Intending vs. Goals

Whatever you ca do or dream you can, begin it;
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
-Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I have been thinking a lot this morning probably because I was up earlier than usual. My friend had invited me to share an early morning yoga class and, since my love is off today, I left Babou with him to sleep away.

Yoga class stretched me at many levels this morning and let me know just how much my body would enjoy this sort of activity on a regular basis. It also made me want to throw up a little! The instructor guided us through a short meditation and spoke briefly about setting your intention for the day and described how this is different from setting a goal. A goal, she explained, occurred in the future; while an intention guided you softly in the moment. I was quite struck by her words and immediately thought of how motherhood automatically creates the fertile ground for this way of living. I used to have amazingly long lists of things to do and rushed through them always trying to get to the end, to the future, not enjoying the process very much. Now that I have a child I feel like I am trying to run while underwater. EVERYTHING is in slow motion. I have found I just have to go with the moment and do the best I can while heading in a general direction.

Later, at coffee (thank GOD for coffee), my friend and I were discussing life, love, and the pursuit of happiness. We were talking in general about how we are both striving for certain things that seem elusive. I, myself, am trying to lose weight. It occurred to me in that moment that if I didn’t focus on having weight to lose but rather acted as though I had already lost it, that I might stop sabotaging my efforts. I think the reason we are often unsuccessful in our efforts is because we hold deep-seated unconscious beliefs about ourselves and our subconscious directs our actions to make that our reality. But if we changed our minds consciously, and practiced that change consciously, that it would sink into our subconscious minds and then it would act as our ally, not our enemy. Maybe the Goethe was right, maybe there is magic in intending and boldly beginning.

And then I thought, “maybe I think too much!”