“I don’t set goals anymore. I set intentions. Goals feel like a punishment I’m assigning myself. Intentions feel like a promise I’m making to myself.”
Okay sis, let’s talk about something that literally changed how I move through my entire life: intentions versus goals. You know that feeling when you write down a goal—like “I’m going to the gym five days a week” or “I’m saving $5,000 by June”—and then you miss one day and suddenly you’re like “well I already ruined it so what’s the point”? Yeah. That is exactly why we need to have this conversation.
I used to be the most aggressive goal-setter you’d ever meet. Bullet journals color-coded. Vision boards with magazine cutouts. Quarterly reviews with myself. And you know what? I was also the most anxious, burned-out, constantly-disappointed version of myself. Because goals are rigid. They don’t bend with your life. And girl, your life is going to bend—midterms hit, your roommate moves out, your car needs a $900 repair, your mental health decides to take a vacation without telling you. Goals will break under that pressure. But intentions? Intentions flex.
Let me be real with you. This isn’t some fluffy “manifestation” nonsense. This is practical. This is about how you actually get what you want without hating yourself along the way. So grab your coffee, get comfortable, and let me break this down for you the way I wish someone had broken it down for me when I was 19 and sobbing over a missed deadline.
What’s the Actual Difference Between Intentions and Goals?
Here’s the simplest way I can put it: a goal is a destination. An intention is the compass you use to get there. Goals are external—you can check them off a list. Intentions are internal—they shape how you show up every single day, regardless of what life throws at you.
Let me give you an example from my actual life. Last year, I had a goal to grow my savings account to $10,000. Sounds good, right? Specific, measurable, all that stuff. But here’s what happened: I got hit with an unexpected medical bill. $1,200. And my brain went “well, you’re not hitting $10,000 anymore, so why even try?” I almost gave up entirely because the goal felt ruined.
That’s when I switched to intentions. Instead of “save $10,000,” my intention became “I intend to be financially responsible and build security for myself.” That intention didn’t break when life happened. It just adjusted. I still saved money. I just saved less that month. And I didn’t beat myself up about it because my intention was still alive and well.
💡 Quick Tip
Write down one area of your life where you feel like you’re constantly failing. Now reframe it as an intention instead of a goal. Example: Instead of “I want to lose 15 pounds,” try “I intend to nourish my body and move in ways that feel good.” See how that feels different in your chest? That’s not nothing.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about goals: they’re often rooted in shame. Think about it. Most of the goals you set—are they actually yours? Or are they what you think you *should* want? The “perfect body” you see on Instagram. The “successful career” your parents talk about at dinner. The “right relationship” your friends keep asking about. Goals can sometimes be a way of trying to prove you’re enough. And that’s a losing game from the start.
Intentions, though? Intentions come from a completely different place. They come from alignment. From asking yourself “who do I want to BE, not just what do I want to HAVE?” And that shift—from doing to being—is where everything changes.
📓 What Works: The Five Minute Journal – This is the simplest way to start your day with intentions instead of anxiety. You write down what you intend to focus on, and it takes literally five minutes. I’ve been using it for two years and it’s the only habit that’s actually stuck.
Why Intentions Work Better for Women in Their 20s
Let me be honest with you about something. Your 20s are a mess. And I mean that in the most loving way possible. You’re supposed to figure out your career, your relationships, your finances, your identity, your health, and your purpose all at the same time while also paying rent and trying to eat vegetables. That’s insane. And goals—rigid, inflexible, all-or-nothing goals—are not built for chaos. But intentions? Intentions are built for exactly this season of life.
Think about what you’re actually dealing with right now. Maybe you’re a college student trying to balance classes, a part-time job, and a social life while also dealing with imposter syndrome and wondering if you picked the wrong major. Or maybe you’re a young professional in your first real job, realizing that nobody actually knows what they’re doing, and you’re trying to figure out how to ask for a raise without having a panic attack. Or maybe you’re somewhere in between, feeling like everyone else has it together and you’re still trying to figure out how to do laundry without shrinking everything.
Here’s what I need you to hear: intentions give you permission to be a work in progress. They don’t demand perfection. They demand presence. And that is so much more sustainable when your life looks like a Pinterest board that someone accidentally dropped in a puddle.
92% of people who set New Year’s resolutions give up by February. But people who set daily intentions? They’re 3x more likely to follow through long-term.
Yeah that is wild right? Let that sink in. Almost everybody fails at goals. Not because they’re lazy or unmotivated, but because goals are designed to fail when life gets messy. Intentions are designed to flex. And when you’re in your 20s, flexibility isn’t optional—it’s survival.
How to Actually Set Intentions (The Practical Way)
Okay so you’re probably thinking “cool, intentions sound nice, but how do I actually do this?” I got you. Let me walk you through exactly how I set intentions now, and how you can start today without overcomplicating it.
First, pick one area of your life. Just one. Not your whole existence. Pick the thing that’s causing you the most stress or the most shame right now. For me, it was my relationship with money. I was constantly anxious about it, avoiding my bank account, and feeling like I was “bad” at being an adult. So my intention became: “I intend to have a peaceful and honest relationship with my finances.”
Notice what that intention does. It doesn’t say “I will save $500 a month.” It doesn’t say “I will never overspend again.” It says “I intend to be peaceful and honest.” That means on days when I do well, I celebrate. On days when I mess up, I don’t spiral—I just get honest about it and adjust. The intention holds me accountable to my values, not to a number.
How to Set Intentions That Actually Stick:
✅ Start with “I intend to” – This phrasing is powerful because it’s a promise, not a demand. Try it. Say it out loud. “I intend to show up as my authentic self today.” Feel the difference?
✅ Focus on how you want to FEEL – Goals are about what you want to achieve. Intentions are about how you want to feel while achieving it. Do you want to feel peaceful? Confident? Curious? Aligned? Let that feeling guide your intention.
✅ Keep it simple – Your intention should fit in one sentence. If it needs a paragraph, it’s too complicated. “I intend to be kind to myself today.” That’s it. That’s enough.
✅ Write it down every single day – I keep a small notebook by my bed. Every morning, I write my intention for the day. It takes 30 seconds. But it changes everything because it sets the tone before the chaos starts.
✅ Revisit it when things go wrong – This is the most important part. When you’re having a bad day, when you feel like you failed, when life hits you sideways—go back to your intention. Ask yourself: “Can I still honor this intention right now?” 99% of the time, the answer is yes.
Let me give you another example from a friend of mine. She’s 22, just graduated, and struggling with body image. She had a goal to “lose 20 pounds” and it was making her miserable. She was either restricting or bingeing, and the scale controlled her entire mood. When she switched to an intention—”I intend to treat my body with respect and listen to what it needs”—everything shifted. She stopped obsessing over the scale. She started eating intuitively. She moved her body because it felt good, not because she was punishing herself. And guess what? She actually ended up losing weight anyway. But that wasn’t the point anymore. The point was that she stopped hating herself in the process.
The Truth Nobody Tells You
Here’s the real tea: goals and intentions aren’t actually enemies. They can work together. But most people get the order wrong. They start with the goal and then try to force intentions to fit around it. That’s backward. You start with the intention—the way you want to show up, the energy you want to bring, the person you want to be—and then you let goals naturally emerge from that place.
Think of it like this: your intention is the root system of a tree. It’s underground, invisible, but it’s what keeps the whole thing alive. The goals are the branches and leaves—visible, measurable, but completely dependent on that root system. If you focus only on the branches, the tree will die. But if you nourish the roots, the branches take care of themselves.
“Your intention is not about what you want to achieve. It’s about who you want to become in the process of achieving it.”
I want you to think about something for a second. When you look back on your life five years from now, what are you going to remember? Are you going to remember the exact number in your bank account? The specific grade you got on that one exam? The weight on the scale on a random Tuesday? Or are you going to remember how you felt? The relationships you built? The way you showed up for yourself when things got hard?
Intentions are what create the memories that actually matter. Goals create achievements. And achievements are fine—they pay the bills and look good on a resume. But they don’t fill the empty spaces inside you. Only living in alignment with your values can do that.
I remember being 21 and having a complete breakdown in my dorm room because I didn’t get an internship I applied for. I had a goal: “Get a prestigious summer internship.” And when I didn’t get it, I felt like a failure. Like my whole future was ruined. But looking back, that rejection was the best thing that ever happened to me. It forced me to reconsider what I actually wanted, not what I thought I was supposed to want. If I had set an intention instead of a goal—something like “I intend to explore career paths that genuinely interest me”—I would have saved myself months of anxiety and self-doubt.
What This Looks Like in Real Life
Let me give you some concrete examples of how to swap goals for intentions in different areas of your life. Because I know you’re busy and you don’t have time for theory—you need something you can use today.
Do you see the pattern? The goal version is about external validation and rigid outcomes. The intention version is about internal alignment and sustainable behavior. And here’s the kicker: when you set intentions, you often end up achieving the goals anyway. But you get there without the anxiety, without the self-hatred, without the all-or-nothing mentality that keeps so many of us stuck.
I had a reader tell me recently that she used to set a goal to “read 50 books a year.” She’d start strong in January, then fall behind, then feel like a failure, then give up entirely. When she switched to an intention—”I intend to make time for reading because it brings me joy”—she stopped pressuring herself. She read when she wanted to. She didn’t finish books she didn’t like. And at the end of the year? She’d read 47 books. Almost the same number. But she actually enjoyed the process instead of treating it like a chore.
The Science Behind Why Intentions Work
Okay I know I said I wasn’t going to throw a bunch of studies at you without making it relevant, so let me keep this real. There’s actual research on this stuff, and it matters because it explains why you feel the way you feel when you set goals versus intentions.
When you set a rigid goal and then miss it, your brain literally processes it as a threat. Your amygdala—the part of your brain that handles fear and survival—lights up. You go into fight-or-flight mode. That’s why missing a goal doesn’t just feel disappointing—it feels like a personal failure, like something is wrong with you. Your body is having a stress response to a number on a piece of paper.
But intentions work differently. They activate the prefrontal cortex—the part of your brain responsible for planning, decision-making, and self-awareness. Instead of triggering a stress response, intentions trigger a sense of agency. You feel like you’re in control of your choices, not being controlled by external expectations. And that feeling—that sense of “I am choosing this because it matters to me”—is what keeps you going when things get hard.
There’s a study from the University of Scranton that found 92% of people who set New Year’s resolutions never actually achieve them. But here’s what’s interesting: the 8% who do succeed? They don’t focus on the outcome. They focus on the process. They set intentions about how they want to show up, and the results follow. That’s not a coincidence. That’s how human motivation actually works.
💡 Quick Tip
If you’re struggling to shift from goals to intentions, start with a “morning intention practice.” Every morning before you check your phone, take three deep breaths and say one intention out loud. “I intend to be patient today.” “I intend to listen more than I speak.” “I intend to focus on what I can control.” It rewires your brain over time. I promise.
What About When You Actually Need a Goal?
Okay, I’m not going to sit here and tell you to throw out goals entirely. That would be unrealistic. There are times when you need a specific, measurable target. Deadlines exist. Rent is due. Your boss expects deliverables. Goals have their place. But here’s how you make them work without destroying your mental health: you set the goal, but you let the intention be the thing that actually guides you.
Let me give you an example. Right now, I have a goal to launch a new program by a specific date. That’s a goal. It has a deadline, it has deliverables, it’s measurable. But my intention behind that goal is “I intend to create something that genuinely helps women feel less alone in their struggles.” That intention is what gets me out of bed in the morning. That intention is what keeps me going when things go wrong. The goal is just the container. The intention is the fuel.
So no, you don’t have to choose one or the other. You just have to get the hierarchy right. Intention first. Goal second. Always. Because when the goal falls apart—and it will, because life is unpredictable—the intention is still there to catch you.
This is the kind of stuff women talk about inside TechMae every single day. No judgment, just real ones keeping it real. We talk about the things that actually keep us up at night—not just surface-level advice, but the messy, complicated, beautiful reality of trying to figure out who we are and what we want.
Related: This post is a must-read for women on their journey. Because let’s be real—having financial freedom makes it a lot easier to focus on intentions instead of survival.
Start Here
I want you to do something right now. Not tomorrow. Not when you have more time. Right now. Take out your phone or a piece of paper and write down one intention for the next 24 hours. Just one. It can be as simple as “I intend to be present in my conversations today” or “I intend to eat without guilt” or “I intend to speak to myself like I would speak to my best friend.”
