A Word of Intention is a single word you choose to carry with you for a while. Calm, Patience, Freedom, Gratitude, Presence. It is small enough to hold in one breath and wide enough to meet a whole day. People often ask what exactly it is for and how to choose one, so this is an attempt to describe it plainly, the way we think about it ourselves.
In short · 5 min read
- A Word of Intention is one word you choose to carry, something to return to rather than achieve.
- It sits where it can quietly come back to your attention, inside a neck, across a back, on a wall.
- People choose from a feeling they miss, a season of life, or a photograph that stays with them.
- Every Word at Intention is paired with a photograph by ClaraXenia.
What it is · Why one word · Where the word lives · How people choose one · Living with a word
What it is
A Word of Intention is not advice and not something to achieve. It is something to reconnect with. When someone chooses Patience, they are rarely setting out to become a patient person by Friday. They are naming something they already know how to be and would like to meet more often. The word works as a reminder of a quality that is already there, sometimes buried under a busy month.
That is also how it differs from two close relatives. A goal has a finish line, and you can tick it off. An affirmation is usually a full sentence, spoken in the first person, like I am calm. A Word of Intention has no finish line and makes no claim. It simply sits beside you and asks, now and then, whether you remember.
A Word of Intention is not advice and not something to achieve. It is something to reconnect with.
Why one word
One word travels well. It can be read in a glance and recalled without effort, which matters, because the moments a word is most useful are usually the ones with no time to think. There is some research that sits nearby. The psychologist Peter Gollwitzer has shown that simple if then plans, such as when I sit down at my desk, I will begin, help people follow through on what they intend. A Word of Intention is looser than that, a cue for attention rather than a plan. And in 2007 a team led by Matthew Lieberman found that putting a feeling into words calmed activity in the amygdala. We wrote about that study, and the Japanese idea of kotodama, in The Spirit of Words. None of this proves what a single chosen word does. It suggests why it is not a strange thing to try.
Where the word lives
A word only helps if it comes back to you. That is why we place it where it naturally returns to your attention during the day, rather than where it is shouted. On our T-shirts it sits inside the neck, close to the skin, an idea we explored in Writing on the Inside. On our hoodies, and on some sweatshirts and long sleeves, it runs across the back. On Word on a Wall it hangs where you pass it every morning.
Every Word is also paired with a photograph by ClaraXenia. Balance is paired with Shadow of Self, a figure half in shadow and half in light. Patience is paired with This is Where he Stood, a pair of worn shoes left on a pavement. The photograph comes first, and the Word emerges from what the image reveals.
How people choose one
Over the years we have noticed a few ways people arrive at their word. Some start from a feeling they miss. Someone whose days have been running away from them might choose Presence. Someone who has been carrying a great deal alone might choose Sharing. Others start from a season of life: a new job, a move, a loss, a beginning. A word chosen at those turning points often stays for a long time.
Some people find the photograph first. They stop at an image without quite knowing why, then read the Word beside it and recognise something. And some prefer a slower way in. Our Your Word of Intention page walks through the Words one feeling at a time, and Intention Cycles keeps time with the moon, with one Word held through each cycle of a little over twenty nine days.
Most people do not choose a word so much as notice that it has been waiting for them.
Living with a word
A word chosen today may not be the right word next year, and that is part of it. People change their word the way they change the pictures on their walls, when something in them has moved. Some keep one for years. Others collect a few, one for work, one for home, one for the harder months. Our own view, which we wrote about in Where Your Attention Goes, is that people are shaped by what they return to. A single word is a small, gentle way of choosing what that is.
Sources
- Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54(7), 493 to 503.
- Lieberman, M. D. et al. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421 to 428.
A quiet extension of this idea
Our pieces are built around this principle. A single word, placed so it naturally comes back into your attention during the day. Not something you have to focus on the whole day, just something that stays with you.
