Intention Means Effort

November 23, 2007

Striving and Thriving

The thing you set your mind on is the thing you ultimately become.

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

What more needs to be said?

In this Age of The Secret and The Law of Attraction—much.

Age-old wisdom has been mainstreamed and popularized. As with most concepts, mainstreaming and popularizing means losing some important components.

I am much more comfortable with the term “Law of Intention” than “Law of Attraction.” I believe effort is required. Intention focuses the mind so your efforts are more productive. When you focus on your goal, your mind at many levels starts listening, gathering information, and solving problems. You see patterns you didn’t recognize before. You become aware of resources you hadn’t thought of.

You see paths to your goal that seem like they pop into your mind. I think there’s a part of the brain that’s working hard putting pieces together, and when your unconscious mind delivers the “finished report” to your awareness it seems like it comes from outside your own thoughts. But I believe it’s processed in your own mind.

Intention is the difference between wanting to be a famous actress and meditating on it each day, and planning to be a famous actress and finding every opportunity to improve your craft and be seen by other people. Intention looks for opportunities to earn money instead of visualizing checks arriving in the mailbox. Intention seeks the path to the goal.

It reminds me of the classic joke about the man who prays diligently each week to win the lottery. After months without winning, he’s beseeching and yearning and pleading with God. Suddenly he hears a voice from above. “Help me out a little. Buy a ticket.”

I think that visualizing the end goal helps make it more real and more believable. I think our minds pursue what we believe is possible and avoid what we believe is impossible. So meditating and visualizing the goal are useful. But even more important is what occurs when you focus your thoughts on <em>the next steps.</em>

It can be helpful to meditate I will be successfully self-employed in five years, or even Money comes to me easily and regularly.

But it’s much more powerful to meditate I will see my next step to discovering and starting my own business, or to think Every day I see more ways to create income from ideas.

It is focused attention that brings information, awareness, and opportunities to you. It is effort and intention that turns thoughts into reality. That happens when you set your mind to discovering your path, finding the next step, and taking it.

With intention, The thing you set your mind on is the thing you ultimately become.

Posted in Striving and Thriving, Zine 2: November 2007, Zines in 2007