Welcome to episode 51 up. Girl Take the Lead were each week. We explore Womanhood and Leadership, woohoo. It's our first episode for 2023. And we are so excited to have you here. Every year. We see tons of ads about New Year's resolutions, and a lot of the times I'm paralyzed, it, they definitely become a big. Should this year. I was hearing more and more into more about intentions and how they were different from resolutions.
And how goals fit in, I was real familiar with goals because they're always a part of a marketing plan that I've ever done. So I I thought we dig in and look together at this, With a Little Help from Jay Shetty and his book, think, like a monk train. Your mind for peace and purpose every day. He has a lot to say about intention so I'll bring that
research to you today. In this episode, you may know Jay Shetty as a social media Superstar and hosted the podcast on purpose which takes aspects of having been a monk Two practical everyday living. He spent four summers in India, interning at corporations and training. With the international Society for Krishna Consciousness, and three years, living a Vedic, monk lifestyle, at an ashram in Mumbai. India here you go.
Thanks for listening. So let's start by looking at the definitions of in tension and resolution Diana. Rob, a psychologist. And author says an intention is something you want to manifest in your life or some guiding principle that you want to live. By while resolutions are hard and fast goals that are either achieved or broken. Intentions are broader ideas So then I started to wonder what is the difference between an intention and a goal.
And here's what I found, a goal describes what you want to do in the future. So then I wondered what's the difference between an intention and a goal and I found this a goal describes what you want to do in the future. It focuses on external accomplishments and is something you can clearly check off a list like go rock climbing or make a successful pie crust and intention describes how you want to feel its focus is internal on your relationship with yourself.
So in my search I found this take interesting, resolution seem to ask us to be perfect something we can never achieve resolution seem to focus only on the outcome, not the journey. So in setting an intention you resolve that you're already enough. So you move forward without having an attachment to the outcome. It's more about the journey so then I wonder like what makes resolutions fail then. So here's what I found.
Many people blame their failure to fulfill resolutions on a lack of time, resources or motivation or a loss of passion after starting. Only about 16 percent of people are able to follow their resolutions. The majority give up within 1 to 6 weeks of starting and many of these resolutions are repeated year after year, some of the resolutions bail. Because one We've set unrealistic resolutions to we lack accountability 3, there's no tracking or review for. There's a lack of planning
five-week have self-doubt. And six the resolution is unclear. So given these pitfalls after looking at intentions, which we said our broader in scope. Could they be more appealing to do for the beginning of the new year? So, here's what I found in Jay. Shetty's book in chapter 4 where he begins to talk about intentions. So, here's a quote from that
book. In our heads, we have an image of an ideal life, our relationships, how we spend our time and work, and Leisure, what we want to achieve Even without the noise of external influences certain goals, Captivate Us. And we design our lives around, achieving them, because we think they will make us happy. But now we will figure out what drives these Ambitions, whether they are likely to make us truly happy and whether happiness is even the right target.
So it gives us a story about having come out of a class, and he was strolling in the ashram with the senior Monk and a few other students. And, as they walked, the senior monk mentions, the achievements of some of the other monks, they pass. And he points out that This one can meditate for eight hours. Straight a few minutes later. He gestures to another and he says, this one fast for seven days in a row further along he points. Do you see the man sitting under the tree?
He can recite every verse from the scripture impressed. Jay says, I wish I could do that, the monk pauses and turns to him, he says, do you wish you could do that or do you wish you could learn? Learn to do that. What do you mean he asks and he says think about your motivations. Do you want to memorize all the scripture? Because it's an impressive achievement or do you want the experience of having studied it? In the first, all you want, is the outcome in the second.
You are curious about what you might learn from the process. And Jay said, he says this New Concept for me was A New Concept for me and it blew my mind and reading this, I got to tell you, it blew my mind to he goes on to talk about for motivations from a hindoo philosopher and the first one is fear. Which is being driven by sickness poverty, fear of Hell, or fear of death. The second one is desire seeking personal gratification through success wealth and pleasure.
The third one is Duty motivated by gratitude responsibility and the desire to do the right thing. And the last one is love compelled for care for others and the urge to help them. so, if we take these motivations and we look at them, And are honest to our with ourselves about what our motivations actually are. We can then look at and begin to question our intentions and see them a bit more deeply and the way he suggest we do that is the why ladder wh-why?
And it takes these for motivations, these states are the roots of all intentions. You develop your intentions to drive forward. So your intention is who you plan to be in order to act with purpose and feel that what you are doing is Meaningful. So what I did was I took this as an exercise for myself so and you can be involved in this because it has to do with the podcast. I thought we would use that as an example.
You know, because he says that having an intention alone isn't enough, we have to live our intentions, it needs to permeate our behavior and we need to consider the work. We need to do behind what we want to achieve. So the why ladder you probably might be familiar with this. It's asking the question. Why fiber six times, let's start
with this example. My intention is to provide you our listener, a unique podcast experience, where you feel inspired motivated and learn something new about leadership from different generational perspectives. So the first why, why is that important? And I could say well the girl Take the Lead podcast can grow because of this unique format. And why is that important?
Then I said, well, reaching more people equals more potential, diverse effective leaders, especially women of younger Generations. Will why is that important? More effective leaders can help others belong. Learn to enhance their own performance and Foster their own, creativity and teamwork. Well, why is that important? And I thought well maybe by understanding and observing the dimensions of leadership, we can suffer less and Lead others with
empathy and compassion. Well, why is that important? Then it was, I'd like to help other women from feeling less than like I did in my career. And why is that important? Because that is about me being helpful. And feeling useful. So, if we look at those, you can see that. I'm I went back and looked at the four motivations and I thought, okay, it's Duty and love perhaps that's really guiding me. And one thing he talks about is that there's no pure intention.
There's no like 100% good service, you know, our ego always kind of gets involved in that and there's different percentages. So like for Duty. When you look at my intention that we just talked About. Perhaps it's you know 30% and love would be 70%, you know and depending how we look at them, perhaps that percentage changes. So that's one way to look at it. And because intentions, permeate our Behavior, we have to live, Our intention and avoid those
Wishful, manifestations. Like I wish I could do this, or I wish I were a better podcaster, or I wish. I were in the top 1% of podcasters, all of that stuff because you have to really be willing to do the work. And we've brought that up. Before in our podcast, especially about doing Byron, Katie's work, he has a nice way of looking at this. So if you take your to-do list to include also, who you need to be to achieve that.
So here's my example, let's say on my to-do list which is there keep researching leadership topics about using our five themes that we pointed out in the last episode, our voice Observing our emotions learning from others developing strategies to listen to ourselves and have fun. And so then the question is, who do I need to be to to that?
And what came up was, I need to be organized in order to research and I need to execute plans so that requires organization and also involves curiosity and passion. So that's who I need to be to achieve that. Let's say, I also have on my to-do list, which I do is to invite gas that challenge the status quo and support women as Leaders. So then who do I need to be to do that? I need to be able to seek and accept help from others, including men who championed the
efforts of women. So, that was cool to see. And then also on my to-do list, I have develop and execute a Content marketing plan, So who do I need to be to do that? I need to suspend whatever I think I know and continue to be a beginner in personal branding. So maybe that's helpful to you. I know you probably thought resolutions might be looking a lot easier than doing intentions, but in order to achieve those things we want to do, I agree that we have to do
work around that. There's another section. I thought in the chapter chapter 4 again of this book that I thought was really helpful and it's called seeds and weeds and they can be summarized in this Tick-Tock he did one of my favorite meditation practices that I do, which is the smallest and shortest part of my meditation is that I've refined my intention, what I mean by that is every day I write down thoughts in my mind that are either weeds or seeds.
Seeds are ones that I want to grow seeds of things that I want to plant, because they're full of love compassion, empathy. Kindness, And the weeds agreed negativity manipulation power control. So here's the takeaway about intentions. Perhaps resolutions. Haven't worked because they haven't been realistic or they weren't internally motivated. Perhaps they were shoulds instead of wants And because intentions are broader in scope, we can do some work around them and use the why ladder.
So we better understand our motivations about who we need to be in order to reach our goals associated with them. And that's where the real work happens. Shifting ourselves to be someone. We need to be So to help you along and to enter episode today, I thought it would be great to have a little motivation from the movie mr. Carter, we're Team accrues recites the poem by Marianne Williamson. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that, we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were all meant to shine as children, do it's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same as we are liberated
from our own fear. Our presence automatically liberates others. Thank you for joining us for this episode. We hope this kicks off your new year with an approach to intentions that might be helpful throughout the year. So in keeping with our intention for this podcast, I'm asking for your help to tell others about this podcast. Subscribe and comment, join our girl Take the Lead Facebook page and visit our website. We just loaded up a freebie which are the pie instructions.
Rebecca gave us in Episode 44, and it's all outlined there for you. Next week, we'll talk about personal branding, and a key component of that storytelling, no matter what our generation. We all are a personal brand as a marketer for so many years. Executing branding was my job and I can outline some of the components of personal branding for you. Plus our research. What others have to say on the topic. I hope you'll join me and talk to you soon. Oh. And by the way, Coming the week
of January 23rd. Our podcast will be one year old. So stay tuned. As we celebrate our birthday. Talk to you later. Thanks for being here.