Why Intention Matters - and How To Artfully Create Your Experience.
When I was not yet born, or even a thought in someone's mind, my parents set an intention to go on a journey. This was long before I knew what it was to watch the birth of my kitten who was named Tashi after a wise Tibetan lama, and to have a father who made jewellery inspired by designs from the East, and a mother who drew madalas and made homemade yoghurt and did yoga in the mornings, or had even heard the sitar music that was played to me on my canary yellow walkman when I couldn't sleep.
In the summer of 1973 my parents had just married in a small registry office ceremony in North London, my mum wearing a white cheesecloth dress, embroidered with red and orange stitching, and my dad a pair of trousers, a white short and a jumper, his wild beard and long curly hair framing a huge smile. Not long back from a trip to Greece, Egypt and the Lebanon, they asked for a small amount of money as a wedding gift that would pay their way through an adventure overland to India, traveling only on foot, bus and train. Together they made the exhausting and often difficult journey to the Himalayas, through Turkey, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and into India and Nepal, where they lived for a time in a hut on the side of the mountain. Experiences that to us now seem extraordinary, travelling through lands that are now war-torn and some destroyed, they saw the Dali Lama in ceremony in his exiled hometown, heard Krishnamurti talk in Delhi and immersed in cultures far away from the home land they knew. This travel took an enormous amount of energy and personal internal resources, but they had set their intention, pointed themselves in a direction, and their life followed a distinct path forward into their futures. On the day they set off they couldn't possibly have known it, but their powerful intention to experience something different from the sheltered small-town world they knew set the course for their life, the life of the baby they were yet to have, and for their grandchildren too.
The Power of Artful Intention Setting
We tend to put more thought and intention into where we want to travel to than we do about how we want to live, aligning our careers to our personal values, or even in knowing what our values are and what we actually want to stand for. Whether you were consciously aware of it at the time or not, the life you have right now was created by your past intentions. You put your focus in a direction and each step you took created the path that you have walked along to get you here, even where you weren't completely present to the decision. Was it consciously and artfully intended?
How does that feel as you sit with that question now? Obvious? Slightly uncomfortable? What else?
Were those intentions that got you here set consciously, or do they feel somehow as though they just happened to you? Were you following your heart, or a path suggested by someone else? Did you create the space to know? Did you know how to ask for what you actually wanted? Were you bold and audacious in your dreams?
The Rules of Intention
~Success follows Intention.
~The people you have in your life and the quality of your relationships follows intention.
~Where you live and what you care about follows intention.
~And your intention in this moment sets your path for the future.
Introducing Choice
When we do an intention audit, many people find they are actually following a path laid out a long time ago, perhaps by the wishes of other people, or some perceived obligation. Some find that they started out with a powerful intention but somehow it got diluted or even lost along the way.
Many are misusing the power of intention and then are wondering why life isn't working.
Many of my clients find that they hold beliefs or habits that get in the way of being able to even see clearly how they direct their intention, or why. Or maybe no one ever gave them permission to explore this before.
Perhaps they forgot, or didn't ever know, that each day comes with a need to recommit to their powerful intention. Did you?
Do the tales you tell yourself in those quieter moments support the intentions you choose, or undermine them? Do they inspire you to get up and enjoy another day or leave you a little flat?
Are the stories you tell yourself helpful or harming?
Some of the most powerful work you can do is in clearing the emotional and spiritual rubble to allow you a clear path to positive intention setting towards a future that makes your heart sing, supports this incredible planet we live on and the people with whom you share it, and that you can know is aligned to who you are and what you are here to do. I'm so glad my parents directed themselves toward an unconventional experience. My life path was set in a direction that I have then been able to hone with my intentional experience. My life has been informed by the wisdom teachings of those lands traveled by my parents and by setting my own powerful personal intentions and trusting the outcome. And the incredible spiral of life links the adventures of my parents to the path that my children now take.
What Changes for Your When Your Direct Your Intention Well?
Understand what gifts you are here to experience and to give (the two go hand in hand!) and inspire the world with your ideas, values and beliefs. Get so clear and decisive on where you put your intention and energy that the dream you dream becomes so much more than just a dream.
Or what if you never did that and instead let the incredible power of intention drain into all of the things you don't really care about? What if those frustrations you experience continued unchanged for another 50 years. How would that then feel at the end of your life looking back?
It is seemingly easy to make a difference that changes everything, yet few do this successfully. But it is much simpler than you might think and incredibly powerful and positive for those who do.
In a short time with me you can discover how to harness the power of intention and create so much more of the life you already know is possible. Get in touch to make this investment in yourself, in your family and in the inspired and meaningful future that is here waiting for you. And if you feel inspired to do share with me directly, or in the comments here what it means to you to get more intentional with your beautiful, precious life.