Intention Archives - Farther to Go!

Persevering Is a Habit

September 13, 2018 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

So Is Not Persevering

Persevering means steadily moving toward your desired outcome regardless of setbacks or obstacles, adjusting course as you go.

Perseverance is the P in IAP. If you don’t create a plan for getting back on track when you (inevitably) can’t or don’t follow through with your intention, one misstep can easily do you in. Your brain essentially reads it as an “end process” command, so that’s exactly what it directs you to do.

Until your brain learns to read missteps differently, you have to refocus and redirect it to get back on track. That requires System 2 attention.

Here are some steps you can take.

Pause. Acknowledge what happened. Check to see if you got some new information from the experience. Maybe you did; maybe you didn’t. If you did, how can you incorporate the new information into your intention or action?
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Consider your desired outcome. Use the Desired Outcome worksheet if you find that helpful. Is this something you really want? If not, go ahead and “end process.” If it is something you want:
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Make a new commitment to your intention. Communicate your intention to yourself by more than just thinking about it. Fill out a new IAP Card (adjusted based on the new information, if applicable). Read your intention out loud or communicate it to another person.
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Focus on your new intention, not on the previous one. In fact, tear up the old IAP card and toss it into the trash. Move forward instead of thinking backward.
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Train your brain to “pause and refresh” by rewarding yourself each time you do it. It’s a habit like any other habit. If your existing habit is to “end process,” you need to reward yourself for changing it to “pause and refresh.”

Setbacks and obstacles are part of life. There’s no point chastising yourself over them, making excuses, or allowing them more power and control than they deserve. Just take a moment to assess your situation, decide what to do next, and take that step.

Perseverance is key to reprogramming your brain’s autopilot. And the key to perseverance is pausing.

I Is for Intention

December 28, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

An intention is something (an act, speech, or effect) you plan or decide to do. An intentional act isn’t accidental or unconscious. That’s pretty straightforward, but intention has become a buzz word, so some clarification is in order.

In the world of magical thinking, intention is touted as a highly potent element. Or is it? One high priest of magical thinking describes intention as a directed impulse of consciousness that contains the seed form of that which you aim to create. (A simpler way to say it would be you have a thought or an idea.) You must then release your intentions into the fertile depths of your consciousness (aka the ground of pure potentiality) so they can grow and flourish. How or why you would need to release an impulse of consciousness into consciousness is unclear. But it’s the escape clause that really gets me. After releasing your intention, you are advised to relinquish your rigid attachment to a specific result because the outcome that you try so hard to force may not be as good for you as the one that comes naturally.

Hold on! The one that comes naturally sounds suspiciously like the very status quo your intention would serve to change. So what was the point of that directed impulse of consciousness? And who or what directed—or, more accurately, misdirected—it?

In a nutshell, you have a thought, you release it, and then things do or do not proceed as you intended. It appears that a directed impulse of consciousness is neither relevant nor powerful after all.

Intention Really IS Powerful

If you want to do something deliberately, as opposed to habitually, you defiinitely do need to start with an intention. Without one, you’re likely to succumb to the siren song of the path of least resistance: that thing that comes naturally. This is just the way we’re all wired.

An intention is more than wishful thinking, a good idea, or a thought released into fertile ground. Creating and acting on an intention requires your conscious thought and attention. If you want to break away from the path of least resistance—no easy task, given your brain’s desire to maintain the status quo—you need to be both committed to following through on your intention and willing to do whatever that takes, including feeling uncomfortable.

You also need to get very, very specific. Many ideas begin as vague or general aims, but if you want to give yourself a fighting chance at changing the status quo, you need to spell out the what, when, where, and how of what you intend to do. this may take some practice.

Creating an Intention

Although creating an intention is not complicated or difficult, there are a few pitfalls to watch out for.

“Shoulds”

You probably have some concepts about the way things should be, as well as how you should be and what you should be able to do. When you’re creating an intention, banish the word should—and even the concept. It isn’t helpful, and it sets you up to have unrealistic expectations. Why start out by pitting your actual self against an idealized self who can easily do whatever it is you’re currently struggling with?

If you have created an intention to do something because you think you should do it or you should be able to do it, let it go. You’re less likely to fully commit yourself to something you should do, and you’re probably not willing to do whatever it might take to accomplish it since you think you should already be doing it. If you prejudge yourself as somehow lacking, you’ve lost before you’ve even begun.

Giant Steps

Maybe there’s an entire area of your life you want to revamp, so you create an intention to do just that. No baby steps for you; you’re going for the gold! But trying to tackle too much all at once is another recipe for failure because the chance of succeeding is minuscule at best.

When you try to do many things at the same time, you give yourself many opportunities to fail. So if, for example, you want to develop a habit that involves doing something multiple times during the day, start out by creating an intention to do it once or twice a day—or even every other day. Once you’ve succeeded with that, you can expand on it.

Aiming to do too much and missing the mark only reinforces any existing feelings of ineffectiveness or inadequacy. When you take baby steps, you have a much better chance of accomplishing what you set out to do. You can then build on your success.

Wiggle Room

As indicated above, a common mistake to make when creating an intention is to be vague rather than specific. Maybe you aren’t consciously trying to give yourself wiggle room, but that’s what vagueness does to intentions: it paves the way for you to wiggle right out of them. Maybe you believe just creating the intention is sufficient. Or your schedule is too variable for you to be specific. Or you want to maintain your flexibility.

It’s important to be specific when creating an intention because vagueness simply doesn’t work, so creating a vague intention is a waste of time. If you want to do something twice a week, decide on the days of the week and the time of day you will do it. If your schedule varies, make appointments with yourself and write them on your calendar or in your planner. Treat your appointments with yourself the same way you would treat an appointment with someone else. Give yourself a little respect. If you know the result (desired outcome) you want, think through the steps you’ll need to take to achieve it. Make the steps your intention and the result is more likely to follow.

For more on intentions and the IAP (Intention/Attention/Perseverance) process, see Make It So!

Part of the series A-Z: An Alphabet of Change.

Count your Yesses

May 28, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

As Rick Hanson famously says, “Your brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones.” That’s because your brain’s primary concern is your survival, so it’s primed to pay more attention to the negative. Positive things may indeed help you survive. But negative things can kill you. As far as your brain is concerned, it’s definitely better to be safe than sorry. It’s better to expect and prepare for a possible threat (there might be a tiger behind that bush) than to be surprised (and wounded or eaten) by that tiger.

It’s easy to forget that we’re operating with essentially the same brain our ancestors on the savanna had. But if you want to overcome your brain’s negativity bias, it’s important to remember that System 1, the unconscious part of your brain that runs you most of the time, doesn’t always deal effectively with the stimulation, stressors, and sheer volume of information you have to contend with in your daily life.

It’s easier for all of us to pay attention to the negative: the threats, the slights, the hurts, the things that fall apart or don’t go our way. We don’t have to make a point of looking for what isn’t working in order to find it. Our brain does that automatically. Another aspect of our survival-based brain—its associative method of “thinking”—makes it easy to get on a negative track and stay there. One darn thing leads to another, meaning one similar thought reminds you of another similar thought. Before you know it, your mood and your attitude have soured, and your ability to refocus your attention has evaporated.

You can’t stop your brain from noticing the negative, and it wouldn’t even be a good idea to try. But neither do you have to give in to it. The advice to count your blessings comes to mind, but I find blessings to be a loaded word on several levels. I prefer to count my yesses. It’s a great way to turn the tide when I notice I’ve mentally starting traveling along that road to nowhere.

Although I tend to be pretty optimistic and upbeat, the first thing I noticed when I began this practice was how much easier it is to count my nos. Because the nos are brought to our attention by System 1, the unconscious part of our brain that is always on and processes 11,000,000 bits of information at a time, they come to mind immediately and automatically without any effort on our part. Counting yesses, on the other hand, requires intention, which is a function of System 2, the conscious part of the brain that is slow, lazy, and easily depleted.

The process of shifting my attention doesn’t just change the mental track I’m on; it also causes me to be aware of how influential my mental model of the world is at any given moment.

We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.

That quote has been attributed to several different people, but regardless of who said it, it’s true.

When you’re tired, stressed, or sick—or when life has dealt you some kind of blow—you simply have less System 2 attention available. So it’s easy for the nos to get the upper hand. A couple of weeks ago I went through a bout of food poisoning. During the illness itself and the two days that followed, the nos were abundant. I observed the downward trend in my thoughts, but I also understood what was happening. I was pretty sure my perspective would change once I got better (which it did), so I didn’t let the nos carry me too far downstream.

Someone I know regularly posts what she calls “The Daily Yes” on Facebook. It’s a prompt that works well for me because I don’t have a regular schedule for accessing Facebook, so I don’t always see it at the same time of day. But every time I do see it, I stop to read it. It doesn’t matter what the specific content is. It’s the word yes that’s my cue to pay attention to what’s juicy and zesty and working in my life—to who and what has said yes to me and who and what I’ve said yes to.

It’s easy for one no to outweigh many yesses, so much so that we may not even notice the yesses when they occur. That’s why I’ve found it helpful to make a list, whether it’s on paper or just a mental list. It reminds me that my brain does have a negativity bias—but that I don’t have to agree with it or go along for that particular ride.

Searching for Clarity? Try Writing.

October 9, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 5 Comments

writing

Writing is a great tool to use when you want to gain clarity about an issue you’re dealing with or are troubled by. This is not news. The catch is that in order to get the best results you need to be clear from the outset about what you want from your writing. You could just fill page after page in a notebook (something I did for quite a few years until I chucked the entire lot), but after you’re finished you may not be any clearer than you were to begin with. You might even be more confused.

Simply writing about a troubling issue can provide benefits, such as helping you feel better, but it isn’t the best way to get clarity.

There are two approaches to writing for clarity—flow writing and deliberate writing—that involve different ways of using the brain. The problem with simply writing about something is that it tends to muddle these two approaches, which means not getting the full benefit of either.

Flow Writing: Making Use of Associative Thinking

The unconscious (System 1) excels in associative thinking. It detects patterns and connects dots quicker than the conscious part of our brain (System 2) can. It’s a fast processor that sometimes sacrifices accuracy for speed. But it also has access to lots of information the conscious brain isn’t aware of.

Flow writing, which is also called free writing, is non-linear, non-rational, and non-logical. There’s no structure to flow writing. You just put your pen to paper and write quickly, letting the words “flow” without censoring or editing them. You don’t stop to think about what you’re writing. The best way to free your mind for flow writing is to set a page limit or use a timer. Flow writing is a good choice if you’re not entirely sure what the problem is. If you have a lot of thoughts swirling around inside your head, you can get them down on paper and take a look at them. But even with flow writing, you’ll get better results if you begin with a specific question to prime your unconscious to focus on the issue or situation at hand.

Deliberate Writing: Making Use of Logical, Linear Thinking

The conscious part of the brain is rational, logical, and linear. It operates at a much slower—more deliberate—speed than the unconscious. A good way to engage conscious thinking to gain clarity about something is to respond to a series of questions or prompts. While flow-writing casts a wide net in search of answers or information, deliberate writing narrows the search.

This 8 Step Problem-Solving exercise is an example of using deliberate thinking to gain clarity. You proceed through the sequence of questions or statements with the intention of reaching some type of resolution about the problem.

Integrated Writing: Making Use of Both Kinds of Thinking

There are times when either flow writing or deliberate writing alone will be sufficient. But integrating them can be much more powerful in terms of results. Integrated writing is synergistic rather than additive, which means the whole (the result) is greater than the sum of the parts you used to arrive at it. A few examples of integrated writing include:

10 minutes of flow writing (System 1 associative thinking) followed by writing the answers to a series of questions (System 2 logical, linear thinking). You can create your own set of questions or use the ones in the 8 Step Problem-Solving exercise.

Write Your Way Out of the Story. For instructions scroll to Antidote #3 in this post on rumination.

Go Deeper: This is a 4-part exercise that’s best to do in one sitting. Begin by writing a question at the top of a blank page and then flow write in response to it for 8-12 minutes. Next, reread what you wrote (engaging System 2), select a sentence or phrase, and write it at the top of another blank page. Flow write in response to this sentence or phrase for 8-12 minutes. Finally, reread both pieces (System 2), find a question—either one you asked in your writing or one that occurs to you after reading—write it at the top of a blank page, and flow write in response to it for 8-12 minutes. Then reread all three pieces and write a one-paragraph summary (System 2).

No matter which type of writing you decide to use, having an intention—being clear about what you’re doing and what you want to get out of your writing—is probably the most important element.

Increase Your Productivity by Eliminating Choice

August 21, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

The best way to ensure you will accomplish something is by taking choice out of the equation. As long as you think you have a choice about whether or not to do something, chances are good you won’t do it.

In an article at 99U titled How I Kept a 373-Day Productivity Streak Unbroken, Jamie Todd Rubin talks about his consecutive-day writing streak. He has an even longer streak, though. At the time he wrote the piece, he had written 516 out of the previous 518 days.

Rubin doesn’t talk about choice in his article, nor does he talk about habits. What he says is:

While I didn’t set out to form a routine, I eventually established one which has led to my most prolific year as a writer yet.

How did he do it? He used the principles of I.A.P.: Intention, Attention, and Perseverance.

He decided to challenge his assumptions about the circumstances he needed to have in order to write. He has a day job and a family that includes young children, so large blocks of uninterrupted time were not on the menu. But as a result of questioning his assumptions, he discovered he could get a significant amount of writing done (500 words) in a 20-minute block of time.

So he set an intention to write for at least 20 minutes every day. He knew that would be easier said than done, especially on days when his regular routine was disrupted.

I learned ways to hack my writing streak to cope with the disruptions and still write every day.

He keeps his attention on his intention by deciding ahead of time when to fit his writing in when his day isn’t going to follow a normal routine. On such days, he usually gets his writing done earlier in the day. He also cuts himself some slack while still keeping his routine in place.

In my normal routine, I can usually count on 40 minutes of writing time. On these off-days, I may only be able to count on 10 or 20 minutes.

Rubin has a plan in place for responding to the unexpected, which is the perseverance part of the process. We have to expect the unexpected to occur and figure out ahead of time how we’ll deal with it.

Sometimes, things happen that you can’t plan ahead for. Life gets in the way. I’ll go into a day thinking that it will be routine, and something comes up. Maybe I have to work late at the day job or maybe one of the kids is sick. Whatever it is, in these instances, I haven’t planned ahead and so I can’t necessarily get my writing done early in the day.

Rubin knows that he can usually count on squeezing 10 minutes of writing in, no matter what’s going on. So he makes that his goal instead of 20 or 40 minutes. As he says, the 250 words he can generate in 10 minutes is 250 words he wouldn’t have otherwise. He also keeps several writing projects going, so he can always find something he’s in the mood to work on.

Even so, he sometimes has a day where he doesn’t have an opportunity to do any writing whatsoever.

What happens when the streak inevitably comes to an end? Well, I just start anew. It’s happened once already. I previously had a 140-day streak, and then missed two days in the space of a week. But I got right back on the horse, and haven’t missed a day for 373 days.

Getting back on the horse is what perseverance is all about. It’s how we beat the “ah, screw it” that tempts us when things don’t go according to plan. It isn’t the two missed days that are important. It’s the other 518 days that really matter.

These three steps (intention, attention, perseverance) can be applied to any activity, not just to writing. If you decide ahead of time that you aren’t going to waste time each day choosing whether or not to do it, you’re far more likely to get it done.

Rubin concludes:

There is no question that my sales of both fiction and nonfiction pieces have increased since I started writing every day. Indeed, since the streak began, I’ve sold 18 pieces of fiction or nonfiction, triple that of any previous year.

Although he didn’t initially set out to create a daily writing habit, by setting an intention, finding a way to keep his attention focused on it, and persevering by planning for the unexpected and the failures, that’s exactly what Rubin has done. By taking choice out of the equation, he tripled his writing productivity.