Intent, Action & Intuition: The Three Pillars of Lasting Transformation

Quick Summary

This blog post introduces the Strategic Achievement Framework from Life’s Next Path. It explains how strategic intent, action, and intuition work together to guide meaningful transformation. By combining clear goals, purposeful actions, and intuitive insight, the framework empowers individuals to achieve fulfilment and embrace their next life chapter with confidence and clarity.

Table of Contents

What is Strategic Intent?

What is Strategic Action?

What is Strategic Intuition?

As I continue to share the key lessons and tools from Life’s Next Path, I want to introduce you to the heart of my coaching approach: the Strategic Achievement Framework. This model emerged directly from my lived experience, refined in the crucible of personal transformation and tested in my work with clients seeking clarity, progress, and renewed fulfilment.

Strategic Intent – The Power of Direction

Everything starts with strategic intent. Think of this as setting your compass: clearly defining where you want to go, mapping out your desired path, and considering why that destination matters to you. In coaching, I support clients to orient themselves toward meaningful goals. Together, we explore the “big picture,” using creativity to imagine new and inspiring outcomes for their next life chapter.

Strategic intent means being specific about the result you desire, but also flexible about how you get there. I’ve learned through both research and lived experience that understanding and harnessing intent generates motivation, inspiration, and sustainability. Without clear intent, plans often lose their way. Yet, when intention is combined with intuition, purposeful action becomes not only possible but sustainable.

Strategic Action – Moving with Purpose

Once intent is clear, it’s time for strategic action. What do you truly want your life to look like? My work as a coach involves helping clients examine their behaviours, thoughts, and patterns—uncovering what supports or hinders them. Together, we clarify aspirations and set goals that align with their intention.

Moving from intent to action involves positive, strengths-based goal setting. We tap into intuition to ensure these goals and the steps to achieve them are a true fit for the individual, not just what looks good on paper. Effective action arises when it flows directly from what matters most.

Strategic Intuition – The Game Changer

One of the most transformative lessons of my own journey—and a distinctive hallmark of my approach—is the role of strategic intuition. Drawing on the work of Professor Joel Pearson, I view intuition not as guesswork or a ‘gut feeling,’ but as the productive use of unconscious knowledge to make better decisions and align actions with one’s intent.

If the whole achievement system were a car, intent is the direction, action is the fuel, and intuition is the oil that keeps it all running smoothly. Despite its power, intuition is often overlooked in favour of relentless action. However, I have found that pausing to listen—inwardly and with all our senses—often yields deeper insights and wiser choices than any linear plan could produce.

Crucially, intuition and gut feeling are not the same. Gut feelings are basic survival responses; intuition, by contrast, stems from a higher level of awareness, enabling more informed, creative, and future-focused decision-making. The key is giving yourself permission to pause, reflect, and access this powerful internal guide.

Stay tuned for a further extract from my book Life’s Next Path in next week’s blog.

Dr Carol McGowan
Strategic Achievement Coaching

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