Transcription
Have you ever started off your day with a clear intention and then, in a blink of an eye, the day's over and it looks nothing like you had in mind? If so, you're not alone.
Hi, I'm Ryder, creator of the Bullet Journal, and in this video, we'll be exploring one simple trick to help your intentions stick. Picture this: You just sat down with your notebook and set your intentions to be more organized, but as you dive into your routine, the chaos of daily demands creep in, and your intention fades to the background. Of course, you don't just stop what you're doing. You keep doing things, but what you're doing no longer aligns with your intention. Acting without intention cultivates what you have rather than what you want.
The trick is to have something that will help us bring our intention from the pages of our notebooks into our life. Something that will help remind us of our intention throughout the day. That's what inspired these. This set of stickers. Every one of our notebooks ships with the sticker set. I like to think of this as the world's lightest toolkit. There's a bunch of stuff that you can do with it, but for the purposes of this video, I want to focus on these guys right here. These are intentionality stickers. I don't use them in my notebook. I use them outside of my notebook to cue an intention.
So, I love my job. I can't believe that I get to do this day in and day out. And some days, it's not a lot of fun. Sometimes there are extended periods of time where I have to deal with things that prevent me from doing what I enjoy. If I'm not careful, even this can start to feel like any other job where I go from having to do a thing to having to do a thing to having to do a thing. It's a really draining mindset. To snap out of it, I put one of these stickers on the keys to my office. Every morning, it reminds me of how lucky I am to be doing this thing. More importantly, it reminds me of why I'm doing what I'm doing, even when I have to work on things that aren't fun. It shifts my attitude from, "I have to do this" to "I get to do this."
When something is particularly painful and I just can't convince myself that I can do this, simply by looking at this little thing, it slows me down just enough to remind me that it's work worth doing. There's so much less resistance when I believe in whatever I'm doing is really worth the time it takes to do it. The less resistance to the work, the more energy and creativity I can bring to the work.
Here are three tips I found helpful when using stickers:
One: Context is key. It helps to place the sticker as close to where your intention is relevant as possible. So, if better oral hygiene is your intention, then place the sticker on your bathroom mirror, for example. Or, if leaving work at work is your intention, place one of the stickers on your door or on your mailbox before you enter. If your intention is to be more intentional, then place one on your phone case to avoid getting distracted.
Two: Less is more. The more intentions you set, the more stickers you use, the more likely you are to get either overwhelmed or forget what all these stickers represent. Try by starting with one simple intention that is most alive for you right now, and then slowly build from there. I've never had more than three. Most of the time, I will only have one. There's usually one thing in my life I'm trying to be more intentional about. The nice thing about using stickers to represent only one intention is that I have a consistent visual cue that I can place anywhere to stay intentional in various situations.
Three: Turn off the autopilot. So, intentions are a tool, and like any other tool, they're only as useful as their ability to help you fix what's broken or build what's needed. After that, they too can become a distraction. So, be sure to check in with your intentions regularly to see if they still make sense. If they still serve you. Often, they do, which is great. Sometimes they need a little bit of updating, which is also important to realize. And sometimes, you realize that your intention no longer serves you at all. When your old intention no longer serves you, a helpful ritual is to peel off the old stickers that represent that old intention. And while you're doing that, you can think about what is most alive for you right now, and then place new stickers. A good time to check in with your intentions is at the end of each month. And if you Bullet Journal, it would be during your monthly ritual. To learn more about the monthly ritual, you can watch this video.
The sticker isn't only reminding you of your intention; it's reminding you of how you want to be in a certain environment, at work, at home, with your kids, with your partners. It's one of those things that can help you completely reset your state, or at least become aware of it before you transition into another place. So, though it might be a very small little thing, it can have a tremendous impact because often, all that's standing between us and what we want is remembering what we want so we can actually do the thing to act accordingly.
And to be clear, you can do this with any sticker or any small object for that matter. Some people will even use small stones that they carry around their pockets so they feel it. These small, meaningful reminders can make it easier to take what you have in mind and make it real. One word. One action. One line at a time.
If you found this video helpful, please like this video and subscribe to the channel. Thank you for taking the time, and I'll see you in the next one. Happy Bullet Journaling.