Living with intention is one of the most valuable ways to create a life that you love. When it comes to self-leadership in these uncertain times, it can feel difficult to know what to do to stay motivated and to continue to move forward. When you are in a state of stress and anxiety your thinking becomes more scattered as energy is diverted towards more primitive functions to offer you an opportunity to stay and feel safe. This is why it is so important to calm and balance your nervous system in order to move forward in your life with ease and grace—no matter what the circumstances of life present (like a 2 month quarantine…).

Leading yourself may already be challenging enough without the present state of the world. Staying in a space of self-awareness, self-reflection and maintaining motivation and inspiration to move forward are difficult feats on a good day. Put a dose of uncertainty and the major stressors that we are all facing at this time on top of your everyday challenges and you might feel as though you’ve become stagnant, defeated, or worse, you might be backsliding. This is a normal part of the change process and it is times like these that we have the ability to build resilience and grow.

One way to live with intention is to create opportunities to choose how you want to feel. You might feel like you are stuck with whatever emotion you are experiencing in the moment during these times. You might feel like you don’t have a choice or option and you can either just push through, dwell in it, or avoid it through emotional repression. This does not have to be the case. While you want to assess and understand whatever emotion you may be experiencing, that does not mean you are stuck with it and that you don’t have the power within yourself to manage it more effectively. Ultimately, you get to choose how you want to feel and always could choose another emotion.

Imagine you wake up and immediately feel anxious, fearful and uncertain. Then you find yourself moving through your day with stress hormones flooding your system, feeling more and more stressed out. Living with intention allows you to choose in the moment a new way to experience the present moment. Here are the steps to intentionally create a new emotional experience, a new way to choose to live within your present moment.

1. Acknowledge and name the emotion you are experiencing.

2. Ask if this is a true or useful experience of the present moment? Be curious about the message this emotion has for you.

3. Use a coping skill to understand and manage the emotion.

4. Ask yourself: How do I want to feel today?

5. Ask yourself: What 3 things can I do to help myself create this/these feeling(s)?

6. Set the intention to use these action steps to help create this internal emotional/feeling experience within you.

7. Receive self or external accountability. For self-accountability, write down when you are going to take these actions to help create these feelings within. Put reminders on your phone or use sticky notes where you will see them. Reflect at the end of the day on how these actions allowed you feel. For external accountability, tell someone who supports you what your intentions are for the day and ask for support, reminders or anything else that will allow this person to give you the inspiration you need to move forward and take action.

8. Reflect on your process. How did it go? Was it effective? What will you do tomorrow to ensure that you set up your day in a way that allows you to feel how you want to feel?

Here is an example:

1. Acknowledge and name the emotion. Presently I feel anxious and stressed.

2. Is this a true representation of the present moment, is it useful right now? No. The message of my anxiety is feeling overwhelmed and uncertain. I acknowledge that these feelings are related to fear based thoughts.

3. Coping skill I can use: deep breathing and a body scan to calm my nervous system and relax my body.

4. How do I want to feel? Strong, focused and hopeful.

5. Actions I can to take to create these feelings: Strong: exercise and stay mentally strong by addressing any anxiety with thought examination technique. Focused: get 3 work tasks completed, cook a nourishing meal for dinner and spend time reading. Hopeful: use my gratitude journal, focus on what is going well and reflect on the positives of my day.

6. Set the intention to take these action steps: Today I set the intention to feel strong, focused and hopeful..

7. I will use self-accountability by writing specifically in my planner when I will complete these actions in order to ensure that I follow through and picture myself taking these actions.

8. How did it go? When I completed each of the actions and reconnected with my intentions for the day I increased those feelings within and created the experience within that I desired. This also improved my feelings of being hopeful and feeling strong and capable. I feel more mentally balanced and calm.

Often, we know what to do, but unfortunately it can be challenging to follow through. Making ourselves a priority can be tough. Feeling anxious, fearful and uncertain makes us feel out of control. These feelings create internal confusion and a sense of being overwhelmed and make it more challenging to think clearly and to focus. That’s why this process is so valuable to work through every single day.

We are all just trying to do the best we can with what we have. If it feels like the best you can has not been working out well, that is where you can search for the accountability you need, either from within or externally. Each time you follow through with setting your intentions and following the actions needed to create the way you want to feel, you will improve your self-esteem. The more that you value yourself and feel good about yourself the more you will build inner inspiration and motivation to continue moving forward. So now is the time to get started! What is your intention for the rest of your day today? How do you want to feel?

Step five to creating a life that you love covers the need to monitor your process and progress and respond to obstacles that will inevitably arise in order to create the change you desire. Here’s a quick review to see how these steps are flowing together. In step one, you created self-awareness through self-reflection and looking deeply inward. Step two was about aligning with your sense of purpose through creating a vision for what you want. Step three allowed you to create a plan of action in order to create the possibility for the changes to occur through goals and action steps executed consistently. Step four encouraged evaluating your current life and lifestyle to assess and assure that you are keeping your body and mind well. That leads us to step five, monitoring your process and progress and responding to obstacles as the arise. We all know that it’s one thing to create a plan, it’s another to execute it consistently over time! Step five allows you to explore your inner resistance to change and learn how to build your resilience to ensure that the change you desire shifts from a wish into reality-based action.

Resistance to change is generally the number one reason we don’t follow through consistently. Resistance dampens motivation, zaps inspiration and keeps us stuck in the discomfort of our comfort zone. Resistance convinces us that we are better off in the discomfort of our comfort zones and creates fear to stretching into change. This step will help you build resilience as an anecdote to resistance and offer some serious reality checks to keep you moving forward.

In order to overcome resistance and create the change you desire; you need to build resilience. Resilience is only created through difficulty, struggle and the need to get up, dust yourself off, and begin again…sometimes, but not always, right back at the beginning. This can be frustrating and sad and allows the resistance to settle in strong. Resilience is the ability to recover and the ability to feel your fear and persevere anyway. There is no way to hack the process of becoming resilient. The only way is to grow your resilience is through experience. People who are resilient have been through a lot, have developed grit, learned from their struggles and have the desire to create change that is stronger than the fear of failure, rejection and disappointment.

When you review your vision, goals and the action steps that will allow it to happen, are you executing your plan of action consistently? If not, what are the excuses that you are telling yourself? Where is your primary resistance to making the changes you desire? Resistance can look like a lot like procrastination, and uses pretty much any excuse, for example, “I don’t have enough time, I’ll do it tomorrow, I’ll start tomorrow, I’m too tired, I don’t know where to start, I forgot, I’m worried it’ll be too hard, I got pulled away by something else, if only, I want to but…” and on and on. If this sounds like what might be churning in your head, take a moment and challenge the resistance that is showing up for you. Ask yourself the following questions if you find you are resisting getting started on or sticking with your goals and actions steps consistently:

-Why am I avoiding this?

-What am I most afraid of, and why?

-Is there something small I can do to test it out and see how it feels to take action?

-Am I ready for this change?

-How badly do I want to live my vision?

-What am I choosing over my vision?

-What is the cost to me to not live my vision and make this change?

-Where can I find inspiration to make this change?

We all have an inner need to grow, to pursue, to create and to evolve. If we are not, that is where true stress, discomfort and challenge will show up in our lives. The trouble is that we are usually the ones that get in our own way of creating the change we say we want. Fear is self-doubt and an inner belief of either we aren’t worthy or deserving of this change, or on the other side of that, that we will be successful and worry how will that will impact our current lives, relationships and way of living. I can tell you that you are deserving and worthy of what you want, however, it is up to you to create this inner belief. I can also tell you that as you create change in your life, it may impact and disrupt your life, but those that support you and care about you will be there for you, and if they don’t, maybe they’re not your people.

Self-sabotage can show up easily and it can feel like an increase of excuses that may hum in the background of your mind. Change requires that you stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone and this process is uncomfortable. No one likes to be uncomfortable. When you persevere, the discomfort is temporary—just while you are in the stretching process—yet the payoff will create feelings of accomplishment, hope, determination, worthiness and joy.

Approaching change will benefit from some solid problem-solving through monitoring your process. If this is a change you’ve attempted in the past, where do you usually bail out? Where do you foresee self-sabotage to occur? If you can manage to preempt some foreseeable struggles, you create a plan for managing those struggles. I recommend that you create your plan of action weekly and check in with your plan of action daily. Where did you execute and where did you not execute? Why did you or did you not complete your action steps? How can you keep it going (if you did!) or make some shifts to motivate yourself if you didn’t. Get deeply curious about why you did execute or why you didn’t. You might be able to borrow from where you did execute to help support the areas where you did not.

Check in with any internal resistance daily as well. Notice any fear that is there and get curious about that. Why is it here? What happened to create this fear? Does it relate to the past? What is worst that can really happen? Resistance usually shows up in the form of internal (not true and certainly not useful) stories we create and we believe those stories. This is not an effective game plan! It can be helpful to sit with the opposites, if that potential fear-based story is true, couldn’t the opposite be true as well? For example, if you find you are resistant because you don’t trust yourself to follow through for the long term, couldn’t it also be true that you have made changes and now have the support to follow through for the long term? Both are not yet reality, however if a negative belief is true couldn’t a neutral or positive belief also be true? The only person we all have any control over in the world is our future self.

Today, attempt to do your future self a favor and commit, stick with your goals and take action. Practice taking action to cure your fears and allow your vision to become your life. A helpful mantra to remind yourself in any moments of resistance is, feel the fear and do it anyway! When you do, notice how you feel about yourself, notice your self-worth increasing. That is how you will continue to manage obstacles, build resilience, determination and a new way to focus on you!