Don't Let Randomness Steal Your Power

Photo by Mike Wilson on Unsplash

Setting intentions might be the most important thing happening in my life right now.

I set intentions at least 10 times everyday, sometimes more.

I set intentions before meetings, before photoshoots, before I eat, before I sleep, before I take a call or walk into an event. Really, there is no limit.

My favourite thing about setting intentions is the echo.

Huh?!

I’ll give you an example. I attended an event a few weeks back. It was a screening and Q+A for a terrific film called A Better Man. I highly recommend watching it. Just be warned, it can be a really tough film to experience.

It was a community event, intended to create a safe space for men and women to connect and engage in productive dialogue, around assault and injustice against women.

Before I walked into the event I took 30 seconds, closed my eyes, squeezed my gratitude rock and searched my heart for my intentions.

Here are the 3 intentions that came up for me:

“Be authentic and speak heart-to-mouth.”

“Make space for others to share, contribute and heal.”

“Listen to any voice that is ready to be heard”

I went into the event a little nervous (I always get nervous at events). Then I noticed a few old Camp Reset homies, which I love dearly and am super comfortable around. So I instantly gravitated towards them. We started chatting, nothing in particular, just casual chit-chat.

At that point I also noticed several other people scattered around the room, all sitting quietly. I began to notice a big energy deficiency between us and them. What I mean by this is, we had a massive advantage of knowing each other for years, whereas most of the other people in the room, where strangers and considering the subject matter of the film, they were justifiably nervous. For the record I was very nervous too, it was just easier to mask my feelings in casual conversation with old friends.

So here’s how intention can be a powerful tool.

As I was catching up with these old friends, the energy I put into my intentions a few minutes back, kept building in my consciousness. I began to hear my intentions echoing through my mind, like a caring, but nagging mother, reminding me of what I had committed to earlier, and how I was not living up to those intentions. The echo got louder, until it was unavoidable.

Then, I knew what I had to do. I found a respectful and honest way to end my (causal) conversation with my old friend, and I walked towards this individual that was sitting on her own, in the back. I did my best to engage in an honest conversation with her. Turns out she was hella cool and we really connected.

Building off of this momentum, I continued to let my intentions guide me. I decided to sit in the opposite corner of the room, intentional away from my old friends. This part was tough. I felt guilty for not sitting next to my Camp Reset buddies, but instead of letting my emotions guide me, I listened to the wisdom of the echo from my intentions.

I ended up sitting in-between two men that I had never met before. Turns out this was a really good decision, as I later had several incredibly productive and healing conversations with both of these men. We did some deep sharing and it honestly felt like we all walked away a littler lighter.

Without my intention this evening would of ended up very differently. This was a small example of the power of intention, but it works just as effectively for massive life events as well. These smaller day-to-day intentions are practice, for when the big whoppers show-up.

What Did I Learn?

By setting clear intentions you are turning on a GPS that is guided by the wisdom of your Soul.

At many points in your life you will reach a fork in the road. You will need to quickly decide if it makes more sense for you to go right or left. This decision will have an impact on your life. Some decisions are transformative and leave a massive imprint, others leave a smaller impact. There are plenty of both in our lives.

If you took the time to set a clear intention ahead of time, then when these forks in the road show up in your life, your intention will echo in your mind like a soul-guided GPS.

If you don’t set an intention, that in itself is also an intention. It’s the intention of randomness. So when you reach a fork you will randomly chooseAND your outcome will be randomly selected. You can see how easily you can get lost with this type of intention.

What’s more concerning, is not that you might make the wrong decision when you reach a fork in the road, it’s that you won’t even notice that there is a decision to be made.

It will just seem like one singular path, which of course is not true.

This inability to even recognized the forks in the road, removes your agency and your power from the equation.

This is why intention is such a game changer in my life. It made me realize how much of my power I was giving away to randomness.