A Therapist, A Buddhist, and You
A Therapist, A Buddhist, and You
Purposeful Horizons: Cultivating Mindful Goals and Intentional Living
This year, Zaw and I guide you through setting goals with purpose and mindfulness. We're peeling back the layers to uncover the essence of true intention, distinguishing it from the often fleeting nature of New Year's resolutions. Tap into the power of efficient goal setting and learn how to align your values with your aspirations, transforming how you approach everything from sobriety to work and relationships.
This episode is about envisioning your dreams and equipping yourself with the resilience and tools necessary to achieve them. We'll share inspiring tales and introduce different ways to turn your goals into actionable plans. Whether you're overcoming a setback or seeking clarity in your path forward, we support your journey toward meaningful accomplishments.
As we wrap up, the importance of reflection is underscored, emphasizing how a simple STOP can shift your entire perspective. Join us as we offer the insights you need to navigate the year ahead with purpose and mindfulness, and from us both, a heartfelt wish for a Happy New Year filled with well-being and intentionality.
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Zaw Maw — Recovery Collective — Annapolis, MD (recoverycollectivemd.com)
Luke DeBoy — Recovery Collective — Annapolis, MD (recoverycollectivemd.com)
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Welcome to another episode of A Therapist of Buddhist. In you. We delve into topics that change our collective well-being. As we stand on the cusp of a new year, join us in exploring the transformative power of setting intentions and goals for 2024. If you like, please share with others and leave a review in a comment. It does go a long way Intentions, goal settings, all 2024. It's now the second time that I've said that. Happy 2024. It's a new year, wow.
Speaker 3:How did that happen? 2024.
Speaker 1:A couple of 24 hours at a time, and then it happened, right. Well, if you're seeking a fresh start, are you eager to align your aspirations with your well-being? In this episode, we unravel the significance of setting intentions, offering a roadmap for personal growth, fulfillment and a meaningful journey ahead. We're going to provide practical tips, insights and a blend of therapeutic and Buddhist perspectives to guide you into the new year. That sounds lovely, zao. I'm glad we can do this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1:I'm glad we can jump in the new year with setting some intentions, because intentions can be powerful, can it? The power of intentions? It's a weird word. The more that I say it intent Intend. I intend to make changes, I intend to move forward with purpose and intentionality.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a really key word because that really reveals the reality. Right? Everything comes from a thought, whether we know it or not. Everything that I do today is as a result of what I've thought about, either intentionally or unintentionally. So that's why the power of intention, as you mentioned, is so powerful, because it's all about the thought. What am I directing towards?
Speaker 1:And the goal is to put that thought into action and make forward progression in our lives, all for your health and wellness, my friends, how about that? Yeah. Let's look at the difference between the reason why I think there's a reason why we're saying intentions and goals as opposed to a resolution. I think there's a difference. What do you think?
Speaker 3:Yeah, because I don't know. I've made a lot of resolutions in my drinking years to stop drinking, to stop smoking cigarettes, to run every day, to be a vegetarian, all these things which we're looking back more like expectations, like standards or things like that. I like the intention because, as you were talking, it makes me, as a Buddhist, the word that comes to minus happiness or to reduce suffering, to suffer less this year. So in that way, it's more about the theme. It's not like a specific action, but that intention can guide. If I have that intention, if I have that intention of I want to create more happiness, that can be a theme for all the actions that I take throughout the day. Wait, is it going to create more happiness or is it going to create more suffering? That intention is more inclusive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think resolutions often set vague, grandiose expectations, often leading to frustrations. Yeah, I don't want to burn out on a resolution, I don't want to do this vague attempt for change and then, after a month or that, gin membership, if you will stare typically ironically begins to fade. So goals and tensions allow for incremental progress. It's fostering a positive mindset in a sense, with action for accomplishment, where I can have resolve and resolution. But we want to take that a step with more action, with intentionality.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it also sets up something really good, especially with our previous episode, because that's the thing about setting goals or intention is that other people want this this year, and I sure want that too. But that, to me, is like a losing battle If we have a reflection of these are the things that I've done this year, this past year. These are the things that's important for me. What's a reasonable goal that I can set? That's like a continuation. It's more meaningful that way, like what is the goal that I'm setting for myself and it motivates me. And these are the series of actions that I will take incrementally.
Speaker 1:I have yet to have someone come into one of my therapy sessions and say, hey, I want to set intentions and goals for the new year. But that has happened organically with more than a handful of my clients so far. I think what we've done organically there's this profound impact of them consciously thinking about hey, this is what last year was like and this is what I want to do with intentionality this year. What I often wind up doing is going beyond the traditional goal setting and I recommend using have you ever heard of the smart criteria?
Speaker 3:Specific yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's an acronym for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. So this ensures your intentions are not only inspiring but also actionable and realistic, laying a solid foundation for your journey. If I can help someone, yes, it can be not drinking, but it can also be goals for work or in relationships. If they can truly be specific, where they can tell whether they look at it every Sunday, whether they look at it monthly, whether they look at it during whatever time when they go, am I achieving this goal yet or there's things I need to change to reach this goal? And they can measure it. It's making it possible, it's making it realistic, yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't know if this is too much of a stretch, but I'm going to bring it up anyway, since I do mindfulness coaching and meditation stuff. So there is a question about how do I know whether I'm meditating correctly?
Speaker 1:You've been asked that before.
Speaker 3:What if I'm doing it wrong?
Speaker 1:It's just me thinking that.
Speaker 3:But the way you're describing it about specific is really addressing that. The measurement I mean meditation is not measurable specifically that way, but it's very helpful to know whether I'm successful or not is to look at how I'm responding to things. Am I happier, Am I more calm? That's the measurement. Being specific about. Oh wait, I used to be angry at this situation with my kids, but now I'm responding differently, being specific with that or even having a goal that way, Like okay, I'm going to start meditating five minutes a day and my goal is to be more calm or to not rush, or to gain more clarity, whatever it is. So that kind of strike chord with me too. About that.
Speaker 1:So with meditation, hey, is my meditation working? Well, there's a your example. Oh, there seems to be a cause and effect. The days that I meditate, or because I'm doing a meditation for five minutes every day when I wake up or before I go to sleep, I've noticed that I am more present in my life, or I am not so impulsive, or I can not react in anger, and people tend to be able to correlate that as a measure for them. I agree completely. I agree completely.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's a good framework. I like that smart SM ART.
Speaker 1:So yeah, setting these clear intentions or goals can contribute to our overall well-being. There's a wonderful example. You're also saying that I can align my goals with mindfulness. At any goal that I set, we can align it with mindfulness, don't you think? Yeah. Mindfulness can be in its own right and intention. Practice can it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it can be, and I would even, in my personal experience, I would even make it to be almost like a prerequisite how am I going to know what I want without any kind of calmness and clarity first? For me to come up with goals that are meaningful for me, I need to sit down and be quiet first. Otherwise I'm still like kind of, oh yeah, this is probably what I want or this is where I want to go. But if I sit and pause, kind of like we've done previously, looking back to the year, it makes me realize, oh okay, I'm being mindful of what has happened and what's important for me, and then it gives me a clarity of these other things that will be meaningful for me to achieve this year.
Speaker 1:Do you think there's benefit, for example, each morning reflecting on a specific intention for the day and then relating that to a mindfulness practice before you start your practice, before you start your day, or do you think that's limiting the mindfulness or the meditation practice setting? Hey, this is my intention for the meditation or mindfulness, but now my mind's going to start going, so bear with me. Can I set my intention for the day, which could be I don't want to say patience, but I could say compassion, and then all of a sudden, I do a meditation or mindfulness practice and I don't necessarily have to relate it to the intention I have for the day. I can just be in this minute. I'm thinking out loud people say that's talking but what do you think?
Speaker 3:about that. Yeah, that sounds good. And then I guess what's helpful is to be open-minded. I do have an intention, but also something that is inclusive. So for me I think about an intention of may I grow, may there be growth for me today, or may there be growth for me this year. That to me is like an open-ended field, but then with that I can even specify that may I grow to be more patient with my kids today, having that general scope but also being specific, but also at the same time, not too rigid.
Speaker 1:And are you answering my first question? Is that what you meditate on, like a mantra almost?
Speaker 3:No, there's more of the intention, but the actual practice can be to your choosing of paying attention to the breath or meditating on a particular concept in Buddhism the impermanence or loving kindness. Those can be the actual practice.
Speaker 1:Because you don't want to cling to what you might not have. Is that why?
Speaker 3:The letting go, yeah, the grasping, yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, the grasper Good let's give. We gave the smart acronym, but let's give some more practical tips for goal setting. Yeah, let's look at practical strategies that individuals can employ to set these intentions and goals effectively. We gave one example of integrating intentions into your daily routine, like setting intention before you do a mindfulness meditation practice. But I think it's also important to support this intention with accountability measures, because this reinforces commitment. We can certainly celebrate small victories along the way, as it sustains motivation. But let me give you this one model, called the ABC model.
Speaker 1:I'll try to keep it simple with these acronyms right, A, acknowledge, B, break down and see choose. We first acknowledge our aspirations and intentions and then we break them down into accountable steps. We can do this at lunch. We can do this at the end of the day, like an inventory. We can do this as a tenth step, where we take a personal inventory and go hey, was my? I'm acknowledging my intention that I set in the morning and let me break it down to see if I met my initial goal with that. Did I do as intentional as I'd like to be? And then see we choose. We choose the most impactful actions that worked and then, if we need to, we can create tangible steps that align with our intentions and make it more achievable. Thoughts on that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's really good. That kind of coincides with something that I've been thinking, which is maybe it might be a little bit of a stretch, but I'll share it anyway is that this is not part of my tradition, but I think this is more of like Tibetan Buddhism where, or like Vajrayana Buddhism, where there's a concept of deities or the unlike and being. So their concept is that when you meditate, you imagine, you visualize yourself as an unlike and being already, and then you reverse engineer it You're already there, but what would you do to get there? So your ABC kind of reminds me of that, because I also first somewhere that the secret to success is vision. So if you have a vision of what you want which coincides with your value, you acknowledge that and you visualize it and then break it down into okay, these are the series of steps that I will take, and then that gives you a framework to make a decision each moment, choosing to gear towards that. So those are my thoughts on that.
Speaker 1:I like that. There's plenty of stories of people having visions or envision their goals and they come true. The one that seems so surreal that comes to my mind was Jim Carrey. When he was much, much younger, Before he broke out in Hollywood, he wrote himself a fake check for, I think, millions of dollars and it was his wild number. And then when he did one of his really famous movies I don't know if it was Jim Carrey, Ace Ventura or if it was the Mask, but he got a check from Hollywood for that exact same amount. And then he had this vision and he worked hard and he became one of the biggest comedians during that set time with the dumb and dumber, but he literally the exact same number he wrote. He had this intention and vision. That was pretty wild, but we can begin to look at this and we can break it down and we can choose to do an inventory at the end of the day or at lunch to go hey, am I on my own track?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's inspiring and motivating. I like that, and that's also related to because you can create as much visions as you want, but it also has to be aligned with who you are, because it's all about the feelings I can have a vision of. Oh, I don't want to do that, but I can have a vision.
Speaker 1:I'm like, oh, that's so cool, you know, and it creates some feelings within you because it reflects your values, and then it becomes achievable that way To me, explaining whether it's a mindfulness or meditation practice, and feeling that awareness of inner self creates this self-awareness of how do we really feel about this intention or this goal, moving forward like man. This feels really good and that can create motivation and action when we use this practice of awareness. Right, yeah, good, good stuff Now, well, challenges are inevitable, aren't they? I don't know if I've had anything in my life go exactly as I planned it. It's very humid of me, but it's now so freeing and peaceful to go. Oh, it's okay, because just about nothing in my life goes exactly as planned. I don't think I've ever been on Ritchie Highway and I missed every light. You know, that's certainly in my intention, but boy has it yet to work for me. I've yet to hit every light and hit a grain, you know. So challenges are inevitable. How can we, as individuals, navigate setbacks and stay resilient in pursuing these intentions?
Speaker 3:That's good, yeah, so my two intentions that I've shared already. One of them is may I grow, you know. The other one is may I also learn? Like life has, for me, has been about learning and growing, you know. So when you ask about that challenge, my intention is like may I learn how to deal with challenges, you know, or may I learn how to grow through the challenges? So those are the two intentions that come to mind.
Speaker 1:As a life coach? Yeah, you get hit with that with clients, and how do you help them with that? Yes, okay, man, I have this setback and right now I'm feeling sluggish and I might lack hope, I might lack intentionality, I might lack peace, I might have this fear that is just dragging me down from being resilient. How do you help them in your coaching? Your Buddhist principle Dita Vada inspired Buddhist coaching.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I guess the short answer is the present moment, right, like everything is here right now. So anything that helps to bring to this moment and we can have access to everything from here, even the past, so that's like a grounding touch point to start from there. So first accept that. Okay, this is how I'm feeling. I'm disappointed about this challenge, you know.
Speaker 1:So you're certainly not telling them. This is very Buddhist of you stop suffering, you don't need to suffer. You're saying, hey, this is part of the experience of a setback, this is part of the ultimately part of the resilience spectrum, isn't it that there's this hurt, there's this struggle Buddhist English language there's this suffering and that is part of the journey to get to resilience, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the cool thing about the present moment is like when you plant your feet on the ground. It gives you that sense of like, literally the grounding experience where, okay, right here, right now, I'm safe, you know. But then that also creates room for clarity, and by that point, that's when I would challenge the client has something like this happened before in the past? And the answer usually is always is yes. There's nobody who has never gone through any challenges in their life, like in different degrees, and then that creates more of a trust that, oh wait, how did I get through that part? And then it would have been a terrible story where I started drinking more, or whatever it is Like if there is something that's already happened, but there's also some points where I came out stronger on the other side, you know. So it's the same thing.
Speaker 1:You don't know what I'm about to say, but you just walked everyone through it. Resilience often involves a developing a coping strategy, and you just gave coping strategies. You talked about a clarity, so part of it is clarifying your intention. Ah, man, my intention is not happening the way I want to do. So this is called another acronym, the CARE plan, c-a-r-e, c-clarify Get clarity with your intention that you're struggling with. Then we A assess the potential challenges. You stated everyone has gone through challenges that haven't gone their way. He said something similar to that You're assessing the challenge. Oh, I've been in a challenge before. R reframe the setbacks as opportunities Because, man, I can make it a game and I can try to not hit every red light, or I can take the back road to avoid two of the lights and see if I can increase my odds. And then there is E how do I execute a revised plan with that new intentionality? So there's another acronym, and you gave your Buddhist spin on another acronym that I'm throwing out to the listeners. How about that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the free need. I have no idea.
Speaker 1:This empowers us to overcome obstacles with. I don't know if it's a proactive mindset or a change in mindset, or okay. Here's the sting, here's the suffering. Now let me reframe it and see the silver lining, and I can once again take the C from the ABCs and go okay, how can I choose a most impactful actions moving forward?
Speaker 3:Pretty good, pretty good. One additional thought, too, not to limit, and I know it is true that we can learn from our own experience, and you know, when I'm depressed and disappointed, I'm not really interested in other people, all I'm interested in is just myself. So this might not be a very user-friendly approach, but the other thing cool thing if you have the willingness is also to learn about other people, because there is a countless numbers of examples where famous people or even people within your community like reaching out to other people, give you that boost of energy too, because there are just so many inspiring successful stories.
Speaker 1:This is why people see you for your coaching practice and they see me for therapy. Whether it's I wanted this for my life and it's not happening, or I set a goal and I didn't reach it, or how do I change with this change in my life, they get coaching and therapy to help reframe and proactively make the changes that they can make in a healthy way, with whatever setbacks, resistance, before the resilience happens. That's a huge reason people come to see you and I Question how can regular reflection enhance the effectiveness of intentions? How can individuals integrate this into their daily lives? I think we're hitting that, but let's hit it again how can regular reflection enhance the effectiveness of these intention settings?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So that got me thinking about life is a lot more meaningful when there is continuity. Otherwise it's different fragmentation all over the place. So reflection is like that, weaving in between events. Reflection can be right in your journal for three minutes about what happened today, or it can be a five-minute silent meditation where you just watch your mind, or it can be a walk where you just take like a 10-minute walk around your neighborhood. Whatever it is. But if there is like something grounding, it creates that touch point for different events that happen and it really gives you because life is all about narration, right, I mean the actual life. There is no story, but since we are living, there is a narration and we create meaning out of it and when we reflect, it really sets the tone that oh, this is what happened and this is what's meaningful for me and this is my value, and now I hope for tomorrow. So that's my take on that reflection.
Speaker 1:This might not initially seem like a direct correlation, but I try to help people be more in tune with their physical sensations, more aware and conscious of their emotions, and often people feel discomfort and their emotions are trying to tell them something. And there's a lot of people that have clinical, diagnosable depression and anxiety. And I help them and empower them to identify, okay, what is their anxiety, trying to tell them why is their mood lower, for whatever reason? Why is it lower than they want it? And they don't want to feel that depressed mood or sadness or hopelessness or apathy.
Speaker 1:And it's really neat for people to be in tune to what they're actually feeling and process what they're feeling and then create an intentionality to change their actions in their life and, as a direct result, a lot of times affecting how they're feeling. And it's amazing how people have Now this isn't a black or white statement, an all or nothing statement that have lived with lifelong depression and anxiety that come here and then all of a sudden, they feel that they have intentionality to change their second emotion, their third emotion, their second thought, their third thought, with intentionally doing changes to their thoughts and their actions and their emotions. Am I making a connection? Yeah, I'm following yeah.
Speaker 1:Good and having this reflection and having more awareness, often on a daily basis, and processing it, whether it's you and your life coaching, mindfulness coaching and recovery coaching and me and therapy that a lot of times, even with meditation and medication and other aspects, that they get better, that they're not so they almost break this resilient plateau that people have been suffering with mood and internal critic that they felt like, oh, I'm never going to break this cycle. Then I'm always going to have this very mean internal critic that's going to be more negative than kind. Then I'm always going to feel this low mood to the level of depression, to apathy, and we often help people break that. They never thought it was possible. I think it's important to bring to bring up and sometimes it takes integrating action. It takes supports outside of recovery coaching, sober coaching and therapy and it takes different elements outside of the recovery collective to help these new intentions and this new lifestyle.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the power really is in the sharing. That's also the beauty of reflection, even if you're not sharing with someone else like your shiny light on it. That, I think, really is the beauty of life, where even with the universe it's like a feedback. You put something out there, it gets responded and you respond again, going back and forth. That's how, because at the end of the day, that's what we're looking for. When somebody's depressed, Nobody cares about me, life is meaningless. But that's not true. When you put yourself out there, it gets responded, and then that's also how you get out of those dark days. And I had another thought about that. I'll try to come back to that later. I think I lost it, but that's okay, that happens, yeah.
Speaker 1:I'll give my last acronym and then I've acronymed out the acronym for stop. When we're feeding the problem, when we're feeding negativity, when that internal critic is preventing us from positivity and light, when our darkness is just crowding us, Well, we can incorporate stop. We can literally stop what we're doing. And when we stop what we're doing, we can take a breath, tea, take a breath, and when we take a breath we can potentially transform our mood and think of love and light and positivity. And during these three deep breaths and we think of love and light and positivity, and just that mindful intention of that gives us the ability to oh, we get to observe.
Speaker 1:We get to observe what our body's doing when it's not filled with fear and anger and resentment, and it's just the opposite. We're fueling it with an inhale of love and light. Our body begins to change physiologically, chemically. Our mind stops thinking. When I think of love, I can't think of anger, fear and resentment If I truly think of love. It's impossible scientifically Chemical changes when we think love and we observe our thoughts and feelings and then we pee, we proceed. We can proceed with love, compassion for ourselves and say F you critic, you don't serve me anymore, You're not intentional, you're just mean and I don't need meanness and we can proceed with mindfulness and be mindful and love and compassion and that's a great immediate game changer for it. And then we can all of a sudden set other intentions when we're in this state, this part of wellness.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's powerful, and remembering that we do have that ability, but support that we can pause and do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah it certainly is nice to foster a harmonious balance between aspirations and that present moment, especially when it's filled with compassion, love and light.
Speaker 3:The thought that I had came back.
Speaker 3:We have brains and our brains are powerful, but more importantly, that spiritual nature in the brain is even more powerful If we think about AI. Ai can like, detect and make sense out of like I think about things, spiritual and nature. I'm not a got oriented person like religious sense, but like I've heard it that sometimes you ask something, you pray for something, and the prayer does not get answered. But then if you truly listen, that prayer can be answered during the day through a conversation or through an event. But the most powerful answer to your prayer is your life and I like thinking about that in terms of this is we're already in the second, I mean in the January of the new year, but I kind of think about that for the previous year, like if you think about that year or think about your life, if you use your spiritual part of your mind, there's a question that got answered through your life and that is like a good way to connect with that intention or create more harmonious intention for the continuation of this life. You know.
Speaker 1:I'm just realizing, as this episode focuses on future and intentions and goal planning, but to do so, we really focused in on the present moment, to be able to do so in a healthy way. So whatever our goals or intentions, that might not be happening. We really gave a bunch of examples of what we can do in the present moment to make that more achievable, more realistic.
Speaker 1:So here as our future is going to come, oh, what a gift, what a gift the start of 2024 is in this present moment, isn't it? Yes, absolutely Very good. Well, as we conclude this exploration into setting intentions for 2024, may you carry with you the tools, insights and inspiration needed for a purposeful journey ahead. Whether you're a well versed in goal setting or just starting, this episode is crafted to resonate with you on your path to well-being. Thank you for joining us as we step into the possibilities of a new year. Remember that your intentions are the compass guiding your journey Until next time. Take a moment for reflection, set your intentions with clarity and embark on a transformative year ahead. Stay well and stay intentional, and happy new year, everyone. Happy new year. My name is Luke, this is Zal.
Speaker 3:See you next time, see ya.