Six Pillars For Building An Intentional Life In This New Year – Forbes

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Feeling dj vu as you translate your wants into resolutions this new year?

Year after year, the same pattern repeats: we resolve to change our ways. Well read more, save more, and exercise regularly. Well drink less and skip social media. Well declutter our closets and our minds.

Whether your resolution is to volunteer regularly, learn something new every day, plant more trees, or make new connections, you are not alone. Millions around the world are doing the same.

But most will give up by January 19, now dubbed Quitters Day. Surveys indicate only 4% of people will fulfill all their resolutions by the end of the year. The best of intentions will be swayed by temptation, or will crash to the wayside.

We get busy. We succumb to whims. We get tired. And we give up.

When erecting tall, strong buildings, structural engineers know that pillars are essential for withstanding heavy gales and intense earthquakes. The same principle applies to building an intentional life to create and achieve new year resolutions.

Developed by my colleague Sarah Wolek, the director of the Intentional Life Lab at the Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets at the University of Maryland, the six pillar approach creates a grid for your decisions, both practical and profound.

Each of the six pillars is essential if one is missing, it weakens the structure. The three me pillars Purpose, Wellness and Prosperity connect our goals to ourselves. Together, they create self-responsibility and self-accountability. The three us pillars Relationships, Community and Nature connect our goals to our world. Together, they create consonance with the people in our life, and the places we inhabit.

Defining your Purpose identifies the values that guide your life. It enables development of character and integrity, guides your actions, and guards against inner and outer conflicts. Attaining Wellness fosters both physical and mental health. It integrates goals related to self-help and self-care, guides choices of activities and lifestyles, and provides the mainstay for relationships with others. Achieving Prosperity defines yardsticks for measuring success. It integrates goals of financial independence and self-esteem, serves to harmonize reasons with rewards, and optimizes on your aspirations and ability.

Sustaining meaningful Relationships begins with identifying who you choose to have in your life, professionally or personally. It honors each individual as an independent equal, fosters kindness over niceness, and provides win-win benefits for a healthy, long-term partnerships. Creating a Community focuses on shared values. It integrates individuals across race, religion, ethnicity and national origin, and provides opportunities for organizations and societies to learn and grow together. Connecting with Nature creates harmony with our surroundings. Nature nourishes us as we nourish our physical world, guides activities that create emotional, physical, and intellectual wellbeing and provides the space to integrate the other pillars of our life.

These six pillars provide the scaffold upon which you can develop, organize, and achieve resolutions by enacting the following three ideas.

Build Out the Why Behind Your Wants

A laundry list of best resolutions does not provide the impetus for long-lasting behavioral change unless each connects to a deeper why.

Ive seen this idea in action through the struggles my husband and I had with weight loss. Like many others, we fixated on fitting in smaller clothes, and rode the roller-coaster of losing and gaining the same pounds, rising to cheer and falling to despair.

Achieving success required us to think not in terms of size and scale, but of our life and purpose. Being able to hike in the woods, keeping pace with our daughters and dogs. Holding hands as we grow old. These whys now sustain us through the why-nots of food temptations and get us off the couch on rainy or bitterly cold days.

As Sarah Polite, a guest we met during our bi-annual stays at Hilton Head Health notes, remembering the why divorces self-worth from what the scale may say, and affirms reasons for wellness in a meaningful, connected life.

Construct the Hierarchy of Your Wants

Resolutions often compete with each other to demand your time and effort, so creating a hierarchy among them is the next building block to an intentional life. Choosing what is more vs. less important begins with owning the right and the responsibility of making critical decisions rather than leaving it for others no matter how benevolent or well meaning they may be.

Ive lived this idea in action, as a daughter and now a parent. Bearing the painful estrangement from my father led to self-esteem earned by defining and achieving my own success. Recognizing my daughters need to chart their own course led to respecting the tradeoffs they deem important. In each relationship, rocky starts have resulted in stronger bonds among independent adults.

As I noted previously on creating work-life balance, knowing what is personally important is key to reducing stress and achieving a balance of mind. Working on chores or saving for a rainy day is less burdensome when it provides financial security for you and your family. Volunteering is not a sacrifice when it is in a community representing your values and vision for the world.

A hierarchy of wants gives you the comfort to say no and the luxury to say yes to yourself and to the people in your life.

Form Consistencies Across Your Wants

While tradeoffs are a reality of life, creating consistencies across wants can provide solutions and optimize effort.

As a simple example, goals related to wellness, relationships, community or nature can be achieved simultaneously with a friend you seek to connect with, if you plant trees or work towards a common cause instead of rich and liquor-laden dinners.

More broadly, Ive taught this idea in action to life-long learners at the Smith School of Business. Accepting the false dichotomy between profit and purpose, students often frame their choices as an either-or, unfairly bashing business as antithetical to social value creation. In the Intentional Life Lab at the Ed Snider Center, we instead encourage students to be enterprising in their own world to solve grand challenges at scale and scope.

As I note in previous columns, doing so preserves human dignity and harmonizes the me and us pillars through win-win outcomes.

Regardless of past failures, this new year goal setters can avoid being a dismal statistic.

Not giving up or giving in when pursuing wants can be bolstered through the six-pillar approach to link our goals to ourselves and our world. Connecting to the whys, and creating hierarchy and consistency in our wants can motivate and animate us to invest the hard work, develop clear strategies, and chart effective implementation plans.

For the payoff of achieving happiness is very worth your time.

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Six Pillars For Building An Intentional Life In This New Year - Forbes