I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. They tend to smuggle in a quiet kind of pressure, turning the turning of the year into a performance review of your life. Suddenly you are measuring yourself against abstract ideals, borrowed goals, and the fantasy of a more disciplined future version of you. None of that has much to do with the real, breathing conditions of your days. Real change does not happen because you bully yourself with targets. It happens when you start paying attention to what is actually alive, strained, hopeful, or unfinished inside you right now.
Instead, I like to set an intention for the year. Not a target to chase or a habit to police, but a quality of attention, a way of meeting whatever actually arrives. An intention is not a demand placed on the future. It is a posture you take toward it. It shapes how you listen, how you respond, and how you move through uncertainty. Where goals try to control outcomes, intentions tune your awareness.
That difference matters. “I will lose twenty pounds” treats your life like a project to be optimized. “I will listen to what my body needs” treats it like a relationship to be tended. One narrows you into success or failure. The other keeps you in conversation with what is real. An intention does not tell you what must happen. It tells you how you will show up, even when things do not go according to plan.
This year, I created a tarot spread specifically for this work. I call it The Intention Forge, and it helped me discover and clarify my intention in a way that felt genuinely rooted in reality rather than aspiration.
The Intention Forge Tarot Spread
This is a five-card spread that treats intention-setting as a conversation with your unconscious rather than a decree from your conscious mind. Here’s how it works:
Position 1: The Ground You Stand On
Where are you actually starting from? Not where you wish you were, but what’s the real current state of your consciousness, your life, your work right now? This card shows you your actual launch point, complete with whatever momentum, mess, or middle-ground reality you’re in.
Position 2: The Hidden Fuel
What energy, desire, or need is actually driving you forward this year? This is the underground river powering your intention, often something you haven’t fully acknowledged yet. Not what you think should motivate you, but what actually does.
Position 3: The Edge to Meet
What challenge, shadow, or growing edge wants to be engaged this year? What does your psyche actually need you to work with, whether you like it or not? This isn’t about fixing yourself. It’s about seeing what wants attention.
Position 4: The Medicine Available
What gift, ally, or capacity is ready to support you? What strength or wisdom can you actually draw on? This card reminds you that you’re not starting from zero. You have resources.
Position 5: The Intention Itself
This card doesn’t tell you what your intention should be. It shows you the quality, energy, or archetypal pattern that wants to shape how you move through this year. Your actual intention emerges from reading all five cards together, not from this single card alone.
My Reading: Walking Out of Self-Imposed Prisons
When I pulled cards for myself, here’s what emerged:
1. The Ground I Stand On: Three of Wands
I’m already launched. Projects are deployed, work is in the world, things are moving. I’m not at the beginning. I’m in that slightly uncomfortable middle place where I’ve committed, I’ve sent my ships out, and now I’m watching to see what comes back. There’s vision here, but also the vulnerability of having already invested.
2. The Hidden Fuel: The Fool
What’s actually driving me is pure beginner’s mind, the willingness to step off edges I can’t see the bottom of. Despite all my experience, the fuel source is radical openness, the capacity to NOT know, to trust the process without guarantees. This is genuine experimentation, not predetermined outcomes.
3. The Edge to Meet: Three of Pentacles
The challenge isn’t solitary mastery. It’s collaboration, showing my work, getting feedback, building something WITH others rather than just FOR others. This card says the growth edge is in the vulnerable act of co-creation, of letting my work be shaped by real exchange rather than perfected in isolation first.
4. The Medicine Available: Six of Pentacles
I have genuine resources to give and the wisdom to give them well. There’s a maturity here about exchange, about knowing when to give, when to receive, how to maintain flow without either hoarding or depleting myself. I actually know how to work with reciprocity.
5. The Intention Itself: Eight of Swords
At first glance, this looks like constraint, being trapped. But look deeper: those swords aren’t touching her. The bindings are loose. She could walk out anytime.
My intention for the year is about recognizing and removing the self-imposed limitations that keep me from stepping into what’s already available.
Reading all five cards together, I arrived at this intention:
“I step out of self-imposed prisons and collaborate with what’s actually ready.”
What Makes This Different
The Intention Forge doesn’t give you a motivational poster slogan. It gives you a map of your actual psychic terrain right now. It shows you where you are, what’s moving you, what wants attention, what you can draw on, and what quality wants to shape your year.
Your intention emerges from seeing all of this clearly, not from deciding what sounds good.
For me, this meant recognizing that I’m a people person working in isolation, that I’ve already broken through digital limitations but haven’t yet stepped into physical collaboration, that my actual fuel is experimental openness not expert certainty.
The self-imposed prison I’m walking out of isn’t about capability or readiness. It’s about the stories that keep me preparing instead of engaging with what’s actually available right now.
Try It Yourself
Pull five cards. Sit with them. Don’t rush to positive interpretation or try to make them say what you want to hear. Let them show you what’s actually there.
Your intention will emerge not from position five alone, but from the whole pattern. From seeing your ground, your fuel, your edge, your medicine, and the quality that wants to shape how you move.
And then, like me, you might find yourself putting a date in your calendar for something you’ve been avoiding. Not because you’ve got it all figured out, but because you’re finally ready to walk out of the cell you’ve been sitting in with the door unlocked.
The cards don’t tell you what to do. They show you what’s really lurking beneath you conscious mind. And sometimes, that’s exactly what you need to set an intention that actually means something.
