How intention can make the difference between feeling frustrated and fulfilled!

My niece visited me this past week with her family.

They come every year for about a week, and we try to both do “touristy things,” and just hang out together. But both she and I keep working while they visit, which is not always easy to balance with time off.

Although they stayed with us this time for only six days, we managed to do everything we wanted to do, including some work, and we did it with ease.

But that was not the case when she visited me last year.

One thing I did this time, made the difference between feeling frustrated last year and fulfilled this year. This one thing can make the difference, for you too, between feeling frustrated or fulfilled as you go about your daily routine.

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I want to talk to you about how living with intention makes all the difference and it can make your day turn from just a day where you feel like you’re a victim of circumstances and you don’t have enough time to a day where you created intention and everything just happens in perfect timing and you just feel at the end that it was a fulfilling day and a day that you were able to do everything that you wanted to do.

And what makes that difference between a kind of hellish day and a wonderful fulfilling, pleasant contentful day is intention. I want to share with you a personal story.

My niece was visiting just this past week with her family. She comes once a year and so she came last year in the summer and she just came now, last week and was here for the Jewish new year.

And I’m sharing the story because there was a very different intention that I had last year when she was visiting and this year it made all the difference. Last year I had a lot of work but I didn’t create any intention specifically around how much time I’m going to allocate for work and what I’m going to do with her. And she was working as well when she was here. So we just kept kind of hanging around the house, each one getting on calls or doing different tasks that we had to do. We did some stuff and we enjoyed ourselves and our time together. But there was a lack of intention and basically I felt frustrated all the time cause I didn’t give myself full time and permission to work and focus on my work. I was still doing it, feeling guilty that I wasn’t just taking the week off to be with my family and so it was not here and not there. It was just, it was not as satisfying.

So this year I decided to create intention and so what I did is I asked her and her family what they wanted to do while they were visiting us and then I thought of the things that I wanted to share with them. And then I just planned for each one of these things and I didn’t wait. We’ll do it tomorrow, we’ll do tomorrow.

Whatever was possible to do today we did today and they were here, they were here for six days and we got so much done and we didn’t rush around. It wasn’t stressful, it’s just that when I wanted to do something with her, we did it calmly and quietly cause we had allocated time for it. When I had to work, I took a few hours off and I gave myself full permission to work cause that’s what I was doing now.

And then again, anything that I wanted to do with my family, with my niece and her family, we just did it. We went out to eat, we went on Safari with her six year old kid. We, did lots of wonderful things and we stayed at home and we hung around the house and we took it easy as well.

But we planned time for it. It was time for hanging out. There was time for being alone. There was time for being together. It was time for work.

And so you see how these two experiences, just one with intention and one without make such a difference. We all have the same time. We all have the same 24 hours, we all have the same day. When we do it with intention, there is time for everything.

And when we don’t have intention and we just kind of go about our day randomly, just being pulled to whatever, there’s a deadline. So we do that, then there’s something else calls us. So we do that and then we, maybe we run to the gym or we cook dinner quickly, but we just kind of do it and we get through our day like this. There’s a feeling that there isn’t enough time, there isn’t enjoyment, there isn’t pleasure, it’s not as fulfilling. Cause we feel torn when we do one thing. We feel incomplete that we didn’t do the other and it’s so amazing.

You know, Einstein said the time is relative and boy is it true. It really is relative. And what makes it relative to your intention changes the outcome of how much time you have. Even though if you count it, it’s the same 24 hours, no intention, it just happens randomly and it’s not as fulfilling and gratifying and calming, create an intention and suddenly it’s like, wow, it’s a sacred act.

It’s a sacred moment. I’m giving myself time to work. I’m giving myself time to rest. I’m giving myself time to see a movie. I’m giving myself time to go to the gym, giving myself time to cook a good meal suddenly, okay, so this half an hour to go cook a meal, an hour at the gym. You know there is enough hours in the day to do all of this, but when it’s not planned, there doesn’t seem to be enough time.

So as the ritual of the new year is about letting go of what’s past and creating intention for the new year, for tomorrow, the day after, and the coming year, then I invite you to create an intention, not just for the coming year, but just to create intention on a daily basis in your life on a weekly basis and allocate as much time for downtime for watching a movie on Netflix. Allocate time for that as much as you do for writing emails because it’s such a delicious experience. So delightful to say, well, now I have to finish the emails in half an hour or an hour, and now I get to watch a movie. There’s actually time for that. I’m allowing myself time for that.

So have fun with it. Play with it. Leave a comment below and I will engage with you.