The Happy and Prosperous Blog

The subject of today’s post is intention. Let’s start with some definitions.This first definition is from www.dictionary.net

• A stretching or bending of the mind toward an object; closeness of application; fixedness of attention; earnestness.

The second one comes from www.margaretmccraw.com/glossary.html

• Blending strong desire with strong belief to create a deliberate outcome.

John Locke, the British philosopher said

Intention is when the mind, with great earnestness, and of choice, fixes its view on any idea.

Use of Intention

I’d like to suggest that setting an intention is a useful tool we can all use to help ourselves get more of what we want. There are lots of ways in which we can use intention but first of all we have to be clear about what we want - we need to be specific about the outcome we want to create. I have written on the blog here before about being clear and specific about our goals and objectives in life. It is equally important to be clear and specific about much shorter term things too. And I’d like to focus on the short-term today.

Short Term Intention

What do you want from today ? If you’re at work, ask yourself, what do I want from this meeting, or from the next hour ? If you’re meeting friends then, how would you like your time with them to be ? Sometimes, when I have been teaching a group of adults, I have suggested that we have a couple of minutes silence at the beginning of a workshop and I have asked the participants to set their own intention for the session. My expectation here, following the second definition above, was that we would all gain more from the teaching, i.e. create a deliberate outcome.

Setting an intention is a way of focussing the mind. In that sense, it is similar to setting a goal or an objective. However, I think there is another dimension to intention. For me intention is more active and more personal. When I set an intention I feel that there is more of me invested in it. It’s a way that I use to keep my internal state / beliefs / desires in sync with the way I am acting in the world, i.e. keeping a congruence between the internal and the external. It answers questions like

• Do I really want this or do I merely want to want it ?
• Is my heart really in this activity ?
• Am I being authentic ?

Influencing The Future

Beyond that there is another level. I believe that if we are clear enough and specific enough and if we truly want the outcome we set, then this actually influences the outcome energetically. At one level we are all made up of energy. (I wrote more details about that in the article called Who Are You.) We influence the energy of the Universe through our thoughts and then the Universe (or whatever you prefer to call it) can create what it is we have intended. Yes, this is the Law of Attraction again !

I believe we can influence the future using the power of our mind. This is a theme of The Science of Getting Rich and it is a technique we can use on a daily or even hourly basis to create a happier and more complete life.

Your Task

If you’re willing to give this a chance, then I would ask you to set an intention for today or, at least, part of today. Be clear and specific about what you want - maybe even write it down - then come back to it at the end of the day and see what happened. This may take practice, so if it doesn’t work out first time, please don’t give up. You don’t go the gym once to get fit, so keep working on this and I feel sure you will be able to create more of what you want in life.

Please let me know via the comments how you get on. Thanks for reading.

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