REVIGLIONE MARIO (detail)

The Power of Intention over Purpose and Goals

Recently, I became frustrated again with my seeming inability to declutter my life from the usual distractions. Reaching for my phone to scroll endlessly, putting Youtube on as background noise, constantly listening to random playlists, the usual suspects. When I reached my peak in frustration a thought came to me: I want to live my life with intent. I want to make conscious decisions and act accordingly. I want to focus on one thing at a time, as often as possible. I know I'm not reinventing the wheel here. Mindfulness and conscious living isn't a foreign concept to me either. But for some reason when I started framing it with the question "What is my intention?" Meaning, what is my intention, in the first place, towards myself, I realized that it seemed easier to shift my behavior. So now when I instinctively pick up my phone out of boredom I ask myself: "What is my intention in doing this?" For some reason it helps me shift my attention towards better options, like reading or just drinking my coffee in silence while looking out of the window, without feeling like I'm forcing myself to. Of course I don't just only do that though. I'm not one of those people that believes all social media is inherently evil. But the way that I consume things on there changes when I ask myself what my intentions are. When I do go on Youtube for example, the end result is I spend less time on there, but consume more high quality content that I'm actually interested in, rather than senseless short-form content. Before, I used to always try to set myself concrete goals like "No scrolling in the morning" but often failed to actually reach those goals because my mind immediately registered it as another annoying task I have to do. The cool thing about finding out what your intentions are in doing certain things, is that it can be applied to a lot of different aspects in life, or even just life in general. Rather than asking myself what my overarching goal or purpose in life is, I just ask myself "How do I intend to live?" Goals and purpose are terms that can feel heavy and burdensome to us, as they are intricately tied to our usefulness to the system we live in. That isn't to say that we should only think about ourselves and never be useful to others, but the societal pressure that comes with "finding your purpose" or reaching certain goals that everyone deems to be standard things you have to achieve (getting a good job, buying a house, starting a family, etc.) often doesn't actually help us achieve those things in a truthful and intentional way, even if we really want to achieve them. And of course it doesn't help at all, when we have dreams that are completely different from the "standard" way of living. (Some people don't care about being successful in their job, some people don't want families, etc.). By focusing on our intentions, we ask ourselves what we want out of life, not what we think we should want. The more we become familiar with our intentions, the more easy it becomes to navigate life in a way that is suitable for our particular selves, and the easier it becomes to live in line with those intentions, because it becomes easier to reinforce positive behaviors that enhance our life experience.