 7 and a half hours later. Uh, so frustrating!

Thankfully, an intelligent Redditor replied with the answer, and it was a simple one: “Reachback.”

That paralyzed state when you can’t do anything, all because of a lingering appointment later in the day, results from a phenomenon called reachback.

I had no idea there was a word to describe my feelings. Before this, I thought I had some sort of fundamental (or executive functioning) flaw that caused me to have this issue. While parts of that are probably true (especially the executive functioning piece)…

I’m not the only weirdo that struggles with this problem!! — Please raise your hand and let me know if the phenomenon of reachback has ever caused you to get absolutely nothing done. Drop a comment below!

Knowing I wanted quality, uninterrupted time, and it was about to happen in my immediate future, I wanted to ensure that I maximized it!

This was an excellent opportunity to put intention setting into practice. It was time to dig into my intentions for the Eugene trip. My plan was to get work done. Now, what exactly would I work on?

The answer actually came to me pretty quickly. After writing an article in April, Everything You Need to Know About Powerful Intention Setting, Plus Examples, I’ve been itching to write more about intentions. (Exercising some grace for myself, I have written other blog posts on intentions, such as this Daily Intentions blog post. I really just want to write more!).

Moral of the Story: Intention setting is so helpful! (Especially for those of us with ADHD).

I hope this blog post helps you to see things a little differently. And, to better understand how to effectively use them in your life. Of course, we won’t always get the opportunity to have 21 hours of quality, uninterrupted time for three days. But, we can do what we set out to accomplish if we harness the power of intention setting!

How about you? Have you tried intention setting? Were you successful in your practice? Drop a comment below. I’d love to hear how you’ve used intention setting in your life.