Resolutions, Goals, and Intentions
Setting Goals and Intentions to Support Your Creative Life
Many of us set resolutions, goals, or intentions for the coming year, yet almost half of all people who set New Year’s resolutions will quit by the end of January. So, how do you stay motivated to keep up with your creative goals for the new year?
First, I think we need to make a distinction between terms.
Goals and resolutions are focused on what we want to accomplish and to be in the future. Intentions are focused on the present and on becoming.
Resolutions are a statement that we’ve resolved to make a certain change. Because they tend to be rigid, once broken, they can be hard to reestablish. Resolutions play on a black-and-white, all-or-nothing, perfectionistic mindset, which I believe contributes to why they often fail. In my experience, resolutions only work if they are supported by goals and intentions.
Goals set a vision for the end result. They are slightly more flexible than resolutions and can be great to keep you focused on what you hope to achieve. Goals can give you something to strive toward, and they can boost motivation when you keep your focus on the result of your efforts. SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals tell you what to do, how to do it, when to get it done, and how to know you’ve arrived. Goals are often tied to specific practices and choices.
Intentions are a bit more vague and abstract; they are often values-based and adaptive. Intentions focus on the direction you’re headed. Where goals focus on specifics, intentions focus on concepts, and they can lead to a much more fulfilling and flexible life if they're implemented intentionally. Which kind of goes along with the name, doesn't it? Setting intentions often takes the form of choosing a word for the year (or month); this guides decision making and influences how you show up in the world.
If your resolutions have already failed, it might be time to create goals and intentions that will help you follow through on your creative desires.
As I see it, there are two critical aspects that determine how well you’ll follow through on goals. They are: 1. Setting the right goals and 2. Implementing practices that will help you stay motivated.
This post will focus on setting the right goals, and the next post will give you tips to stay motivated and follow through on the goals you set.
How to set goals and intentions that enhance your creative life
Setting Goals
Be honest about your starting point. We don’t always see the gap between where we are and where we want to be (and other times this gap feels insurmountable). You have to be honest about where you’re starting in order to make a plan to move forward. If you have no experience with instruments and don’t know how to read sheet music, don’t start with intermediate piano lessons. This just sets you up for failure. Locate yourself on the map, only then can you know where to begin.
Break it down into specifics and give yourself direction. As creatives, we can sometimes get so caught up in the vision, that we miss out on the details necessary to get there. For example, rather than making a goal to “learn to draw,” you can break it down into specific styles or features. Your new goal might be to learn how to draw a human hand in a semi-realistic style before the end of January. To do this, you can break it down further by creating supporting goals such as, draw at least one hand daily, follow YouTube hand drawing tutorials, and do a study on hands every Saturday.
Start small and make it manageable. As cheesy as it might sound, we make progress one step at a time. Don’t be afraid to set small goals for yourself, especially if you don’t currently have an established creative practice. For instance, it’s okay to set a goal to write one sentence daily if that still feels daunting. Once you establish the habit, you can build up to bigger goals and a more substantial daily investment. When you make goals manageable for yourself (yet still somewhat challenging so you don’t get bored), you’re much more likely to follow through. You can sit with a blank page for 5 minutes a day. Set realistic expectations so you don’t get discouraged and do stay motivated.
Process goals vs. product goals. Product goals focus on the outcome, process goals focus on the practice. Since product goals focus on the end result, they are a bit more rigid and give less direction for the journey. Process goals, however, focus on how you get there. It’s good to have a vision, but product goals don’t define how you get there. Process goals will help you establish habits that propel you forward, and they often support product goals. For example, you might have a product goal to write, illustrate, and publish a children’s book. A process goal might be to work on your story for 20 minutes a day, and to draw your main character (or other elements) daily. Practice makes progress, and process goals help you take regular steps toward your vision.
Setting and Implementing Intentions
Find the theme. Intentions can be drawn from goals. When you look at your goals, do any specific themes emerge? How about in your recent creations? Is there a word or an idea that really resonates with you? When I’ve chosen a word for the year, it often isn’t heavily planned, but rather comes from a concept that keeps showing up in my life and feels significant to the type of person I want to be. When you stop to pay attention, often there will be a theme that emerges from your life, your goals, or your creative work that you may not have been consciously aware of until looking for it. Some examples might be: curiosity, playfulness, storytelling, growth, exploration, authenticity, collaboration, etc.
What do you want more of? Intentions can set a focus on a specific area you would like to grow into. If you have an intention to live a creative life, what does that look like? Is there an intention you can set, or a word you can choose, that adequately embodies what you want your creative work to be defined by? Or perhaps you want to approach your work a specific way. For instance, maybe you want to experiment with different creative mediums and approach your work differently each time you create. Or maybe you want to cultivate curiosity rather than following your default ideas and creative habits.
Values assessment. What values feel extra important at this moment in your life? You might set an intention centered on these values to prioritize them in your life and in your creative work. What values have you lost sight of? Feeling disconnected from your values can take a toll on your mental health. If there are values you’re living out of sync with, setting an intention around those values can help bring them into focus and bring alignment into your life and your creative work. When you’re disconnected from your values, you’re disconnected from yourself. Setting intentions grounded in values can create congruence that enables you to create more authentically.
Set intentions to define the direction you’re headed, and make goals that align with the direction you want to go.
Setting goals and intentions can be the easy part. Many of us have dreams for the future, skills we want to build, and destinations we want to reach. Staying motivated and gaining momentum is a huge part of accomplishing these goals. In the next post, I’ll share ideas for staying motivated and following through.
What are some of your creative goals and intentions for this coming year?
Happy creating!
🦋 Amarie