Both our intentions and our reactions will over time create our reality. Are you making choices and decisions with intention or are you reacting to circumstances and other people?
Here’s an example from the sports world. The star player, reacting to disappointment over their team’s sure defeat, plays poorly. Hit pause, rewind, and now the star player has their best game ever despite a team loss. The star player reveals their mindset was to do their best regardless of how others around them were playing. Here’s another one. The sales representative goes home early complaining that no one was home today. Pause, rewind, and now the sales representative decides to work later in the evening when more people will be home, committed to achieving their stated activity goal of never going home until they talk to a certain number of prospects each day. Which example was indicative of reacting and which showed intention controlling action? What will be the reality for each if they continue to choose intention or reaction?
Intentions are based on goals, reactions are based on emotions such as fear, greed, scarcity, and ego. It takes a strong intention to push through barriers, roadblocks, and adversity. It’s easy to react to our circumstances. It’s the “high road or low road” decision. Do you take the “easy way or hard way”? Sadly, we often choose comfort over challenge, believing that somehow, we will still manage to succeed at a high level. It’s critical that you choose a goal that is worthwhile and personal. It must mean something to you if it’s going to pull you through the tough times.
Here are some best practices to train yourself to choose intention over reaction.
Create space to create and think about your goals. Ask yourself what it is that you would really like to accomplish? If failure was not possible, what would you like to achieve? Get focused on where you are going. Then, develop the daily routine of reviewing it. Visualize yourself already achieving your goal. What does it feel like? How does it change your life and the lives of those around you? Bask in how it makes you feel.
Spend time daily consuming ideas that support achieving your goals. You can’t keep doing the same old things, thinking the same old way, and expect life to improve. You must feed your mind with the new and powerful ideas that will support doing the new things required to achieve more. Don’t miss this step.
Identify mistakes, own them, learn from them. Anything worthwhile will require learning which means mistakes. Prepare for this. When you experience a failure, view it as a valuable learning opportunity. Take responsibility for your mistakes. Unless you own it, you can’t fix it. If you point the blame away from yourself, it is now beyond your control. Be a student always and have an incremental mindset.
What we become starts with the choices we make. You can choose to set exciting goals and be driven to achieve them by being intentional in your choices. Or you can allow yourself to be reactionary when it comes to your choices. Regardless of your choice, it will become your reality. Choose wisely!