segment intending

Process #2 of 5 for quick & easy focus & alignment

Photo of a person sitting on a wood floor string a long thread of beads. From Natalia Blauth on Unsplash.

You are aligned when you feel connected, serene, optimistic, excited, clear. In short, you’re aligned when you feel good.

When you don’t feel good, you may want to reach for a tool that could make you feel better. This is how you mind your alignment.

When you get up in the morning, you might reach for a tool that allows you to choose your own focus. How do you want to feel?

These quick & easy processes I’m offering in a series of 5 come from Abraham-Hicks, where I’m getting most of my dynamic learning & input for feeling great about my evolving life these days!

SEGMENT INTENDING
This process has two steps, and the first is optional.

1. Write down the name of the next segment at the top of your page.
2. Simply list how you want to feel during that segment.

Multitasking version: If you can’t write your intentions down—maybe you’re driving or putting lunch together—speak your intentions out loud. Pen on paper is ideal, but segment intending is super helpful whether written or spoken.

LET’S DEFINE SEGMENT
Think of your day as a beaded necklace that you’re constructing or creating bead by bead as you move through the hours. Each bead represents the next activity. So a string of segments could look like this:

• Making morning coffee
• Sitting down to do alignment processes
• Meditating (or doing Qigong or yoga, or stepping into nature, or …)
• Going to work
• Doing the first task of your work day
• Stepping outside to breathe and look up at the sky
• …

You can even treat sleep as a segment. Read the next paragraph if you could use a reminder about good ways to put yourself to bed.

Segment-intend to declare how you want to drop in for sleep and how you’d like to feel waking up. Consider how this could change the tone of how you rest compared with what else you might carry into sleep. As you go to bed, do you evaluate yourself, your day, your success, your relationship? Or do you go over what’s not yet done and look anxiously ahead? How about clear, kind, restful intentions instead? Intend feeling satisfied, letting go, feeling held & supported (by the bed, by all of life, by what feels complete & lovely & good enough for this day)?

Photo of notebook, pen, and lit candle. From Mushaboom Studio on Unsplash.

WHY INTEND FOR JUST ONE SEGMENT?
This tool brings intentional living down to brass tacks (um, or necklace beads). All you’re doing is isolating one manageable next bit and defining how you want to feel in it. Then you can consciously aim for that.

Intentions for just the next segment are powerful because they’re simple, their focus is narrow, they feel entirely doable. You’re gazing at and polishing the one next beautiful bead you’re about to string onto the necklace that is this wonderful day in progress.

It’s unlikely you’ll want or need to set intentions for every single segment of a day. Use segment intending especially if you’re already noticing a wobble. Examples of wobbles you may feel acutely or get even a whiff of:

• I’m about to go get food and I’ve been overeating or grabbing the easiest thing & not aligning with my healthy food preferences.
• I’m heading to teach a class or lead a meeting or make a pitch and I’m not sure I’m fully prepared—I’m not sure I’ll nail it.
• I’m settling in for some down time and I’m already catching a whiff of guilt or self-disapproval because I’ve been playing too many games or binge-watching Netflix or just chronically feeling bad about not working anytime I’m not working.
• I’m about to join an event where I’m not sure what the vibe will be or how connected I’ll feel to others.
• I’m gearing up for a hard conversation.

Note that you don’t have to feel even a little bit bad about what’s coming up to segment-intend. I zoom-met with a friend I adore the other day, and I used segment intending to imbibe up front how much I love being in their presence. That’s what I carried in with me, heart full and eyes already reflecting their brightness.

Have you ever entered a meeting flustered or scattered or just barely catching up to yourself and this moment? I have. And when I segment-intend, I don’t do that. I come in clear, conscious, grounded. Ready or not, I am ready, and I’m willing. I’m present.

Don’t you love getting more conscious in your dance with consciousness? More to the point—in this one next dance? Want to show up with sass, ease, attitude? You decide.

Photo of young person with dark skin, locs, and torn jeans dancing in the street pointing at the viewer. From Blake Cheek on Unsplash.

MAKE YOUR INTENTIONS ABOUT YOU AND, PRECISELY, HOW YOU WANT TO FEEL.
It doesn’t really work to intend that things will happen a certain way, or that you’ll get a certain outcome. (Universe’s business.) It’s pointless to intend how others will show up, because you have no agency there. (Their business.)

Just make intentions about how you want to feel. You can’t even control what you’ll do or how you’ll do it. So focus on calling in feeling states.

Side note: when you’re minding your own alignment, you may find—may have already found!—that you call forth more of the good stuff that others have to bring. But just let that happen. Your work (your business) is to tend to your own clear focus and the feeling state that focus brings. You can leave the rest to life, to others, to Source, to Law of Attraction (to whatever you want to call it).

EXAMPLES OF INTENTIONS FOR A SEGMENT
Let’s say you’re about to write something up for work that you’ve been thinking about. So your list of intentions could look like this:

• I feel relaxed
• I’m in the flow
• I’m enjoying my love of this topic
• I feel competent
• I feel good about how this builds on what I did before
• Sitting here writing in my own bubble, I already feel aligned with the people this will be going to
• I full fully here, happy to be here
• The writing is unforced—like I’m taking dictation
• I have that sense of nailing it, I know when that’s happening
• I sense when it’s not quite right and I love dropping in with it gently to see what wants to give, what else wants to come
• I’m detached from outcome or how long it takes, just content with dropping in for what might happen here

That’s it, folks. Then go on through the door into your next segment, and what’s there to meet you will be colored by all that you just set up, all that you’re consciously bringing with you. And as you string each segment of the day onto the whole, you end up with a thing of beauty and a sense of satisfaction.

You can find process #1, Easy Existing Matches, right here.
Process #3, on the Abraham-Hicks concept of zoom in, zoom out, is the next post on this blog.
Reminder that no process you know about does any good unless you use it. I dare you to use one or more of these daily. (But really I want you to follow your curiosity about what’s possible to keep you aligned and feeling good as much as possible for your total well-being and fulfillment.)


Love & blessings, Jaya
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