Creating Intentions and

Affirmations in Order to
Realize Life Transformation

Cheryl Lindsay

Jan 22, 2019·8 min read

How are those new year resolutions working for you? Many of
us utilize the freshness of a new year to make positive changes
in our life. We recommit to old goals and habits and determine
to eliminate negative behaviors and attitudes. Experience tells
us that most of us will not keep these commitments through the
year. Perhaps, you have already encountered stumbling blocks
and moments of failure. How can we increase the possibility and
probability of progress in realizing what we have named as
important in our lives?

The change maker is establishing a system that incorporates

intentions and affirmations in order to realize the life
transformation you seek.

What are intentions? Intentions are actions that we take in

order to realize new goals. They require thought and some
degree of processing and evaluation of the current state of our
life and our desired outcomes in order to determine what new
attitudes and behaviors we need to engage to attain those
desires. Is there much difference between a resolution and an
intention? I’m not sure if it’s more than semantics. But word
choice can be important. Our words reflect, echo and precede
our actions. So, what is the difference between I resolve and I
intend? One is tied to an annual exercise in which we wish to
make radical changes in our life circumstances. The other is not
associated with that practice at all. Rather, it is a new way of
looking at how we can change our lives for the better in a long-
term, systematic way, that ties attitude and behavior to new
ways of being.

What are affirmations? Affirmations are statements that give us

life. They are tools to speak life to ourselves. They remind us of
who we are and of what is possible. They are positive statements
of being and positive reinforcement. They affirm the best of who
we are and strive to be. They are simple, typically, but powerful
and life changing. Often, they counter cultural norms and allow
us to look beyond the obvious and challenge conventional
wisdom. Affirmations take us from mediocrity to excellence not
by acquiring skills but recognizing our own brilliance and
potential.

How do we create intentions and affirmations?

First, let’s begin with intentions. Start with self-evaluation and

visioning. I think creating a vision board is especially helpful
with this part. A mind map can be an effective alternative in this
process as well. Begin by recording, in visual form, what you
want from life. This can also be done in list form. I’m a very
visual person so mind maps and vision boards work best for me.
Those forms also allow me to show connections and overlapping
intentions more readily than a list would do. However, if you are
a lister, by all means, write a list!

Once your vision board is complete, then the next task is to

translate each vision from the board into an intention for your
life. Don’t worry at this point about how much time a certain
goal will take to complete or the resources available to change a
particular behavior. These intentions may take several forms.
They may be goals, new habits, dreams, or even resolutions. The
idea is to capture in tangible and concrete descriptions those
visuals you have noted on your vision board. Write these down.
Again, lists or mind maps work for this process, but rather than
pictures, you will choose words to communicate the specifics.
Take as many sheets as you need for this. I recommend doing
this as a draft and working over it for several days, or perhaps
weeks if you have not practiced visioning in the recent past. The
next step is to narrow down your vast vision and intention
document into those intentions you desire to prioritize for the
upcoming year (or even short-term goal such as 30, 60 or 90
days). These intentions should be achievable and aspirational.
In other words, you should be able to accomplish them but not
easily. If you have a goal that is really important to you that you
want to make significant progress on within the year, but you
know it cannot be achieved within that time frame, it can still be
captured in your intentions. Break that larger goal into smaller,
progressive goals. Ask yourself, what can you achieve in this
year to realize the overall goal in the coming years. Those
intermediate goals are then added to your intentions for this
year. The larger goal may be represented on your vision board.

The vision board is intended to be a tool for motivation. Seeing

it should trigger you to act and to inspire you to push through
when the work seems daunting. It should be visually appealing
so that you want to look at it and it should generate good
feelings and positive emotions when you do. At the same time, it
must be meaningful. Each image should represent something
concrete. Vague vision boards are not helpful even if they are
pretty. The importance of setting your intentions before working
on a vision board cannot be overstated. If you freestyle a vision
board, you may end up inspired in the short term. You may have
a love pictorial representation of your hopes and dreams. But
you may create something so out of reach that it becomes
meaningless. That works against you as you may become
discouraged by goals that are not necessarily too large, but
unrealistic in the near term. Part of the power of intention
setting in short-term segments is that small wins inspire and
encourage you to continue in order to realize the big wins.
Climb the mountain by focusing on the next step and then the
next. That’s doable. Focusing on the summit is too daunting, too
big, too overwhelming. Focus on what’s before you and before
you know it, you’re reached the zenith of the mountain and can
then set your sights on the clouds.

Once you have created your vision board, you need a

mechanism for accountability and an ongoing means of
encouragement for your journey. Affirmations provide the
encouragement, but it is equally important to hold yourself
accountable for the execution of your intentions and the
realization of your vision. If you can find a way to tie all the
above in one system, you are well on your way to transforming
your life.

Accountability may take many forms but should fit into the
normal patterns and rhythm of your life. For me, it takes the
form of having a place adjacent to my vision board to celebrate
achievement and realization. In fact, my entire system is found
within the front section of my planner. One page of intentions is
followed by a one-page vision board which is followed by a
“celebrations” page. On this page, I will record the achievement
of goals and milestones. That black page is accountability for
me. It begs me to fill it up.
Accountability may look very different for you. You may engage
an accountability partner. This person also has visions and
intentions. You partner together in the achievement of your
individual goals by sharing the highs and lows, success and
failures, the milestones and the setbacks. You encourage each
other to continue when you feel like giving up, and you celebrate
the progress you make on the journey. This approach is the
most personal. It requires trust and honesty as well as grace and
compassion. Accountability partners demand an investment of
time and energy in developing and maintaining that
relationship, but if nurtured and cultivated with care, they can
yield tremendous dividends in support and fruitfulness.

Other means of accountability may be posting to social media. I

know a lot of people of my Instagram feed post their daily
workout and what they eat in a day to hold themselves
accountable to a larger community. Be careful of this method as
it does not require trust and is largely one-way communication.
While people can respond to your post, the initiative is on you.
The desire to appear consistent and maintain the illusion of
success may also be greater on social media than in other
relational methods of accountability.

You may keep a log or diary. You may create an “actualization

board” to mirror your vision board. On this board, you visually
demonstrate what you have accomplished. It is similar to my
celebrations page. The emphasis on actualization is that you
would use real pictures of you fulfilling your intentions and
realizing your visions. Whatever system you design must work
for you. That’s the key to consistency and effectiveness.

But where do the affirmations come in?

Affirmations help you become your own biggest fan. They help
you provide support and encouragement to yourself. They help
to reframe the way we think about ourselves and our ability to
attain our goals, follow our dreams, and reach our aspirations.
Affirmations change the way we think and by changing our
thinking, we change the way we live. We negate negative self-
talk and overcome low expectations that we hold for ourselves.
Sometimes, we need to replace pessimism imposed externally as
other people in our lives have expressed doubt about our
abilities. At other times, we have internalized those doubts
ourselves and need to reorient our thinking. Used repeatedly
and consistently, affirmations can change our attitude toward
ourselves.
I keep a rather extensive list of affirmations. They originate
from different sources. Some come from scripture, either as
direct quotes or paraphrased summaries. The internet can also
be a wonderful resource for generating affirmations. I follow
certain accounts on social media just for the quotes. When one
resonates with me, I write it down in a little notebook that I
keep just for that purpose. (Hoarders of notebooks and journals,
here is another way to fill a notebook!) You may simply do a
search for affirmations and find an abundance of material to
help get you started. I also have a daily devotional process that I
have developed that ends with one concise, distilled statement
about God’s love. Many of those statements become
affirmations for me.
I find the best affirmations are the most concise. They should be
one sentence that can be uttered almost as a mantra. In the
year, I completed a particularly big goal, I had a simple
affirmation that I used almost every day: “I will not give up on
myself.” It doesn’t have to be a full of big words and complex
sentences. It needs to help you see yourself as the person you
strive to be…and already fundamentally are.

If you have struggled with maintaining the resolutions you set at

the beginning of this year, perhaps it’s because you have not
implemented a system for transforming you into a more
resolved person. Incorporate intentions, visioning, and daily
affirmations into your plan for transformation. Make this the
year that you realize life transformation.

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