Setting Intentions in 2022

Minal Bhanshali is the founder of lifestyle brand 7 Over 7 and a Soul Embodiment Mentor & Purpose Guide at Intuit Soul Salon. As a trained Vedic yoga teacher, meditation guide and ritual facilitator, Minal holds space for the collective remembrance of our true essence, enabling transformative healing, insight and self-mastery. Minal shares with us her top tips for setting intentions that can help magnetise our dreams and promote our overall sense of wellbeing, instead of setting regimented and restrictive New Year’s resolutions.

What are the benefits of setting intentions for the year ahead?

It is far more empowering to set intentions that promote those behaviours that uplift us than by telling ourselves we must change and ‘resolve’ with self-deprecating ideas that have been fed to us by those businesses that profit on us feeling less than, including the diet, fitness and beauty industries.

By connecting with what it is we truly desire, we can begin to set intentions that are aligned with our growth and expansion. It is also a subtle way of programming our minds to set goals and go after that which will elevate out state of happiness, joy and wellbeing when we meet them.

How best can we set intentions as we start the new year and stick to them?

Envisioning a future that really fires you up on a soul level, isn’t just down to the basics of manifestation that most people tend to apply.

Setting powerful intentions that resonate with you is about tapping into your creative force, reclaiming your power, aligning all that you do with your ‘NorthStar’ goal and then making a strategic plan that gets you there, with the least amount of resistance.

Here’s some simple steps to get you started:

1 Begin with how you want to FEEL and BE throughout the year (and beyond!). As a society we have for too long focused on what we can do, without first thinking how what we do impacts our overall being.

2 Then think to yourself, what and who you need to do and be in order to evoke those feelings.

3 Reflect on what is holding you back? What old ways of thinking and feeling and which people and situations do you need to let go of, to make space so you can call in the new changes you desire?

4 How does all of the above fit into what you think your life will look like three years from now. As Vishen Lakhiani (the founder of MindValley) says, as human beings we often over-estimate what we can achieve in a year and under estimate what is possible for us in ten years, and so it is a good measure to look at life three years from now, because it is far more realistic to gauge this time period.

5 What will your contribution be to the world as a result of what you desire being realized? When we project our impact and how it affects other lives out into the quantum realm, that intention carries far more weight than the impact on just one life alone.

6 How can you embody what you are calling in, starting today? When we begin to embody more of what we want, we trick our bodies into thinking that reality has already come to pass, and this is what fuels our mind to keep taking consistent, aligned action to make our dreams a reality.

How can you reclaim your personal power?

This is a fundamental step to creating a life by design, a life on your own terms. Reclaiming your power is about leaving the photo-copy life behind and think in terms of what YOU want your life to be. This is how.

• Reconnect with your purpose and your NorthStar wish for what your legacy will be. How do you want to be remembered? What impact do you want to leave in this world?
• Find your upper-limit problem and address it. Your upper limit is where you self-sabotage. It is a mismatch of your beliefs about what you can bring into your life and what you feel you deserve.
• Level up! Invest in yourself so that you can launch into your dreams. No man is an island and we all need our own mentors to show us the way. It’s far easier to follow others’ footsteps than try and go at it alone through trial and error.
• Tune in, your biggest ally is your own intuition, so pay attention and act on it.
• Do a life edit, keeping those people and practices that support you in your growth as you aspire towards your dreams.

What is the secret to self-mastery and why should we focus on this?

Acquiring self-mastery is the holy grail of self-development; it is what enables you to break-free from all of those limiting beliefs and patterns that keep you stuck, people-pleasing or playing small and dimming your light just to fit in. It is the single thing that if you focus on it consistently, you can make your dreams a reality more effortlessly.

The way to do this is to have a growth plan. I encourage you to apply a technique I developed called Expansion Mapping, which is a living and breathing ‘dream-scape’ that I like to use personally and co-create with my clients to call in growth, abundance and experiences that set a spark in all areas of life; wellbeing, wealth, relations, growth, contribution and most of all, a deeper understanding of what the highest expression of your entire being looks like. What is looks like is a list of practices, experiences, tools and mentors that push you further in the direction of where you are striving to be. Every time you up-level, you can then add another point of expansion on your map. And it doesn’t need to be complicated either, it could be a simple topic you wish you explore. What this practice encourages is mindful consumption, so that you are less likely to feel stuck, overwhelmed or confused about where you are heading.

Minal Bhanshali will be joining us in The Nest on 22nd January to hold a Cancer Full Moon Women’s Sharing Circle, as well as hosting a 3-Day Envision and Embody challenge in January and you can secure your FREE spot with discount code TREEHOUSE