Welcome to the Small Steps Podcast. I'm your host, Amy Soon. I'm a nutritional therapy practitioner, blogger at Small Eats, author of Not at My Dastal Lunch, designer, and avid learner. In my nutrition practice, I help you cut through the health and wellness noise to find what works for you.
This podcast is here to educate, inspire, and empower you to grow, try new things, and live a life you truly feel good about one small step at a time. Each episode has small steps that you can try and see how they work for you. You can find all the show notes, small steps, and other episodes at small-eats.com slash podcast. Remember, the materials and content within this podcast are intended as general information only.
They are not to be considered a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Welcome back to another episode of the Small Steps Podcast. I am so glad that you are here this week to join us. This is episode 70, and this is part four of a five-part series about intention setting.
So if this is the first episode that you are listening to in this intention setting series, I highly recommend you go back to episode 67 and start there, because this series is all about breaking this intention setting into small steps and every week builds on top of the others. So jumping in here may not make, especially for this episode because you are going to pull things that have been talked about in previous episodes, it may not make as much sense. So if you are new to the intention setting series that's going on here, go back to episode 67. Also, as a fun reminder, as you're working through this series, all the exercises and questions have been made into awesome work treats that I designed that you can either print out or fill out on your computer to really set this in motion.
You can find all that in the show notes or at small-eat.com slash podcast. So we're four episodes in of this five-part series, and I wanted to do a quick recap of what we have covered so far. So episode 67 is part one, where we set the stage, we get clear on your values, and we check in with is intention setting really what you want or need right now. Episode 68 on part two, we reflected on what happened in the past year or any period of time that you wanted to see what worked, what hasn't, what you want to adjust, and getting more clear on what intentions could bring and the things that you've already done that might be helpful to bring into those intentions, or that you might want to divert from, because they're like, this doesn't really work for me.
And last week's episode, episode 69, which is part three, we brainstormed all the potential intentions and got them out on paper, audio or screens, whatever, no holds barred, just letting ourselves lose and also setting up the best container as possible to have this brainstorm so that you can get all these ideas out in low pressure, fun kind of way. And this week, we are finally there. We are going to choose our intentions. Hooray, we finally got there.
And I do want to take a moment before we dive in any deeper, I would love for you to give yourself a moment, to give yourself so much props for all the steps that you've taken so far. This has been, if you've been doing this in real time, this has been four weeks, this has been four worksheets, lots of reflection, lots of getting really clear and maybe a little bit uncomfortable. It's probably brought up a lot of things, that was good things, bad things, bad things, all the things in between. And that's a really big deal.
So I would really invite you to take a moment and feel really proud that you were doing this work and though it might feel small and I feel gradual. Like this shit is really important. So I want you to feel that. Yeah, I did it, I'm doing it because this is a big deal.
A lot of this episode does refer to last week's episode, so 69 and episode 67 the most. I'm definitely going to be referencing the work that you've done on previous worksheets, whether that was in the worksheets that I've designed or wherever all that information is. It's going to be helpful for you to pull those things out right now. So last week you've got a lot of intentions out and you've got a lot of things brainstorming and flowing.
You could look at that and be like, okay, this is a good amount or you could look at it and be like, wow, there are so many intentions here. How am I going to choose? Which ones? Is there can be the tendency to be like, oh, these are so great, I'm going to do all of them.
I love your excitement and small steps here. We are all about small steps and most of the time, because we usually have so many other things choosing a few, whatever number that is, and we're going to help you figure that out. It's probably best. So this week we're going to look at the intentions that we brainstormed last week and narrow that down to what you want to focus on right now.
I've also found that some intentions work for different periods of time and just because you have all them out and you don't use them doesn't need their trash or that you throw them away or that they were just like, oh, like why did I spend this time? Like it might be that other intentions need to happen first before other intentions that you wrote down need to be focused on or like there might be some additional background stuff that would lead you to build up to certain tensions rather than others or certain things in your life might have to change. Like you might need a different job, need to live in a different place, a certain event in your life might need to happen, like you might need to make that happen or you're like, oh, after this big life event that I have, like after I have a baby, after I move, after I move, after I like, some things might hinge on other things that order to happen. So I do want to say that some of these things, it might not be the best time for those right now because other things might need to happen before those things happen.
Also keep that in mind. So pull out worksheets from week one and your brainstorm worksheet. And I think that's going to be really helpful to look over again if you've been doing these, like giving yourself self-space image of each of these rather than like doing it all in one sitting, definitely review your values and the question around what you need and what you want right now. I think it's important to refresh yourself on what do I actually want, what do I actually need?
Because oftentimes those intentions that you wrote down, a lot of them could be great. And then I'd be like, yeah, this is like really cool and sounds super exciting, but it's really not what I want to need right now. It's just a cool shiny thing. So knowing what you really want and what you really need right now can really help you figure out what is something that you want to focus on right now.
Also something that's really helpful to get clear on as you set these intentions, if you haven't focused on this already, is get clear on the period of time that you want to work on these intentions. The amount of time also can help you figure out what you want to move forward with. Like I said before, something is coming up and those intentions, certain intentions are best focused on after that. Or later, it's helpful to know what period of time to help narrow things down.
So once you've gotten those things like out of the top of your mind and you've decided like what period of time you want to focus on, review your intention brain storm sheets again and circle all the things or write them down again that align with all of those things and or things that feel the most important to you right now. It can be as many things as you want, or as few things as you want, because we're still going to go through the narrowing down process. So if you're like, there are too many, this is so hard, these are all perfect and wonderful. Choose those things that align and know that we are going to narrow this stuff down.
So after you have done that, and again, you can take as long or as short with this process as you need to, you can always come back to this and review it again. Think about the following things of the things that you've circled. How does this intention feel to you? That could be mentally, emotionally, physically, all the things.
Do you want to focus on this intention right now? There are lots of intentions that is like, oh yeah, I should do this. Although, so it's like, this would be helpful for me, but if you don't really want to do the intention, even if it is good for you, also it's important to ask, where is this good for you coming from? Is this good for you that aligns with your values?
Is this good for you that aligns with maybe potentially other people's values that you might be working away from? Do you want to focus on right now? Do you want to? Is it aligned?
And are there other intentions that you circle that might need to be focused on first in order to make this one that you're looking at possible? Like we said before, contingencies and dominoes and all the shits connected. Last question, which I think is the most important question. Do you have the mental and emotional and potentially other resources bandwidth to focus on this intention right now?
Do you have a space for this in your life? We're going to talk about maybe arranging stuff, but if you know no amount of arranging in your life can make this work, maybe it's not one to continue to move forward with. If you're really honest with yourself and to these questions, and also please remember, you are not a failure. If you don't want to do a certain intention, if you are currently not able to do an intention right now for whatever reason, and if you don't have the bandwidth for any particular intentions right now, this is not another exercise or another sneaky way to sit on yourself.
This is a way to be kind and compassionate with yourself and choose things that are very supportive for you and not things that will add more stress or anxiety or any kind of dis-use to your life. You don't need that. That is not what the objective of this is. So as you review those questions and you look at the intentions again, narrow it down to a number that feels manageable for you.
I personally would probably go with three to five for a period of time that lasts longer than a few weeks, maybe like a month or a quarter, which is three months, and you will know the number that works best for you. And remember, these aren't the final ones that you're doing, but maybe if you had 10 and 10 was like, whoa, and maybe you narrowed it down to number that feels more manageable for you because we're still in an narrowing down selection. We're going bigger, slightly smaller, slightly smaller, slightly smaller until we find the right number. So once you narrow down the selection, after asking those questions, you're going to write them all out or talk them out or whichever.
This will also be in the cool printables in the show notes for you. So you're going to write it down. And now we're going to look through each intention to see how they would fit in your life, how they would look, and what you would need to adjust. This is going to help you get that extra level of clarity to see if you have a bandwidth right now, if you really want to do this after it gets clear.
If seeing the action items of it, you're like, oh, actually I really don't have the space for that right now in this moment. Or yes, I totally do. And this makes this intention feel so much more manageable and really like what I want. So let's look at one.
Let's start with one. And to make this process more clear, I'm going to use an example intention so that you can see how this kind of breaks down. So the intention that I'm going to be working with right now is I will nourish my body with foods that make my body feel good. This is something that we mentioned as an example and like the very first one.
So get clear on what this intention looks like. So you'll write out what this actually means. What does this mean for you in all the ways? You can write as many things as you want.
Sometimes I think writing the more things the better so that it can become more clear and more tangible for you. So for this intention, I will nourish my body with foods that make my body feel good. It can mean a lot of things. If this is one that is resonating with you, it can mean a lot of things depending on your body and how it's working and how it's feeling right now.
So that could be depending on your body. It could be eating foods that don't make my stomach hurt or bloated. It could be eating foods that don't give me headaches or make me feel really tired or eating food that does not make me break out in any kind of rashes or have some kind of reaction that you don't like. This could also mean eating foods that make me feel full and satisfied instead of having foods that don't make me feel full or satisfied or constantly hungry all the time.
And this could also mean eating more food in general to feel more satisfied or feel overall better in your body. And better in your body. I think when you're also getting clear, I think it would be really important to define like what does make my body feel good. What does that mean?
I gave specific examples because this is how I think. Be mindful of getting very clear. Very clear. So if you're like, I don't want my body to hurt anymore.
Cool. But what does that feel like for you? Is that being bloated? Is that your stomach being hurt after you eat for a certain amount of time?
Do you break out in rashes? Do you have to go to the bathroom all the time? Get very clear on that so that it can be recognizable on what you can do from there. So in order to make this intentional actionable, then you'll write down the things that you could do to make that happen.
And the more ideas that you have, the better. And you do not have to act on all these ideas. This is still kind of like a brainstorm for us to get clear on. Is this an intention that we want to do and have space for?
So for this particular intention, it can mean a lot of things. It can mean cooking more food for yourself. It can mean cooking more meals more consistently throughout the week. Maybe in sending this intention, I know that I'm good with cooking like two meals, and there are five days in the week that I go to work, and so I need to cook more consistently throughout the week, or I just kind of cook here and there with things aligned, but it needs to be a little bit more consistent about it.
Maybe that's making different choices when ordering out or ordering in for any meals, because I think it's important with this particular intention, a lot of times when this is talked about, there is a large emphasis on cooking your own meals, which, yes, cooking your own meals is awesome for a lot of reasons. It's more affordable for a lot of people. It can really connect you with the process of cooking and get you more emotionally and mentally invested in doing this. And it provides a lot of fun opportunities that you can do at home, with your partner, with family, a lot of other things.
And depending on people's schedules, depending on people's lives, sometimes ordering in or out is just easier or more manageable in a certain period or a certain time of people's lives. There's always this big idea that ordering out is bad or some kind of you're breaking the rules or it's only for a treat. There are so many options out there as healthy living and healthy food becomes more trendy as well as becomes more trendy. There are a lot more places out there.
Also, it depends on the area that you live in, because I'm saying this from a place of I live in California, I live in Los Angeles, there's a lot of wellness culture here. There are a lot easier things for me to find in my area than it could be if you live in the middle of the country. So that is again saying that from a more privileged, higher access, less food insecure situation. And if all of those things are also available for you, if you are in a similar situation and maybe you work a really busy corporate job or there are other things and making a meal right now, in this particular season of your life isn't something that can move.
Consider different choices when you're ordering it now for a lesson dinner. And I don't mean that in the way of eating vegetables and the chicken breast. I'm talking about finding places that just have more vegetables or more things that you know feel better or feel fine in your body. If you honestly don't know what in particular, make your body feel fine or not.
Another thing that you could do to make this intention actionable is to pay more attention to your body and how food feels in your body. Doing a little bit of investigative work, connecting and being more present while you're eating. Maybe writing things down so that you know what exactly doesn't make my body feel good. What does it feel like?
This could also be adding in more ingredients to whatever you're cooking or buying or eating that don't have a strong reaction in your body. If you're like, all right, I eat this food and I feel fine. I always add spinach and it doesn't do anything. Okay, cool.
Maybe start adding in more spinach or maybe start eating more things that you know your body's like, I don't care. It's fine. It's great. Also, getting clear on what goes in your body and what doesn't work in your body and potentially easing back on those.
So if you know every time that you have eggs, you feel some kind of way afterwards and you have eggs every day for breakfast, what would happen if you didn't have eggs for breakfast? Or what if you only had eggs every other day for breakfast? Or what if you only had eggs once a week? What if that feeling in your body changed?
We won't know until you figure it out. Also, something that could be really helpful is grocery shopping more consistently or doing any meal planning or prepping so that then you could do things like cook more meals or have more things on hand for you to have throughout the week that don't make your body not feel great. Then, have you write those things out? Write what we need to shift in your life to make this happen.
So it's important to acknowledge that while we can add things into our life, we can't always add everything into our lives. Some things have to shift and be deprioritized or moved off the list so that other things can happen. We're human. We only have a certain amount of capacity for things to focus on and have attention and do so that we don't push ourselves into getting really sick by doing too many things.
So in order to make something happen, like we've already done release rituals, right? We've done a release ritual around emotional things. So now it's time to think about the more logistics. Like what might need to shift in your day to day or week to week or whenever to actually make some of this stuff happen.
So for this particular intention, that could mean setting aside time to meal plan, meal shop or prep. This could also be figuring out where does your time go? I've talked about in previous episodes doing a time on it. A lot of times we aren't as aware of what we're spending our time on.
I know, I'm very guilty of this too. You pick up your phone for something and then 20 minutes later you're on Instagram. You're like, wait, how long have I been on Instagram? Especially iPhones, but I'm not sure about Androids.
If anyone has an Android and can confirm. I'm sure there are also apps to do this on an Android as well. But Apple has screen time so you can definitely see how much you are on your phone. If you know that there are other things that take big chunks of your time that isn't your phone, it might also be helpful to do a time on it so that you can get really clear on how much available time you could have.
Like maybe shifting your life would be okay, I'm going to watch less television or I'm going to be more mindful of high on my phone. Or there could be other things that you might have to adjust in order to make time to meal plan, meal shop or meal prep. You could set a schedule or a goal of how many meals you want to cook for yourself or your partner and your family. You could do research on restaurants in your area that have food that works for you and your body and try those out and see if you like them.
So if one of the options for you is ordering it out for lunch or dinner. You could keep a food and mood journal to see how foods affect your body and your mood and your digestion. So this could be another way to figure out how foods work in your body having this journal. It is not a journal to track ounces, to track calories, to track how much food you are having.
It is literally just like I ate bell peppers. I had no reaction. It didn't feel like anything negative or positive or anything in between. Like it's trying to figure out how does your food affect your mood or affect anything in your body, which could be like your digestion.
It could be if you have any skin things like it does this food, do anything negative or positive to this stuff because it's all related. So it's not really about tracking. And if you have disorder eating this might or working through a history of disorder eating. This option might not be the best for you because it could domino effect into other things.
If you are working with a professional around that or if you have worked with a professional around that you and that professional will know what is best for you. If you don't have those things or you're willing to try it or you're curious, something to try. You can also find different recipes to try that have more foods that make you feel good and less foods that don't make you feel good. You can find different alternatives to foods that don't work with you.
So if you realize that gluten or dairy or certain foods just don't make your body feel good or you need different kinds of protein. Do some researching, see what's in your area, walk around your market, Google things and find alternatives. There are so many alternatives to things nowadays. We are living in, again, if you are living in a more urban environment, there are a lot of alternatives.
And you could probably order a lot of these online. There are so many things that you can either buy or make that can be close enough substitutes for a lot of things out there. Ten years ago, this was not a thing. Like if you decided to give up gluten and you still wanted to try bread, good luck.
You would have tasted like a freaking sponge. There are many things out there. So if you're feeling some kind of way of like, I don't know if everyone gave up blah blah blah blah. I really like pasta.
There are so many would free pasta out there that don't taste like gummy shit because that's how it used to taste. Try it out and see if you like it. Also, when I mentioned earlier, being more aware of your time and doing less of something to make room for any of the above. So if you've written all those things out, review that and again, check in with yourself.
How do some of these options feel to you? You definitely do not have to do all the things that you listed out. It's just a brainstorm to get your brain going. But how do some of them feel?
Do some of them sound good or exciting to you? Do they sound supportive? Do they sound interesting? Do you have time to make some of these shifts and take some of these actions right now?
Again, if you don't have the time or the space or it's just not able to move right now for things out of your control, that could be a way to figure out if there is an intention you want to work with. And again, as always, do these things still align with your values and what you want and what you need in your life right now? If most of the questions are no, this might not be the right intention for you right now in this moment. So once you do this process, repeat this process with all the intention that you have and from there, pick the ones you want to focus on.
Again, you know what that magic number is because you know what's happening in your life and you know what might need to shift. You know the better picture of what's going on in your life than I do. And also, I do want to say if you narrowed it down to like five and doing this with five intentions feels way too overwhelming. Choose the things that stick out to you the most and if as you do the other ones, you're like, no, maybe I'll just try it.
Just keep writing out the process. And if this all in general feels overwhelming, you can start with just one. One is enough. One is great.
So if even after doing all this, you're like, oh my God, this still all feels really too much. But I still want to do this process. Start with one. So on the last page of the worksheet, we're going to write this down to solidify it.
So my intentions are, and write them out. Because you've listed so many things, you have a lot of options for how you embody these intentions and how you work on them, which is great. So as you embody your intentions each day, each week, each month, try those options out. You have so many and see which ones you like and which ones work for you.
And know that what works in one instance may not work in the others, depending on a lot of other things. And that's okay. The fact that you did so much brainstorming gives you a lot of options to try. And also, I invite you to think of this as always as an experiment.
There are lower stakes here. The things that do or don't work are not a reflection on how smart, where the intelligent you are at all the things. So the small steps of the show is review week one worksheets and brainstorming worksheets. Pick some intentions that resonate with you and your values and what you need and want right now.
Work on what those intentions would look like and what we need to have around them. And decide which ones to embody for the period of time that you want. And as always have a lot of kindness and compassion as you work through this, as you figure this out. You don't have to pick the most glomerous intentions.
You don't have to be big. They can be very small. You don't have to choose more than two. You can choose one.
So that is it for this week's show. Next week, the last episode of this series, we are going to talk about how to keep the momentum of your intentions going. So we talked about a lot of stuff, right? We talked about brainstorming a lot of things to try.
And now we're going to get into the nitty-gritty of how to keep the momentum going. Because setting intentions is one thing and embod those intentions and figuring out how to continue to embody those intentions is a completely other thing that I thought was very important to talk about. So that's what we're going to review next week. Again, I hope you love this series and this show.
As always, if you love this, please consider sharing it with your friends, family members, reviewing it on iTunes, sharing it on social media, tag me at small underscore eats. So I can give you a shout out and thank you for loving the show. And again, if you have any feedback on this intention setting series, please let me know. I would love to hear it.
And if you want any different series to break something down into smaller steps over a period of time, let me know. Alright, until next week, you can do this one small stuff at a time.