Power Of Intention ~ Reframe Your Attachment To Outcomes

Today I'd like to talk about something that I've been thinking a lot about and have been kind of brainstorming with some friends of mine,

And it's intention.

Intention is such an important thing for a lot of reasons.

I believe that everything that we do with intention is something that we're doing that is a choice or something loving for a friend,

Buying somebody a gift,

Doing a favor.

If we're doing it with the intention of honoring ourselves and in alignment with ourselves,

Then it's going to be received that way.

If you're doing it with an intention that is chaotic or it's self-serving,

It's going to come back to you that way.

If you're in a relationship and everybody keeps score,

That is doing it for scorekeeping,

Not for just wanting to show up for this person.

So how do we make choices from a place of intention?

Well,

I like to call it mindful decision-making,

And I'm working on a course around this.

And I think that mindful decision-making is you have to look at the choices that you make in your life and honor the fact that I'm making the best choice that I can right now with the tools that I have right now,

With the emotional intelligence that I have at this moment to make this decision.

And the beautiful thing that happens with that,

And I've experienced this recently,

And I shared the story with you,

Is whatever outcome comes out of that,

If you've done it with intention,

It doesn't matter.

Let me say that again.

If you choose something with the power of intention and honor the fact that you made the best choice in alignment with who you are,

Your belief system,

Your value system,

Everything that you've checked in on and you've made that decision,

The outcome doesn't matter.

And the outcome could be awesome,

The best way that you wanted it to go.

Or the outcome could be a teachable moment where you say to yourself,

Wow,

I did the best that I could there and this happened.

And what that does is it stops us from getting into rumination.

It stops us from getting into the place of poor,

Poor me,

I'm a victim,

Oh my goodness,

Why did this happen to me?

And you can say to yourself and let yourself off the hook and say,

I did my best.

I had something recently happen to me where I chose to share something with somebody and it took a long time for me to get to the place where I felt comfortable sharing this thing.

And I shared it with intention,

I shared it with love,

I shared it with grace,

I shared it with forgiveness for myself.

And the person on the other end was triggered and couldn't hold space for it.

And in a sense,

It re-triggered me for a second,

But I allowed myself to feel the emotion of feeling abandoned and feeling kind of hurt and feeling like,

Well,

That sucks.

It went quickly from that to interesting.

I shared something very personal with intention and the other person obviously had a trigger around this particular topic and wasn't able to hold space.

They didn't abandon me on purpose.

They didn't say,

Screw you,

You don't matter.

They didn't do that.

Could they have handled it better?

Probably.

Could we have had more of a conversation about what we should do moving forward?

Absolutely.

In my opinion,

Yes.

But I can step back and I can go,

Okay,

So the outcome of me doing this with intention has led me to a situation where I can forgive or have compassion for this person that I shared this with to know that's too much.

That was too much for them to handle.

And then I can say to myself,

Okay,

So if now that space is gone and this person has moved into a new space and I have this open space,

What can now move into that?

What is the thing that is going to be in that space that I need at this time so I can make another choice with intention to move into that space or bring something into that space or allow somebody to move into that space?

And I think of some of the decisions that I've made when I was younger and what if this had happened,

Say three,

Four years ago even,

And the spiral that it would have put me in,

I would have been mad,

I would have been frustrated,

I would have said,

How could they do that to me?

And think back in your life for a second and go,

What decisions have we made in our lives that we thought were the best choices?

I can think of 10 off the top of my head.

They were very,

Very dumb decisions.

But at the time,

I thought it was the best choice that I can make.

And it's about going back and forgiving yourself as a child,

As a teenager,

As a 20-something.

What did you do at 20 that you look back and go,

Oh my goodness,

How did I make that choice?

But it was the best choice at the time.

That's what you wanted to do.

That was where your self-improvement,

Growth,

Whatever you want to call it,

Emotional intelligence,

That was where you were then.

And you can't go back and punish yourself for those choices.

You can't,

Believe me,

I used to do it ad nauseum.

I was a nostalgic punisher of my own choices constantly until I forgave myself in that moment knowing that I did the best that I could with what I had and what the tools were that I had.

So I know that 10 years from now,

I'm going to make different choices.

I'm going to probably be even more mindful and more compassionate and more forgiving and more able to see a situation and say,

I did the best that I could.

You did the best that you could.

It wasn't a match.

We went our separate ways.

Now let's go our separate ways.

And I think that that is the thing that is the most important to remember in life.

And a really interesting example that we've all probably tried,

I heard it on a podcast about around fasting.

And I know this is a very simple,

Simple concept,

But we can make two choices.

We can starve ourselves or we can choose to fast.

And your body reacts to those two things very,

Very differently.

So if you say,

I'm going to go on a 16 hour fast and I'm going to stop eating at eight and then I'm going to eat again tomorrow at two or something like that.

I don't know if that's 16 hours.

I'm terrible with math,

But something like that.

I'm going to go on a 16 hour fast.

And if you tell your body,

I'm purposely choosing not to eat and I believe this is the most healthy thing that I can do for us.

It's very different than going to bed at eight,

Waking up,

Skipping breakfast,

Skipping snacks.

Your body's going,

We're starving,

We're starving,

We're starving,

And then gorging yourself at 2 p.

M.

Because you're starving.

Those are two very different things.

In one,

You're telling your body,

Oh,

You're doing this with a wonderful intention because you believe that this is the best choice for us.

Whether it's right or wrong,

You're doing it with intention.

Whereas the other one,

Your body literally thinks you're dying.

And how much of a juxtaposition are those two things?

Harmony with your body saying,

Oh,

We're choosing this.

Starving your body thinking that it's going to die.

And I know it's a very simple and almost a little dramatic explanation.

But when you exponentially bring that up to,

Am I going to take that job?

Am I going to stay in this relationship?

Am I going to move cities?

You have to look at all the different things in that,

Gather the information.

And then when you're ready,

Truly check in with your healthy intuition,

Which we've talked about before.

Check in with your healthy intuition and say to yourself,

Okay,

With all the tools,

All the things that I've learned,

All the things that I've consumed,

All the work that I've done,

All the journaling that I've done,

The therapy that I've done,

The meditations that I've done,

The yoga that I've done,

The friends,

Energy,

Advice,

All these different things.

And then you make a choice and say,

I'm choosing this because this is what I believe is the best,

Not best,

Let's back that up.

This is the most aligned choice that I can make in this moment.

So that if you do move to a new city and something happens where you don't get a job and you have to move back,

You can see yourself,

Oh,

I tried it.

It didn't work out.

As opposed to spiraling and going,

I'm a failure.

Why did I choose this?

I should never have moved here.

And then spiraling in that or,

You know,

I am going to choose to commit to this person.

And you choose that.

And then that person goes off and betrays your trust.

They sleep with somebody else or they do some financial thing.

I don't know.

However,

They're going to betray your trust that you've built up.

It's going to hurt just like it's going to be painful to move back from a new city.

The interesting thing about that is you made a choice to commit to this person.

And if you commit to this person and they make a choice in their best interest to betray your trust,

That's not your fault.

It's not on you.

You didn't make a bad choice by choosing this person.

You made a choice that was best in alignment that you thought at that time.

And we all know that we've made choices that we want to go back and go,

Why the heck did I choose that?

Well,

You did and you're here and now you have more emotional intelligence.

You've learned from the experience.

And the real key here is that you don't have to attach to the outcome.

If you don't attach to the outcome,

It can't hurt you as much as it normally would.

And it puts you in an unhealthy spiral.

If you can objectively look and say that person did the best that they could,

It wasn't great.

Or I did the best that I could,

It wasn't great.

Or we both did the best that we could and it wasn't what we needed.

It wasn't in alignment.

You can forgive yourself.

You can have compassion.

And there's nothing more valuable in this world than forgiveness,

Compassion,

Understanding,

Listening,

Loving,

Accepting,

And knowing that these people are doing the best they can with what it is that they're feeling that day.

What's their trauma?

What's their triggers?

Those aren't your fault.

The only person that you're responsible for is yourself,

Your emotions,

Who you are,

How you're showing up.

They didn't do things to you.

They did the best that they could.

Don't take it personal.

And it's not a victim.

You're not a victim.

You are just experiencing someone else's best.

And it might not be in alignment with your best.

And know that that's okay.

And just show up as best you can.

And I know it's hard.

And if you need to be angry for a minute,

You need to cry,

You need to scream.

If you need to just be quiet and go into a corner and think about it for a second,

Allow yourself to express the emotion and then come back to this place of,

I did the best that I could.

And it didn't work out.

And that's okay.

And that is okay.

And then inflows compassion,

Inflows forgiveness.

And all of a sudden,

Everybody in the situation is elevated.

And we can move into a space where there's empty space for others,

For the next thing that comes into your life,

Which I'm going to talk about with manifestation and all these other different things too.

And I know I've talked a little bit about uncreate to create,

But I do believe that forgiving and having compassion for somebody else's triggers and traumas and how they're showing up for you,

Leave space for other people that are more in alignment with you and where you're at to flow.

Peace and love.