Always Ques­tion Your Intent — the best way to fig­ure out where you are going, and what you can do next, is to ques­tion your own focus. Far too often, we allow the dra­mas in our heads, the “I know what you are intend­ing” thoughts, to dom­i­nate. We then go off half cocked, miss­ing clues to the con­trary, dig­ging holes for our­selves. Remem­ber: our dra­mas are just that — plays we invent for our own amusement.

Being truly alive means shut­ting the inner TV off once in a while, and sim­ply enact­ing our intent.

Below are sev­eral illus­tra­tions and sug­ges­tions designed to help you ques­tion your intent!

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The Canada Update

Our new home and office

Pro­duc­tive week. We have a new home in Water­loo, at 544 Drum­mer­hill Cres­cent, Water­loo, Ontario N2T 1G4. The house phone is: 519.954.3495, if you’d like to sat “hi” or book a ses­sion!! I’ll update the Google Map thingie on the site soon!

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I love client stories.

One thing that’s hap­pened on our trip to Costa Rica is that I’ve heard from a few peo­ple who were clients, say­ing thanks. I’m appre­cia­tive of their words, and often they remind me of some sig­nif­i­cant event from our dia­logue times.

Here’s an exam­ple: It was some years ago, in Decem­ber. “Sally” and I had been dis­cussing “Intent,” as in:

“What are you intend­ing to accom­plish, and is the way you are choos­ing to act right now aid­ing or hin­der­ing your stated intent?”

Good tim­ing, as the fol­low­ing hap­pened a cou­ple of days after our ses­sion. Sally was writ­ing out the ubiq­ui­tous Xmas let­ter, and because it was some years ago, intended to mail it. So, she printed out a test ver­sion. She next decided to ask her hus­band to read it over before print­ing out enough for the teem­ing masses. Her hus­band read the let­ter, agreed it was OK, and even con­grat­u­lated her for a job well done.

Then, the fun began.

He thought of him­self as the “man of the house,” and assumed that tech­nol­ogy was sub­ject to his deft touch. So, off he went to the com­puter, where he attempted to print a bunch. The pro­gram opened, sent the let­ter to the printer, and then…

Noth­ing. Nada.

He tried to get the printer to work by repeat­edly click­ing “Print” on the com­puter screen. Nada, again.

Sally sug­gested that maybe the printer was out of ink.

He loudly and ‘colour­fully’ assured her that she hadn’t the least clue about com­put­ers — and that she couldn’t pos­si­bly be right about what was hap­pen­ing. He fid­dled some more. Fail­ing, he swore and jumped up and down, blamed her for break­ing the printer, wig­gled some wires, failed mis­er­ably at get­ting the thing to print, and then, because really, what else could he do, he ended the evening by stomp­ing off to his room.

Now you know one rea­son she was doing therapy

I asked her what she would have done in the past.

Sally described what her “nor­mal” behav­iour would have been, as she reacted to her husband’s behav­iour — to get really small, to try to dis­ap­pear, to agree that she, indeed, had bro­ken the printer, and to do any­thing to get him to stop being mad at her. She added,

“That’s what I learned to do when my dad got mad.”

Well, yes. We do learn behav­iours at our par­ents’ knees, and we learn from our tribes, and we build and build on what we learned. In a sit­u­a­tion like this, it does feel “nor­mal” to want to do what I’ve always done.

Until we “ques­tion our intent.”

This is the part my client really under­stood from the prior ses­sion. As she felt her­self shrink­ing, she thought, “What’s my intent here?” She real­ized that she had two inten­tions, and because they were her inten­tions, both could be ful­filled by her, with­out any­one else doing any­thing different.

• First, she wanted to print her Xmas letter.
• Sec­ond, she was curi­ous about her husband’s anger.

She also real­ized that, in the past, she would have done any­thing to get him to stop his behav­iour — she would have fol­lowed him to his room, begged his for­give­ness, endured his silence while blam­ing herself.

She saw that this would have been an intent to change some­one else — an impos­si­ble task.

So this time, as he stomped out of the room, she wished him a “Good night,” and decided not to take his anger per­son­ally. The next morn­ing, she went to an office sup­ply place, bought a new ink car­tridge, inserted it, and printed out her Xmas letter.

First inten­tion met. When her hus­band got home, she said, “Guess what! I fixed the com­puter!” He asked her how that was pos­si­ble. She replied, “I replaced the ink car­tridge, and printed off the letter.”

Now, I know. You prob­a­bly thought that she “should” have said, “See. I told you so.” But by sim­ply stat­ing the “I replaced the ink car­tridge” part, she didn’t esca­late the episode from the night before.

With­out an esca­la­tion, she was able to take the oppor­tu­nity to invite her hus­band to talk about his anger. He did, halt­ingly, and that began their even­tual dia­logue about all mat­ters emo­tional. Sec­ond inten­tion met.

It is sim­ple to become aware of my own intent. I am also clear that, with­out ask­ing, I am igno­rant of the intent of oth­ers. On the other hand, I can pre­tend not to know my own inten­tions, while imag­in­ing I have oth­ers all fig­ured out. But when I do that, I am lying to myself.

Dar­bella and I pull off all kinds of stuff, because of our intent to work well together. Just ahead of com­ing to Costa Rica, we moved all of our “stuff” into two stor­age lock­ers. (OK, we paid two guys to move the washer… we’re old, after all!) We emp­tied our town­house, filled a truck, and emp­tied it, all in 6 hours.

As we were strug­gling with the small chest freezer — get­ting it out of the base­ment and into the truck — we remem­bered another time, and another chest freezer. We gave that one to a friend.

We moved some fur­ni­ture, hauled in the freezer, and car­ried it down a stair­case with a bend in the mid­dle, and deposited the freezer in the base­ment. Our friend com­mented that she’d never seen two peo­ple move some­thing like we did. No yelling, blam­ing, fight­ing. Just teamwork.

Dar said, “We’ve had a lot of prac­tice.” Indeed, that’s true. But I also know we’ve never squab­bled over mov­ing some­thing. I said, “Yeah, and we hang wall­pa­per together, too.”

The rea­son we do this so well is all about our intent. Our intent, always, is to com­mu­ni­cate clearly, let the other know where we are, and to come to a place of agreed upon res­o­lu­tion. In this case, then, our intent was to get the freezer to the base­ment with­out hurt­ing our­selves, the walls, or the freezer.

Our intent was not to:

• be in charge
• be right
• be short tempered
• have a fight.

It really is this sim­ple. And we “do” life in the same way.

Prior to mov­ing the freezer off of the porch, we walked through the house, mov­ing things out of the way. We looked at the stairs, real­ized they were slip­pery, and there­fore left our boots on. Inter­est­ingly, there was a point, try­ing to get the freezer around the 90 degree bend, where I rested it on the steel toe of my boot.

After pick­ing the freezer up, Dar said, “I’m going to put both hands under­neath.” She had one hand under, one hand on the back of the freezer. She let me know this so I could com­pen­sate for the weight shift when she briefly let go with one hand to move it. I had to stick my head out around the freezer, to see her hand and watch — then I could com­pen­sate pre­cisely when she let go. I then decided to do the same with my hands, so she watched me.

As we moved the freezer, we checked with each other as to our “tired­ness.” On the stairs, we got jammed up a bit on the turn. We found a way to rest the weight evenly, while hav­ing a dis­cus­sion about what to do. One of us would sug­gest, then we’d try it to see if it worked. Three tries, and around the bend she went.

Now, we could have gone to anger or frus­tra­tion or whin­ing, but this wouldn’t have accom­plished our intent — to get the freezer into the basement.

Life, as I said, is the same.

• If my intent is to deepen a rela­tion­ship, then I need to eval­u­ate my actions and choices and words on the basis of that intent.
• If my intent is to be inti­mate, I need to dis­ci­pline myself to move closer, not back up.
• If my intent is to imple­ment a project, then every­thing I “do” will lead to the com­ple­tion of the project. There­fore, it is also my respon­si­bil­ity to trans­late my project into lan­guage oth­ers can understand.
• If my intent is good com­mu­ni­ca­tion, I will be aware of what works and what doesn’t — with each per­son I’m try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate with. I will choose to com­mu­ni­cate, for exam­ple, in “Darbella-speak,” which means that I know which ways of say­ing things work with her — and which ways she chooses to annoy her­self with. I need to get over myself and any think­ing that she should just “put up with me” when I mis­s­peak myself. I’m an adult, and if I’m aware of my intent, I can choose not to pro­voke when my goal is good communication.

Far too often, we allow the dra­mas in our heads, the “I know what you are intend­ing” thoughts, to dom­i­nate. We then go off half cocked, miss­ing clues to the con­trary, dig­ging holes for our­selves. Remem­ber: our dra­mas are just that — plays we invent for our own amusement.

Being truly alive means shut­ting the inner TV off once in a while, and sim­ply enact­ing our intent.

If you are always in your head, imag­in­ing what you don’t have and think you really want, you tend to miss what you already have. By stay­ing present, being in the moment — I have the best chance of being real. I can cel­e­brate this moment in my life — and why not? It’s all that exists.

What do you want for your life? In all of that want­ing, what are you miss­ing that you already have? In your wish to be right, are you liv­ing a ful­fill­ing life? In your quest for per­fec­tion, or wis­dom, or enlight­en­ment, are you fail­ing to notice your whole­ness — the good, the bad, the indif­fer­ent? What would hap­pen in your life if you chose whole­ness, pres­ence, and clar­ity as your clear intent — and lived each moment in the moment, liv­ing and breath­ing your intent?

Hmm. Maybe liv­ing your intent and cel­e­brat­ing your intent would be… enough.

At the very least, the freezer would get to the base­ment — and ele­gantly at that.

Related posts:

1. A Question of Intent
2. A Question of Experience