What are you #Intentioning for 2022?

Issue 188 — January 3, 2022

🎆Happy New Year! What are you Intentioning for your life and leadership this brave new year of 2022? 🎆What will this year mean for you? 🎆What first step will you take to go from ambition to Intention to done?

These aren’t necessarily easy questions, I know.

I had this recurring dream when I was in a period of transition. I was driving fast down a winding, unlit, red dirt West Texas road. I couldn’t see what was ahead. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t get off because there were no exits, no crossroads.

It was like the car was driving me rather than the other way around. I kept hurtling down that uncharted road, driving fast into whatever came next.

Do you ever feel your life is like that?

It was the opposite of “intentioning,” the word I coined to signify intention as an action verb. And it didn’t feel good.

If there’s anything I learned in 2021, it’s that we are all driving, often thinking we’re in control of the vehicle, but in truth having few clues as to what we’ll find around the bend.

There will always be surprises ahead. As I start the fresh new year of 2022 with a pandemic that keeps throwing disruptions at us, one thing is certain.

Yes, there will be unexpected setbacks, disasters, twists and turns that sap my natural optimism and make me want to just stop the damn car and take a nap. This is the nature of life.

And yet, simultaneously there will be unanticipated opportunities if I’m smart enough to see them and brave enough to take them. If I stay true to my purpose and maintain a mindset of intentioning as I wrote about in my book of that name and in which I share 9 Leadership Intentioning Tools to help you personally, professionally, and in the public/societal sphere.

[I love this distinction between making resolutions and Intentioning.]

You see, in my dream I didn’t realize that I could have turned the car around and gone in a different direction. I could have stopped in order to assess the situation. I could have called for help. You can probably think of other options to take back my power — to set the course rather than have it set for me, or perhaps to have found a way to use the energy to propel me forward to my intention.

Like you might have been doing as 2021 drew to a close and 2022 began, I have been reading trusted colleagues’ advice for assessing where we’ve been and to determine where I want to go.

They’re all helpful, but several especially resonated.

#1. Tiffany Dufu, founder of The Cru says, “Find your truth and the courage to live it. Since I was in college I’ve been inspired by the art and activism of two women who felt immortal to me, Cicely Tyson and bell hooks. They both passed this year, but left us blueprints for how to define yourself on your own terms and leverage your superpower to advance humanity.”

#2. Rev. Dr. Theresa S. Thames, founder and CEO of Soul Joy Coaching, LLC. says this, and I so agree, especially in the wake of trauma and disruption: “Tap into joy — we spend the majority of our waking hours at work. Yes, work is work, but that doesn’t mean that work must lack joy. Find opportunities to explore, laugh, and have fun.”

[Dr. Theresa Thames, with whom I had the pleasure of participating in a panel with for New York’s 92Y Women in Power.]

#3. Natalie Ellis, cofounder of BossBabe, asks the question: “Where can you be more focused? Can you zero in on one thing that feels really important to you? What one thing would move the needle closer to your goals? How can you commit to that every day…find one thing to zero in on. Not ten. Not five. Just one thing that’s a non-negotiable for you in 2022. And then get laser-focused on how you’re going to make it happen.”

So back to my initial questions. Take an hour or two and think deeply about them, perhaps journal about them and calendar them:

What are you Intentioning for your life and leadership this brave new year of 2022? What will this year mean for you? What first step will you take to go from ambition to Intention to done?

[A new year is a great time to get your ducks in a row.]

I believe in you. I know you have what you need to go wherever you choose. Take The Lead and I are always here to support you on your journey.

Intentioning a healthy, happy 2022.

P.S. In case you missed it, here’s a little New Year gift, “New Day’s Lyric” by youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman:

May this be the day

We come together.

Mourning, we come to mend,

Withered, we come to weather,

Torn, we come to tend,

Battered, we come to better.

Tethered by this year of yearning,

That though we weren’t ready for this,

We have been readied by it.

Steadily we vow that no matter

How we are weighed down,

We must always pave a way forward.

This hope is our door, our portal.

Even if we never get back to normal,

Someday we can venture beyond it,

To leave the known and take the first steps.

So let us not return to what was normal,

But reach toward what is next.

What was cursed, we will cure.

What was plagued, we will prove pure.

Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,

Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,

Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake;

Those moments we missed

Are now these moments we make,

The moments we meet,

And our hearts, once all together beaten,

Now all together beat.

Come, look up with kindness yet,

For even solace can be sourced from sorrow.

We remember, not just for the sake of yesterday,

But to take on tomorrow.

We heed this old spirit,

In a new day’s lyric,

In our hearts, we hear it:

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne.

Be bold, sang Time this year,

Be bold, sang Time,

For when you honor yesterday,

Tomorrow ye will find.

Know what we’ve fought

Need not be forgot nor for none.

It defines us, binds us as one,

Come over, join this day just begun.

For wherever we come together,

We will forever overcome.

GLORIA FELDT is the Cofounder and President of Take The Lead, a motivational speaker and expert women’s leadership developer for companies that want to build gender balance, and a bestselling author of five books, most recently Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good. Former President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she teaches “Women, Power, and Leadership” at Arizona State University and is a frequent media commentator. Learn more at www.gloriafeldt.com and www.taketheleadwomen.com. Tweet Gloria Feldt.