Creating an essential intent is hard. It takes courage, insight, and foresight to see which activities and efforts will add up to your single highest point of contribution. It takes asking tough questions, making real trade-offs, and exercising serious discipline to cut out the competing priorities that distract us from our true intention. Yet it is worth the effort because only with real clarity of purpose can people, teams, and organisations fully mobilise and achieve something truly excellent.

Being specific about what you want and how you will achieve it helps you say no to things that derail progress, distract your attention, and pull you off course

We have to work with intention as much as possible — this is especially true when we have more to do than time within which to do it. Intention enables us to prioritize so we don’t overload our attentional space.

Set your ambitions, even if you are uncertain about what they should be. The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power.

Committing your goals to paper increases the likelihood of your achieving them by one thousand percent.

Define it. Remember, well-defined goals are like magnets. The better you chisel them, the stronger they pull.

When you set more goals, try more things, engage in more activities, and explore more opportunities, your probabilities of success increase dramatically.

When in doubt, check your intentions.

And how will I accomplish this? First I will set goals for the day, the week, the month, the year, and my life. Just as the rain must fall before the wheat will crack its shell and sprout, so must I have objectives before my life will crystallize. In setting my goals I will consider my best performance of the past and multiply it a hundredfold. This will be the standard by which I will live in the future. Never will I be of concern that my goals are too high for is it not better to aim my spear at the moon and strike only an eagle than to aim my spear at the eagle and strike only a rock? Today I will multiply my value a hundredfold.

You select one of your aspirations, then come up with a bunch of specific behaviors that can help you achieve your aspiration.

Research shows that applying implementation intentions increases your self-control, even when you’re in bad environments.27 Rather than wearing out your willpower and watching yourself fail, you have a pre-planned response that takes the guesswork out of your decision-making. When you have a pre-plan for how you’ll deal with obstacles, then you won’t get thrown off when you’re in a situation and tempted to sabotage your goals.

Clarity of intention is the key to creating a powerful skill or ritual.

You have to set yourself goals so you can push yourself harder. Desire is the key to success.

intention is one of the most powerful
forces in the universe

it sets actions into motion
and gives them a direction

words get their energy from the intention
we place into them

if you want to reclaim your power,
start by being intentional