Why Intention Matters
- justcalljenna2025
- Feb 2
- 14 min read
Intention sets direction—and that’s exactly why intention matters more than motivation ever could. Join Jenna Williams as she explores how intention, awareness, and the brain work together to help you get unstuck and build habits that actually last. Through deeply personal stories of healing, relatable metaphors like the pasta on the bread plate, and practical frameworks such as Priority One, Two, Three, Jenna explains why shrinking a task isn’t quitting—it’s strategy. You’ll learn why intention matters when your brain is overwhelmed, how scaling habits keeps you out of survival mode, and how the words you use act as alchemy, training your brain’s filter.
If you’ve ever felt stuck waiting to feel ready, this episode shows you why intention matters—and how small, intentional actions can create real, sustainable change.
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Why Intention Matters
Scaling Habits & Priority One, Two, Three
We’re going to talk a little bit about why intention matters, with awareness of what we have, and what you intend is the direction you’re going to go. I think that, number one, you have to shrink the task, but you need to give yourself permission to scale the habit. You need to give yourself permission to not be perfect.
Scale the habit. What does that really mean? To me, it means coming up with priorities 1, 2, and 3. For example, maybe my overall goal, like my New Year's resolution, my ultimate goal, is that I am going to work out for an hour a day. Maybe that is my A game. That is when I am firing on all cylinders. I am at my best. My B game or my priority two might be the consistent habit I am really going for.
That might be that I am getting up and going to the gym and running on the treadmill for twenty minutes. My priority three, my “I am at my lowest low. I am literally talking myself out of doing what I am supposed to be doing. I am ready to give up the habit. I just do not care. Today was the worst day ever.” Building that consistency, scaling the habit. It might be that “Today is the worst and I want to give up, so I am just going to run around the block for five minutes.”
Let us take that to another place outside of working out, because many of you are not going to want to work out. If we break that priority 1, 2, 3, maybe it is into reading like me. I love to read. My priority one might be that I am going to read a chapter every day. My priority two might be that I am going to read ten pages every day. My priority three might be I am going to get up, sit in my chair, and attempt to read a paragraph.
That scaling was so important in my healing. Give yourself permission to scale the habit. I have a chair that I sit in, and I read. Nowadays, my reading is about 30 minutes to an hour each day, depending on how long I sleep in, which, by the way, I do not wake up with an alarm anymore. Fabulous. You should absolutely do that.
Beyond that, I think it is making that consistent space where I got up and went to that chair every day. Every day I go to that chair. On my worst days, when I get up, I am like, “I do not want to be awake. I am really not interested in even doing anything. Life is hard.” Yes, I am human. I have those days too. I am not going to lie and say I do not. That would be silly to assume that I did not.
On those days, I still make the space. “I am going to go sit in my chair. Maybe I am not reading a whole chapter. Maybe I am not reading for an hour. Maybe I am only reading the next paragraph.” That is okay. Consistently, no matter what I feel like, having a priority 1, 2, or 3, and giving myself permission to scale the habit for what I can do that day, is important. We all have limits, boundaries, and availability to do things.
Let me tell you a story that happened to me when I was healing. The brain goes into overwhelm. How did I really learn the value of scaling the habit and getting out of that survival mode? I went out to dinner with a good friend of mine. It was maybe a month after I could walk again. Two or three months into the stroke, we went to an Italian restaurant.
I ordered the chicken fettuccine. I have got to tell you, if you can imagine what a bowl of pasta looks like in an Italian restaurant. I looked at it and was like, “I am starving and cannot eat a bite.” My brain went into, again, I did not know if I was fighting a saber-tooth tiger or just that the pasta was overwhelming, but it went into a full survival mode, and I was pent up.
We moved the pasta bowl over, took the bread plate, put a scoop of pasta on the bread plate, and it was a manageable, scalable chunk that I could live with. I ended up eating about half the bowl of pasta, not because I could eat it out of the bowl. That big bowl was overwhelming, but with a little bite on a bread plate, I got through half the bowl.
When you think about scaling the habit, that is a huge thing to understand. Your brain does not know the difference, but if the task is too big, it will literally fight itself. You are biologically wired to do it. Sorry to inform you, it is not a mindset thing. Your brain is wired that way. If you scale the habit, if you break it into a manageable chunk, you can get through that. Just like the pasta on the bread plate or the reading of a paragraph versus a chapter or the gym an hour versus walking around the block, give yourself permission to scale the habit.
If a task feels too big, your brain will resist—it’s wired that way. But scale the habit into manageable chunks, and you can get it done.
When you shrink the task into a manageable chunk, your brain can go to the easy place and go, “This is easy. I am not overloaded. My cognitive ease is fine.” You can do and go much further. You do not hit the wall. You do not get to a barrier where your brain goes, “No, I cannot do it.” It is very manageable. In my view, the place where we go back to the filters and the brain and the biological wiring, you have to allow yourself permission to do that.
I believe we are all trained to be harder on ourselves than anybody else. You would let your best friend scale the habits, so why will you not let yourself? You have to give yourself permission to do that. You have to allow yourself to not be priority one all the time. It is exhausting to be on all the time, but you also have to have what your brain can do. You cannot be a whole bowl of pasta.
Maybe you need to be a bread plate full that is digestible, manageable. Have your priority 1, 2, 3, and give yourself permission to shrink the habit into what you can manage. You do not need to make it harder on yourself. You can allow your brain to be a little lazy. Use it to your advantage instead of getting stuck in survival mode.
Trust me, you are never going to feel ready. It is not a feeling. It is a decision. You decide to take the action when you are in survival mode, but you do not need to make it harder on yourself. You can give yourself permission to shrink the task so it is easier to take the action forward you need to take. You have got to get unstuck somehow. You could spend your whole life wondering if you are ready. “Can I eat that bowl of pasta?” “I do not know. I cannot do it.”
You’re never going to feel ready. It’s not a feeling—it’s a decision.
You can give yourself permission to put a bite on the plate and say, “It is okay if I do not eat the whole bowl, I am just going to eat a plate.” Again, you are never going to feel ready. You could spend time in your brain coming up with all the perfect reasons why, but you are never going to be ready to eat the pasta. That bowl is overwhelming. Your brain is fighting you on it. Go ahead and put it on the bread plate. Go ahead and do that. Give yourself permission. Let yourself be ready.
Words As Alchemy & The Power Of Intention
A second concept that is really important in intention is that words are alchemy. Words are like spells. I’m not a witch, but words are spelled. In English, it is a spelling test. What you speak and spell is alchemy. The alchemy is how you are telling your brain to filter. Do not go through your day saying, “I am fat, I am ugly, I am not good enough,” because you are going to find all the reasons you are not.
Instead, use your words to speak what you want. “I am getting better every day. I am taking a risk to put out a podcast and share my story.” These are big risks, but those words are alchemy. I have a couple of things I say every day, and I will share them with you because they make a big difference to me. Abundance is a mindset. I am abundant every day. It is abundant. Abundance is not tied to money. That is a factor, but abundance is the freedom to live the life I want to live, and a big chunk of that was my own personal responsibility.
I had to let go of what other people thought of me. I had to let that bounce off of me, roll off of me, and not carry it with me. I had to let it go. They were heavy bricks I was carrying around. If you think of an eagle, can an eagle fly the highest it can fly if it is carrying a load of bricks? No, you need to let that stuff go so you can soar to the heights of who you need to be. Words are alchemy. They are going to teach the filter in your brain what to do.
Be careful what you speak. Words become alchemy. They become the ignited spark of energy that travels a certain way. Be careful what you say. You cannot always control your thoughts, but you can control what you say. Be mindful of yourself. Be gentle with yourself. Give yourself permission. Give yourself a little grace. You are human. You are allowed to make a mistake.
You are just not allowed to make the same mistake a hundred times without growing. That is probably where the problems come in. Mistakes happen. We are not perfect. Give ourselves permission. Priority 1, 2, 3. If it is a priority, it is a priority that you do it every day. It does not matter on the scale. An A, B, or C is still a passing grade.
I also want to talk to you about letting go. We touched on the subject that a bird cannot soar when it is carrying weight. The hardest thing is letting go. I remember talking to a friend of mine, and we were talking about something heavy, like a life thing. I am not going to break confidence. We all know those kinds of things. They are a weight. They are heavy. They do not feel good. At one point, she asked me how I felt about it. I just said, “Is this mine to carry?” It was not my weight to carry. I had to give myself permission to let that go.
That act opened up a priority 1, 2, 3 for me, where I started realizing I could let other things go. For me personally, on top of healing, I had to heal from the inside. I had to do that hard work that nobody wants to look in the mirror and see the ugly parts of themselves, but I sure had to do that. Letting go was a big one. Will this matter in five years from now? I have lived enough life to know that. I can remember when I was twenty, and I had a broken heart, “It was going to end forever.” I think it was some broken heart song, “Where do broken hearts go?” Come on, we have all been there. I had the wonderful ‘80s music to get me through it. There are some great ‘80s love songs.
The whole point is I can remember myself at that time because it was five years ago. I can remember myself at that time thinking life was over on that day. It was never going to end. It was the end-all, be-all. “I will never find love again.” Every single one of us has had that broken heart. If you have not, you probably have not lived much.
Finding Purpose (Ikigai) & Letting Go
If you can go back and think of that version of you, the world was ending. The sky was falling. DEFCON 5. It was the worst of the worst. If you look back at you now, you can probably go, “I thought that was the end,” but it was not that big a deal. There is a beautiful concept in Japanese culture called Ikigai. Ikigai is your reason for being.
Maybe some of us say, "What is my purpose?" I am not sure that it is going to go that deep. The idea of Ikigai and what I find the most beautiful about it is that when you live from your purpose, when you are doing what you love, what aligns with you, the work feels lighter, the day feels brighter. The road is lighter, the day is sunnier, and you can fly higher.
When you live from your purpose—when you’re doing what you love and what aligns with you—the work feels lighter, the day feels brighter, the road feels easier, and you can fly higher.
When you live from your Ikigai, you have a purpose. There are many resources out there to figure it out. In fact, there is a beautiful book called Ikigai. I highly recommend it. The whole idea is what is your purpose living from where you are at? Remember the RAS and the filter and words being alchemy. All of that goes along with that concept. What is your reason for being? When I started, Ikigai seemed overwhelming, just like the pasta bowl.
It seemed completely out of touch. Am I supposed to know what my purpose is? I just survived death. Am I supposed to know a purpose? I gave myself permission to scale the habit. Started small. Priority 1, 2, 3. Somebody recommended journaling to me. I cannot stand a journal. My left hand does not even work yet. Writing is not easy.
I found that place to start with my awareness priority 1, 2, and 3. What do I love? What makes me feel warm and expanded? What words do I not like? Here is an interesting fact. I have a potty mouth. I cuss. Before the stroke, I had the heart of a mermaid in the mouth of a sailor. Somehow, after the stroke, my brain changed a little bit, and cussing did not come out.
It is not like I tried to stop. It just stopped on its own. Apparently, it stressed me out like an f-bomb. I think when you go back to the concept of Ikigai and your priorities, you just think about those words being alchemy. You find different ways of communicating, different ways of seeing. Do not put the pressure on yourself that you have to know your life's purpose.
Sometimes your Ikigai could just be, "I am raising my family." My Ikigai is, "I come home, and I make dinner." My Ikigai is, "I am responsible for watering the plants in the house." You do not need to have it be your reason for living. That is the purpose of it. Maybe give yourself permission to scale that back a little bit. You do not need so much pressure on yourself.
You could choose to do, "What is my Ikigai today? What is my Ikigai for the week?” Maybe you start with, "Where does it come from, what gives me joy in my day?” What is the purpose of this horrible thing I went through? I learned so much. My purpose is to share that with people, to teach you what I have learned about the brain, how human beings are biologically wired, and how to get from point A to point B, and find the sustainment that will let you make the massive progress that you want. I want you to be able to look back in six months or a year and go, "Jenna helped me figure this out, and I got from where I did not like being to this wonderful life that I never even thought possible." If I helped just one of you do that, I would have lived my Ikigai.
Let me give you an example of how that manifested itself in my world, for me to shrink to priority 1, 2, and 3. It started in the beginning when I had physical therapy, and I was supposed to walk. Practice walking with a cane and not a walker. I was not even allowed to take a shower on the day I was doing physical therapy. My body could not do it all. You want to talk about stretch goals, and the doctor would like me to walk a mile. I cannot even walk four driveways without a cane. How is that possible?
Instead of worrying about how I was going to get there, breaking it into manageable chunks of priority 1, 2, and 3 made sense at that time when I was very broken. For me, priority one was that I was just going to make sure that I was ready for physical therapy. If it took a wipe, extra deodorant, and some perfume, okay, I was aware that my instruction was not to shower before it. That was priority two.
Priority one was "I feel great today. I have the most energy in the world. I am firing on all cylinders. I am going to actually take a shower even though that is not what they want me to do, but I am going to push myself, yay." That was priority one. It did not mean that I could do it every time. Priority three was "I can barely get up out of bed. My left side is convulsing. My brain is full. I have a headache. Physically, I could not do it.”
It would have been so easy to just tell everybody my excuse was that I could not. "I do not feel good today." I did not feel good any day back then. I think when I put it in those perspectives, priority three was that I was not going to cancel physical therapy. When she arrived at my house, because they sent her to my house, I would just tell her I do not have it in me.
Self-Compassion & Positive Self-Talk In Daily Life
Sometimes that would be that we did my entire physical therapy with a walker and not a cane. We did not even attempt to walk. Firing on all cylinders, I would walk around the block, shower before I did it, and on priority two, I just did the best I could to be ready for when she arrived to push my body. I promise you that back in those days, after physical therapy, a two-hour nap was normal. I was exhausted. Again, shrinking that task and setting reasonable priorities helped me sustain it.
The way you talk to yourself will set you up for things. Be careful what you say to yourself and others. I bet every single one of us could go back and look at the way we talk to ourselves. If we talk that way to our spouse, our mother, or our boss, we would probably have a big fire to put out. If you talk that way to your boss, you would probably be fired. Your mom or sister might not speak to you again. Your partner might go find someone else.
Words are alchemy. Be careful what you say to yourself. You are always listening. Think about that for a second. You are always listening. The cells of your body want you to talk to them. They love it when you do. I’m natural at talking to myself in the shower and go, "Thanks for losing a pound this week," or "Guess what, girl? I saw you lift that bowl."
Before the stroke, I did not pat myself on the back. I did not congratulate myself for a single thing. There was not a person in my life saying, "Yes, girl, you did that. Congratulations on your big win." Why would I not talk to myself that way? When I started doing that, the cells of my body responded. The energy in my mind responded.
There are studies of plants, of all things. I am a plant lover. If you see my house, it is a jungle. Truly, it is a jungle. Ask my kids. Think about plants. Some studies show that when speaking positively to plants, they reproduce faster, grow greener, and grow taller. When speaking negatively to them, their growth is stunted. You are no different. Plants are full of water cells just like you. If you can talk positively to plants and make them grow, why would you not talk positively to yourself?
You absolutely deserve it. I bet from a psychology perspective, if you went back and did the work, you would actually see that the voice telling you you are not good enough is probably not even your own. Watch what you say. Words are alchemy. It is called spelling for a reason. Until next time, remember, karma is real, energy is contagious. Check your vibes.
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