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Intention

Two for You — take two minutes to live and lead with intention

Episode 3.1

What values do you want to focus on as you live and lead with intention? Setting intentions helps us focus on the journey and the process rather than an end goal. What tools do you have integrated into your own life to help connect you with your intentions?

“Intention is like a highlighter pen for your mind. Contemplating intention keeps our priorities in sight as life rushes by.”

— Ethan Nichtern, author and Buddhist teacher

Transcript

Note: Two for You written transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before referencing content in print.

[Lori] Hello and welcome to Two for You, two minutes to live and lead with intention. So, we thought we'd talk to you today about what the heck is "two minutes to live and lead with intention" to us?

[Denise] Intention and the way we look at it is a little different than goal-setting and goal-setting you're looking into the future, you're looking at what don't I have and what do I want to get. Intention is more about being right here, right now in the moment. You focus it, you recognize that the moment is, you put your values into that situation and it kind of revs up your energy.

[Lori] Yeah. So, what do you do, Denise? What do you have integrated into your life to help you to live and lead with intention?

[Denise] One of the things that I do every day, or I aspire to do every day, is even before I get out of bed in the morning, I try to think of three things that I am grateful for and three things that I would like to accomplish during the day. They're not big things, I keep my standards pretty low when it comes to the intention, but at least it gives me a grounding of my values and my intention.

[Lori] And for me, as somebody who is "Achiever" with your strengths, you know, the goal-setting part, right? Where we want to go, it naturally comes as a focus for me. Instead, I try to focus on how I want to be and I have a little sign in my office as well that says how I want to be and whether that's how I want to be in relationship with my colleagues or how I want to be in the meeting or how I want to be with my kids or my partner. You know, putting your cell phone away or really being here when you're here. It's something that I like to focus on and I'm working on at the moment.

[Denise] So recognize, too, that being intentional also helps you be engaged and there's lots of research around the benefits of being engaged throughout your life. So as leaders and as community members and as fellow people, we challenge you to live and lead your lives with intention. 

Authors: Lori Rothstein and Denise Stromme, former Extension educators

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