Divorcing with intention is an opportunity to change, to live a more realized life, in accord with your values, dreams, goals, and yes, intentions. Through a successful divorce, you can achieve a sense of peace, connection, joy, meaning, purpose, love…or whatever else is important to you.
An intention is a goal with soul. It is connected to who you are as your best self, and it brings you happiness and peace.
When it comes to divorce, setting intentions is so vital, so important. It is the difference between being a victim of your divorce, and being the architect and creator of your newly envisioned life.
Defining Your Intentions
The definition of an intention is “an aim or plan” OR “the healing process of a wound.”
How perfect is that definition when it comes to divorce? Divorce is filled with so much planning and so many decisions to make. And of course, there are a myriad of possible wounds: heartbreak, abandonment, abuse, trauma, infidelity, betrayal, loss, profound change, etc. By setting our divorce intentions, we can heal those wounds, mitigate future hurts, as well as create a plan for our new and improved life.
Setting Intentions is a Process of Discovering Yourself
Your intentions act as a mental model — much like an architect’s blueprints — helping you make decisions, and take ownership of your life. It’s a way to take back control in a very chaotic and confusing process. We are making you the creator, the star, the expert, and the hero of your life.
You need your intentions to help guide you through. You need a big WHY…why are you doing this? What is your goal with soul? This article will help you move through the process of creating intentions in detail, but here are just a few ideas to get you thinking…
Some possible Divorce Intentions:
- Give myself time to heal
- Cleanse my mind of my ex
- Be kind to myself
- Nurture and take care of myself
- Have faith in the process
- Keep my kids out of it
- Divorce with dignity, compassion, clarity
- Use divorce as a catalyst for transformation
- Have an open heart
- Love myself, love my family, find romantic love again
- Stay connected to my values
What do your intentions look like?
Mindfulness and Conscious Awareness
Intentions start from a place of “mindfulness” and “conscious awareness” — that means getting quiet enough so that we hear and pay attention to what’s truly important to us.
Mindfulness is bringing attention and awareness to each and every moment of your life. Doing so gives meaning to your actions. It’s being conscious of what you’re doing, what you’re thinking.
Conscious awareness means being awake and aware of your mind itself. It’s using our perception purposefully so that we propel ourselves forward in a direction that leads to what we desire.
Ways to Quiet Your Mind
It is difficult to quiet the noise that we are all very used to living with. Buddhists call this incessant chatter in our brains the “monkey mind.” It’s a very apt term…you think of a busy and noisy monkey jumping from branch to branch, never settling for long, and getting into trouble for its insatiable curiosity.
But there are some common ways to tame the restless monkey mind, such as meditation, yoga, and any sort of activity that absorbs our focus and puts us into a state of flow.
Meditation
For thousands of years, meditation has been the go-to method for quieting the mind, and getting to a place of true connection and awareness. Founded in religious tradition, meditation was a spiritual practice to elevate oneself from the mundane human reality to the transcendental universal reality. Today, the benefits of meditation are robust, and easily accessible, after having finally made it into the mainstream after being practiced for millenia in places like India and China.
Luckily for us, there are so many everyday options for adding a bit of meditation into our lives. It’s called the practice of mediation, as we will be practicing it, rather than perfecting it. And like any new habit, you’ll need to start small, and build up your stamina.
You can dip your toe into the water, and try something called the “One Minute Meditation,” where you take one minute to relax, and do some deep breathing.
Meditation Apps
All sorts of guided meditations are readily available to us. A simple search on the App store on your phone, will result in many options, including:
There are so many choices, you can google them, read reviews, and find one that sounds interesting to you.
Guided Meditation
Or you could meditate in person with a teacher or guide. With mental health and fitness gaining in popularity, meditation studios are popping up all over the country. Similar to a yoga studio, a meditation studio offers guided meditation classes and workshops. In Los Angeles, where I live, we have several, including Unplug Meditation, The Den, Ceremony Meditation, and Lake Shrine. Try a google search for a mediation studio or class in your area, and see if there’s one near you. If in-person is not an option, you can also try a virtual meditation class — most of the studios above are offering virtual classes or check out Gaia.com for lots of classes of all kinds.
If you’re not quite ready for meditation, maybe just set aside some quiet time each day to sit and relax. In this busy, fast-paced world we live in, we often race through our days with no time for quiet or reflection. Even if you have to put it into your calendar, allow yourself 5, 10, 15, or 20 minutes to just BE. Light a candle, put on soothing music, drink a hot beverage. Keep it calm and restful. Do what works best for you.
Yoga
Yoga was born out of meditation. At its core, yoga is a practice of using awareness of breath and meditation for spiritual evolution. The stretching and exercises that we think of as yoga are an offshoot to try and distract our busy minds.
Slower types of yoga classes, such as gentle, yin, regenerative, or deep breathing yoga, may provide you with an opportunity to quiet your mind. Choose a class that works for you. Try different types, different teachers, even different studios, to find one that resonates. And like meditation, you can also find a wide variety of virtual yoga classes online.
Flow
Another way to quiet the mind is through exercise, or doing any sort of activity that produces a FLOW state for you.
Hungarian-American psychologist, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi coined the term “flow” in 1975, and today positive psychology calls it being fully immersed in an activity, full of focus and enjoyment of that activity. You could call it being in “the zone.”
What sorts of activities produce a state of flow for you? What activity could you do that would combine mindfulness and movement? For me it’s dance (zumba!), tennis, and hiking. I love being in nature with my dogs, surrounded by beauty, where I can get lost in thought…
Notice Your Thoughts to Effect Change
As you learn to quiet your mind and bring awareness to your thoughts and feelings, you can actively create change.
There is evidence that suggests our thoughts affect our emotions, our emotions affect our choices, and our choices shape our lives. Research on neural pathways has revealed that the way you think wires your brain. You can have well-worn neural pathways, such as negative thinking or self-criticism. Rather than trying to give up a well-worn route, it may be easier to create new pathways, new ways of thinking. Ultimately creating new habits.
Dr. Dan Siegel at UCLA is researching how identifying and naming your emotions helps to calm your limbic system (which is the emotion-processing part of the brain). The limbic system is the same area that is responsible for the fight or flight response when we feel we are in mortal danger. If you say “anger” when you’re feeling angry, you can actually help release the powerful charge that emotions hold over your body.
By noticing and naming, you can let go of the negative emotions, and any harsh personal criticisms. Naming the emotion and writing it down can also be a tool to get you out of your emotional mind, and back into your thinking/rational/logical mind. Keep a journal or notebook handy to jot down what you’re feeling and thinking. Your thoughts create your reality, so choose them wisely.
Trust Yourself — Develop Your Intuition
No one else knows more about your life than you do. You are your own best expert. Mallika Chopra, the queen of intention, says: “We may rely on others and turn to others for help, but ultimately our answers come from within.”
You are the best judge of whether your choices and the actions that you take will make you happy and fulfilled.
Your goal is to get in touch with your heart and soul. Listen to your gut. Your mind adds filters, questions, and doubts. We want to look past the mind. Go deeper into your inner recesses. Get quiet enough so that you can hear that soft inner voice that’s whispering something to you.
Make Your Intentions Known
There are so many ways to express your intentions. Maybe write them down in your journal, or put them on a sticky note and place it in a conspicuous place, like your bathroom mirror. How about saying them over and over to yourself like a mantra, or an affirmation. Email or share them with a close friend or family member. Or bravely launch them out into the world through social media, such as FaceBook, Instagram, or Intent.com. There’s also ingenious “flying wish paper,” where you can write your intention, light it on fire, and watch it float off into the heavens, literally sharing your dreams with the universe.
Repetition of your intentions solidifies them in your mind, and gives them more power, more energy. Knowing your intentions grounds you and keeps you centered, even in times of chaos and overwhelm.
Being clear on your intentions will help to guide you as you are faced with the many decisions in divorce. Helping you to make choices and act in ways that are in line with and reflect your intentions.
Sharing Your Intentions Helps to Hold You Accountable
If you have friends, family, and/or a supportive professional who are all aware of your intentions, they can serve as reminders for you, or create a framework that will keep you moving in the right direction. Also, if you put it out into the world that you want to do something, the universe will start organizing itself to make your intention a reality.
Care for Yourself & Your Intentions
Many of your intentions will likely take time and effort to come to fruition. And you will need to sustain yourself on this tumultuous journey.
Nurturing yourself and your intentions will require you to practice self-kindness and self care. How do you define self-care? What makes you laugh or feel joyful? Create a list of what you need to take care of your physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being…
A helpful visual that really resonated with me when I was going through divorce, was the common idea of putting on our oxygen mask first before we help others.
What kind of support do you need as you move through this journey? What kind of help do you need to foster your intention? Can you rely on family, friends, neighbors, tribe, professionals/experts? Who’s in your support network?
Intentions in Action
Setting intentions requires attention, commitment, action, and energy. In coaching, we discover and commit to some action steps. Steps that will move you from where you are now to where you want to be. It takes some concerted effort. What can you do today to move towards your goal? Do what you can now. Don’t put it off until some unknown time in the future.
One of my favorite quotes, from an unknown author is “Small steps over time, lead to great distances.” Even doing one action a day can lead to forward movement, increased confidence, and more control.
Ask yourself, “Is there one action I could take today that would bring my ideal life closer?” or “What is the most important action I could take today?” It may be something as simple as making a phone call, getting a book, or just creating some space.
Intentions Come From Your Own Inner Wisdom
All the answers are within you. As you allow yourself to dream, as you figure out your values and set your intentions, you are creating your new reality. You are the authority on what is good for you. Divorce can be a process for discovering yourself. Go within and see what resonates with you.
It can be tempting to think that others — experts/friends/family — have the answers. And there is a time to listen to others when you find yourself in unfamiliar territory, and you need to acquire knowledge. But at a certain point you need to listen to your own inner wisdom, and chart your own course. Setting intentions for your divorce and your newly transformed life is the path.
Would you like to get on the path to transforming your life with powerful intentions? Check out our online course Divorcing with Intention — this workshop will teach you how to approach your divorce in a way that is mindful and purposeful. Stop churning in the whirlpool that is an unhappy marriage, and start thriving because of your deeply reflected intentions!
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