Goals, Priorities, and Intentions Assignment

This assignment involves a series of self-reflection exercises in which you focus on your specific goals, priorities and intentions while at university.

Self-reflection depends on self-awareness, which is a complex and sometimes difficult skill to master. The short list which follows can be viewed as a primer for self-awareness; it shows the direction of thinking, or feeling, that self-awareness and mindfulness entail. Please use these prompts to guide your self-reflection:

• What am I feeling right now?
• What am I thinking right now?
• Why am I reacting in this particular way?
• What do my thoughts, feelings, and reactions tell me about myself?
• Is there anything about my current feelings or behavior that suggests ongoing themes in my life?
• Is my perception of myself consistent with what other people tell me about the kind of person I am?
• When and how do I get stuck, and what am I doing to work on this?
• In what ways do I get overwhelmed, or shut down, or avoid?
• Where am I going in my life?

These questions, and many others, require the capacity for self-reflection and self-awareness. As we continue in the course, you may wish to consider these questions as they apply to you. At the very least, you might wish to consider what you are currently working on in your life, in which direction your attention is drawn, into which of the innumerable themes of human nature you are now called to delve.

There are there parts to this assignment, as follows:

Creating Awareness

During the first week of the assignment you will be asked to keep track of your time. This includes time spent sleeping, preparing food and eating, getting ready, commuting, attending class, studying, working, taking care of dependents, exercising, watching TV, playing video games, socializing, etc. At the end of one week, you will make a tally of how much time you spent in each of these activities and reflect on your thoughts about these findings. You will be asked to consider what each of these activities contributes to or detracts from the quality of your life.

Determining Goals, Priorities, and Commitments

During the first week of the assignment you will also be asked to outline at least two goals for the semester, two goals for the year, and two goals that you would like to achieve throughout your time at Kwantlen. In addition, you will be asked to consider the various activities and relationships in your life and what priority they have for you and why. You will be asked to discuss whether you believe that you are currently living in a way that is moving you towards or away from these goals and priorities and why this is happening.

You will also be asked to create a schedule for the semester ahead, including various details of coursework, deadlines, assignments, work commitments, personal commitments, and so on.

Living with Intention

During the second week of the assignment you will be asked to begin each day with ten to fifteen minutes of silence in which you mindfully contemplate what it is you most want to accomplish (the process of developing mindfulness will be discussed in class and will be practised through a series of exercises). You will be asked to use these periods of mindfulness to consider which changes you would like to make to your current approach to your lifestyle and time allocation. In this second week, you will once again track your time, but this time you will focus on making your desired changes.

The assignment concludes with a short analysis (roughly 500 words) that explores your learning within the context of the assignment. What did you learn in the first part of the assignment? What stood out most in the second part of the assignment? How did things change across the weeks? What did you do differently? How did reality line up with your expectations? What got in the way? What will you continue to do differently, or what might you work on in the future to continue moving towards your goals? These and other suggested lines of inquiry will be discussed in class.

This assignment is worth 30 percent of your final grade.