Harnessing the creative power of intention
I met a man called Simon* this week. He lives in London and is supporting a community to build a school in Duwehn Town, Liberia. My first reaction: How? HOW? How do you even start such a bold project in such a distant place? His answer turned out to be very simple. He met a Liberian man called Emmanuel, and asked him what his big idea was. Emanuel told him, “I want to build a school” Simon replied. I will help you. In other words he set an intention. It all flowed from there.
There is a difference between a wish, a desire and an intention. A wish is a casual longing, a vague tugging at the heartstrings that causes us to look up and out into the future, sigh at the beautiful possibilty that is out of our reach, and then bow our heads once more to our myopic view of the present.
A desire is a wish on steroids. We take that peek at the future and then we see it not just in our minds eye, but in our heart and gut. We feel the longing. We start to use all our senses to imagine it. We say that we can ‘almost taste it’ or we ‘love the sound of it’. We ‘envision it’ , ‘feel its the right thing for us’ . We begin to sound like the Spice Girls in our really, really, wanting of it. And yet, its stays forever in the future, remote, separate. Not ours.
An intention is a commitment that calls forth a matching response from the Universe. It’s the mental equivalent of lacing up your boots, shrugging on the knapsack and calling to your companions, “I’m setting off to the dream life, anyone coming?”
Wishes and desires keep us amused. They give us hope. They distract from the tedious reality of our lives. They do not move us forward. Intention on the other hand is the match that ignites the fuel of creativity, and creativity is how you make that future your present.
It is impossible to set a true intention without using a muscular action verb. I am going to found a company. I will earn enough to pay for a new house. I am going to capture the light on these hills in my painting. I am going to be a mentor to the new intake of interns. An intention is expressed in the positive and not the conditional. No wimpy, I wish I could be a CEO of my own company. If only I had enough money to move to Croatia. Wouldn't it be nice if I had Rembrant’s talent. Notice also how those are all expressions of assets one wishes to have? Intentions are about being or doing. I will help you.
An intention is a declaration of certainty, a statement of allegiance to a vision, a squaring yourself up and facing in the right direction with determination. I will help you. It’s also a letting go of other possibilities. Intention is formed at the point where you are prepared to set aside the multiples of ifs and coulds and wouldn’t it be wonderful ifs, available to you, at least temporarily. Your relinquished options may well be wonderful ideas or worthy world-changing projects, but setting an intention is an act of picking.
And that’s why setting an intention is so powerful. Because in forming it you take the first step of creation, which is to make a new arrangement of the possibilities. From a crowd of eager options all jostling for attention you order them, calling one forward, placing the rest in a waiting area, maybe in a tangle still or maybe in a ranked order to wait their allocated turn. And then the magic starts.
Actually, its not really magic. It just feels like it. It’s the accumulation and direction of energy. Hankering takes up energy. When we quit spending energy jonesing for what we quite like the idea of but can’t actually be bothered to do anything about, the energy becomes available to us to spend on the intention. Instead of having scattered attentions we turn a laser view on the choice we have made. There are fewer decisions to make because we have narrower parameters and so we have the capacity to make bolder, more audacious decisions and still have energy left to fool around playing a little bit, just for the fun of it.
We start to design the intention, to know what it is not, what it is intended to achieve. We become able to describe it, not just with clarity but with energetic enthusiasm and that gets us the attention of others. Suddenly doors open, people stick their heads out to see what we are doing. They welcome us into their worlds, give us their knowledge, share their connections. We are so sure now that we know what it is we are intending to do we take up those connections and more people open their doors to us. Some people just cheer us on with much needed encouragement, but many follow.
Eventually we are marching down the road with our knapsack on and a crowd behind us like the Pied Piper of Intentions. All around us the air is bright with flying ideas. As we march we breath in the enthusiasms of the crowd. We refresh ourselves by drinking in the new ideas they bring. So many new possibilities and suddenly, a fog descends. We have lost the intention. We rode it, but we forgot to harness it and now it has bolted away from us.
To harness the creative power of intention means, not just to set it running, but to remain connected with it. It means to keep its magnificent power under your control as you would an Arabian Stallion with a bridle and reins. How to do that? Simply, keep on forming the intention. Keep on moving aside the new possibities your new friends have brought to you. Keep on sorting out what you are going to take and what you are going to leave behind. Keep on saying your positive simple, actions verb sentences. Keep declaring, this is, this will be. Get to know your ‘this’ in the same way you come to know your spouse. Know its curves and wrinkles, its colouring, the way it sounds in your head as you wake together in the morning. Give it the same commitment, the same fidelity.
Communicate with it. Pay it undivided attention. Stay with it.
Claim it.
Then when you achieve it, when it is yours. Begin again. Energy cannot be destroyed, only displaced or transformed. Allow yourself some time to sort thorough those options, the old and the newly gathered. Pick again. Create again. And again, again and again. Bigger, better, wilder. Because now you know how. You can harness the creative power of intention
*Simon Crowe is a Master Coach at www.simoncrowe.com. Read about the Big Idea Barw’du school at http://www.thebigidea.space
