Intention vs. Action - how a Journal helped motivate me to achieve my goals
McKenna McKrell
When all is said and done, I’ll always wish I worked harder, did more. Because intention is no more than a sense of false security if you never have the action to back it up.
I always have goals, they may not be written down on a list with a pretty title, “goals”, but they’re always there. But I’ve learned over the past year that sometimes my goals simply become intention. I mean to do something, but really they’re too hard to just, do. They require work and planning, and I disregard that fact by covering up with intention to complete a task.
I’ve run cross country for 5 years, and I’m training to begin my 6th in the fall. Last summer, I wrote down a list of goals for my coach, but the one that was most important had to do with my mental attitude towards my races. I wanted to step on the line feeling positive, and motivated, leaving all the nervous and negative feelings at home. I wrote that goal down as an assignment, I meant it, but every word of it was turned in to my coach before the season even began and suddenly it wasn’t a priority. Even though I said it’s, “what I’m working for this season”, it was only intention. I never backed it up with solid action.
When the year came to a close, I thought about all my good intention, and I wanted to back it all up. I started a “Bullet Journal”, it’s a planning/logging technique that uses bullet notes as a way to set goals, schedule, and debrief each day. Mine started out in a traditional way, with goals written in the front, calendars, weekly “spreads”, with bullet lists for every day. The journal slowly morphed though, keeping this journal had become a goal that I was acting on, so the way I started journaling reflected more of my goals. It became a mileage log with little workout reflections, race times, covered in stickers of big meets I wanted to attend. It was me beginning to manifest in regards to that assignment I turned in months before.
My track season certainly wasn’t my best, but I worked for those 5 months to find motivation on the starting line and it came. It wasn’t always fool proof, of course I had some slip-up races, but I learned more every race about what drives me. This bullet journal reminded me every day that I put in so much work, and I have an entire team behind me-it helped me put solid action behind a goal that had long been just intention.