Goals and intentions

What marks A-personality achievers from other people are the goals they set. They plan their days and lives towards achieving these goals. Success, happiness, money, a family home, good education for their children, the consistent step up their career ladders. All these are end objectives that are mapped out, though they may be far into the future. The identification of these goals creates the directional path towards where they want to go. These goals are like the champion’s trophy, the award, the very objective of what the rat race of life is about. Goals are clear and conscious choices, our outer objectives for the future.

Even less aggressive personalities have goals, though maybe not as ambitious and may be easier to reach. A vacation for next year (no matter how humble), a car plan, health benefits, all such concerns that color our everyday within a society, in this kind of materialistic world we live in.

While goals are great to have, and which always give some form of direction in our lives. There is something, in my opinion, which is more important, and can be more meaningful to our lives. This is intention.

We first understand intention as being a reason for our actions. People do things, commit acts because there is an intention behind the act. A man courts and woos a woman because there is the intention to marry her and make her mother of his children. A businessman works hard so he can provide well for his family. A woman serves her man because she loves him. There is a reason for the act. On the negative side, a man hurts another to rob him of his money so he has money to buy what he wants. There is a follow through for some short-term goal.

So intention is what colors our actions. Intentions can be good or bad, if we look at things in a dualistic manner (being either good or bad, black or white, right or wrong, higher or lower).

However, there is another aspect, a special nuance to intention which we are not aware of or even know about. Intention is also the act, that energy or mind-thought, the faith, to work out an aspect of a process of living. It is the process of putting awareness and consciousness in the moment, in each moment as we move towards the larger goals of our lives.

Let us take, for example, a traditional mother-homemaker with the goals of achieving a solid family home, being able to raise her children with the solid values, and the financial capability to give them a good education. Her intentions are what would color the quality of her journey. She wakes up with a clear intention to make the best of the day, as though it were her last. She would then try her best to be aware of the many activities of the day and pour herself totally into them, enjoying everything including those activities that normally would make her climb the wall. Facing a screaming bratty child, she forms an intention of patience, to hold back and breathe and detach a little from the drama of being played out by the child. This can be repeated as she faces a rude shopkeeper, or the turtle speed of traffic. This desire for the virtue of patience is itself an intention. She may also have the intention to always face her children with an optimistic and positive angle at looking at life, and the firm conviction that she must educate only the best and highest values she possesses.

To be aware of the power of intentions is to live a life that is awake and purposeful. It gives depth to the moments of our journey as we try to move towards goals that we have consciously set. Because not only our goals will be conscious directions, the process of getting there, with clear intentions, makes the journey all the more powerful. Intentions are our inner values lived everyday in the "now." To bring intention into our life is a way of bringing spirit in, as we intend for only the higher, lighter, brighter side of ourselves to shine forth.

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E-mail me at: jej1@easycall. com.ph