Waking Up Well - Intentions

Good morning everybody. Good morning. Welcome back to Waking Up. Well, or welcome to Waking Up. Well, this might be your first time. Had some new signups this week and, uh, wanna welcome everybody, whether it's your first time or you've been here many times before. I want to thank you for joining us here this morning. Hope you are all doing well. So for those of you, uh, where it might be your first time, if you, if we have not met yet, my name is Brett Powell, I'm the president of the American Institute for Preventive Medicine. I also am your host here for Waking Up. Well, I want to apologize. Um, last week I was attending a wellness summit, actually here in town in, uh, Austin, Texas. And it went, it went really well. It was so nice to, uh, connect with old friends in the wellbeing space and, uh, and new friends of course, and, um, really enjoyed it. But I missed being on, and I, I apologize, I was actually tied up at the moment, um, that we were meant to be on here. So, uh, it looks like Alyssa might have been at my presentation, which was, which is great. So yeah, there might be a few people that are joining from the presentation, so that's great. Thanks for hopping on. Alright, so, you know, or maybe you don't waking up. Well, we are attempting to answer the age old question of whether or not we can change our day for the better. In only 15 minutes. Can we do it a, a micro workshop, 15 minutes and 15 minutes only, and I will try to keep us to 15 minutes only, meaning we're gonna be off here in less than 15 minutes. Can we change our day for the better? I think the answer is yes. So today what I would like to do is first warm up the chat by asking you if there's something in particular that you might be looking forward to this holiday weekend. We have a long weekend upcoming. It might seem like it's still far away, it's Wednesday morning, or perhaps you feel as though it's right around the corner. Maybe you're even scooting out early. Uh, is there something in particular that you are looking forward to? Go ahead and let us know in the chat. I myself am actually leaving, uh, tomorrow I'm headed to Colorado, uh, with my fiance and I will be, uh, convening with, uh, my fiance's mother and her boyfriend in Colorado. I'm looking forward to it. It should be nice some time in the mountains. So it looks like lots of fun stuff, lots of family time, a little bit of travel. I see, um, Minnesota State Fair, which actually unfortunately reminds me that there has been a unfortunate, tragic, tragic, uh, shooting in, in Minneapolis. So our hearts go out to the community in Minneapolis this morning. Um, I think this is just, just happened, so if you have not heard, then please pause, say a prayer for our friends in, in Minneapolis and anybody that might have been affected. Um, there was a shooting in a church, I believe so, very unfortunate. But, um, anyhow, lots of, lots of good things that we're looking forward to. And the reason why I mention thinking about what you might be looking forward to is that what I want to do today is take a look at setting intentions. Now, you, you may have been on, uh, a couple months back and we did this for July 4th and it went so well that the fact that we have another holiday weekend here, I thought we'd run it back and take a look at some of the advantages that we can gain by thinking intently and setting some intentions around, uh, a holiday weekend. Now, of course you can do this any weekend and you can do it any and every day. Setting intentions is a really good strategy to get the most out of your time. So I think about this as a way to enjoy a long weekend or a holiday weekend more fully. Uh, it's an opportunity for you to do the things that you really wanna do as opposed to having that feeling when you wake up on Tuesday and it's time to go back to work and you're thinking, oh shoot, that weekend flew by. I didn't get a chance to do the things that I had intended to do. And so setting intentions can give you a, a greater sense of control, kind of a sense of clarity. It definitely pre prevents that sort of, I wish I had feeling. Um, when the weekend comes to a close, there is research to support this. Uh, I always try to tie in the research. A lot of this, uh, might be intuitive, but there is actually some good solid research, research that shows that people who set intentions are more likely to follow through with the actions that they intend to do and feel better about those choices. There was a study published in, uh, the American Psychologist Journal found that people who form clear intentions are two to three times more likely to follow through compared to those who just might set vague goals. Uh, so if you can have a little cheat code as a way that you're gonna be two or three times more likely to follow through on something that sounds like a pretty good win, I like I'll take those chances, uh, in particular if it's something that's relatively simple to do. Research also shows that intentions can reduce stress and foster a greater sense of satisfaction with how your time is spent. So seems like you get quite a bit of benefit for something that you can do in only a couple of minutes. And if you are already thinking about how you might be able to set intentions, hold tight, you better believe that we are going to be setting some intentions for the weekend here in a moment as our activity for the day. So before we do that, don't get ahead of ourselves. You might benefit by thinking about intentions in terms of the categories that they fall into. So perhaps you're thinking about connection and who you want to spend meaningful time with or connect with, even if it's by phone or otherwise. Um, you might be thinking about the category of rest. Do you want to carve out some space to recharge the batteries and take a moment to rest for yourself? Um, joy is another category that you can think about. What do you wanna do? That sounds fun and how are you gonna do it? And then a fourth category you might consider is growth. So is there something that you might do that pushes yourself a little bit? Is there something that you want to learn that you've been putting off? Is there something that you want to reflect on or something you want to practice that maybe you've been working on? So some examples of intentions might include things such as, I want to spend quality time with my children without checking my phone. So leaving my phone aside and just spending quality time with kids or maybe another family member. I plan to enjoy my favorite dessert fully without guilt. This is one that I should, should be including in my intentions for the weekend because I always feel guilty. I love chocolate chip cookies. I probably will run into a cookie somewhere in Colorado and I should enjoy it and enjoy it as such and not feel, uh, the guilt afterwards, but maybe limit myself to one cookie. I've actually heard there's some research that shows that the feeling of guilt after eating something unhealthy actually hinders the digestion process and you're better off just acknowledging that the, um, that the dessert was something that you wanted to enjoy and enjoy it as such, and then move on to whatever else you're doing. So anyhow, um, another intention might be be that you're gonna set aside an hour to do nothing and relax. And another one might be that you're going to enjoy a few drinks, but you wanna limit yourself to three or so, or sit, you know, set whatever number that you want. And then, uh, finally you might say that I'm going to reach out to fill in the blank a person that you want to connect with who will not be in town or who I will not see, but who I want to connect with. Um, so I mentioned to you that, uh, my fiance and I were traveling to Colorado where we're gonna be with, with my fiance's mother, my future mother-in-law and her boyfriend. Uh, I see them quite often, although I don't get to spend one-on-one time with them because usually there's a broader family. My fiance's family is huge and, and they're usually all around. They travel in a pack and it's great, they're all amazing. But I don't necessarily get the opportunity to spend one-on-one time with my fiance's mother or her boyfriend. And so my intention for the weekend is to ask each of them to go on a walk or quick hike so that I can get some one-on-one time with each of them. Uh, I feel like this is a good opportunity given that the entire family won't be there. So now it's your turn. So if you can think about an intention or two or maybe even three and go ahead and write them down. So think about something that you might want to do this weekend. Be as specific as you can or as you like, and just take a moment here and write one or two or maybe even three of them down. Something that you want to accomplish, something that you think will be really fulfilling, make the most of your time. Uh, you can think about those categories of connection, of rest, of joy and happiness or of growth, or it can be something completely unique and not fall into one of those categories. This is you, this is how you are planning your time and how you want to make the most of it. So go ahead and just take another minute or so and see if you can write down an intention or two. And I see Amy's sharing her intention in the chat, which you are more than welcome to do. The chat is always wide open for your participation. See, I'm catching up on the, on the chat a little bit. Oh man, Heather, it looks like Heather has her AI chat bot in here. I think this might be the first time that we've had a chat bot join waking up. Well, but we, we welcome everybody including AI assistance. Um, I see a couple state fairs that people are going to, which is great. It's state fair season. Uh, let's see here. Sarah says she's gonna put her phone down and read her book. I love that. Also visiting Colorado. Wow, Sarah, I might see you in the mountains. Um, some good intentions here. So, okay, you've got your intentions written down. We're gonna take this one step further. And what I want you to actually do now is close your eyes and envision yourself moving through that intention. So if it's a person that you're spending time with, it's if it's an activity that you're doing, if it's reading a book, picture yourself. Where are you? What are you sitting on? What are you feeling? Who are you with, who's around? Close your eyes and literally put yourself, I guess figuratively, but put yourself in your mind's eye. Put yourself in that situation. Maybe you smell something, maybe you hear something, maybe you feel something. But go through the full intention that you wrote down. And if you wrote down more than one, go through all of them. Start with the first one and then move on to the next one. But actually put yourself there, feel it, be it, live it. And then when you're done with that, you can go ahead and open your eyes again. What we've done is allowed you to visualize actually completing it in the attempt that you'll be more likely to do that now that you've had sort of the feeling of completing that. Uh, so we've set our intentions, we have visualized our intentions. We now know the incredible benefit of setting and following through with intentions. So now really all we have to do is go live it and enjoy it and have a a, a wonderful weekend. So we are closing in on 15 minutes, whi whi which is crazy. It goes by so quickly. So I want to thank you all for joining. As you know, we're here every week and it is completely free. You're welcome to share this with friends, family, colleagues, teams. You can invite your entire company if you'd like. I'm gonna drop a link to our Handy dandy flyer in the case that you want to share this more broadly. Uh, I also always like to remind you that you, you, your organization in all likelihood Hood has wonderful wellbeing resources that you can make use of if you like this sort of thing. And, and I would welcome any feedback that you may have. So if there are any topics in particular or any feedback that you have in related, in relation to these sessions, I would welcome it. So thank you all for joining. I hope that you have a wonderful we rest of the week. I hope that you have an incredible weekend with, uh, all of the intentions set and delivered and that the intentions bring you great joy and a happy and healthy holiday weekend ahead. We'll see you next week. Take care. Bye. Thanks everyone. Take care.