Intentify
Intentify: to take seriously; to manifest; to resolve to put a little love in your heart and meaning into your action
Calendar created by my sister Melodie
We’ve just concluded the first week of this brand new year and I don’t have any resolutions. Oh sure, there are things I want to do. Hope to do. Plan to do. And things I’d like to do differently. I’d be all in for a wholesale change. But I don’t want to set myself up for failure. Because I know myself well enough that if I embark on something new and don’t manage to do it perfectly right from the start, I’m quite likely to drop it because it hasn’t manifested just the way I’d envisioned it – from the get go.
Practice may make perfect, but we’ve also heard that perfect is the enemy of the good. It might also be the enemy of getting anything done at all!
So I have no resoutions this year!
Instead, I have resolve. I am resolved to do this. I am resolved to learn this. To get better at that. To let go of the other. To replace this with that. And so far, it’s been working pretty well.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” the proverb goes, but I don’t think wanting to do a good thing should be punished with eternal damnation.
Yoda
Maybe the immortal words of Jedi Master Yoda in “The Empire Strikes Back” make the point more clearly: “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”
Intention is a key buzzword in a lot of spiritual and New Age discussions. But for the life of me, when I first heard that, I couldn’t get my head around what it meant. Was it merely as simple and straight forward as planning to do something? Wanting to do something and focusing on it? Setting out to do something?
And then, a few years back, I read Wayne Dyer’s wonderful book, "The Power of Intention". Inspired by the words of Carlos Castaneda in "The Active Side of Infinity", Dyer says: “I was stunned by the insight and clarity it gave me about the power of intention. Imagine that intention is not something you do, but rather a force that exists in the universe as an invisible field of energy!”
“In the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which shamans call intent, and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link.”
Carlos Castaneda
Today is the second Monday of January, a natural back-to-school date. I had mapped out a whole schedule of how I was going to seriously get back at it today. I was to be at my desk at 10 AM and work here until 1 PM.
But I went to bed late last night – something about Revenge Bedtime Procrastination – and then, it was hard to get to sleep. And when my alarm went off this morning, instead of springing out of bed, I pressed snooze. Such a delirious sensation. I snoozified for an hour.
When I finally did get up, I read the news, played my favourite word games, enjoyed two cups of coffee, and then finally picked up my lap desk to begin my morning pages. Lots of ruminations and excuses for why I hadn’t shown up at my big desk yet. And then, the most wondrous thing happened:
RESOLVIFY
I wrote “resolvify.”
And thus began today’s blog. It’s called Intentify because I think that Resolution and Intention are closely linked (their definitions both include the root of the other word) – and “Intentify” was one of the earliest titles I jotted down in my original notes for Festify blogs.
So here we are.
I resolved to write at 10 and, while this didn’t begin to emerge then, ideas for this began percolating then, and sure enough, I’ve begun writing this blog during the intended time period - albeit at the very end!
I eventually showed up and my intention manifested, just not in the timetable I’d set out. Once again, Divine Timing prevailed.
So this year, no resolutions. But I do have some resolve. I will stand a little straighter. I will care for myself more. I will be more gentle with myself, yet push myself a little harder. And I will do my best to be more kind, to me and everyone else.
There’s so much of me to get back to post-pandemic. I lost sight of many things I loved doing, and people I loved being with.
Once I finish writing this, I’m heading out to my first yoga class in years. And tomorrow, we’re going to a trivia night with some friends.
How do you approach your goals for a New Year?
Do you make resolutions?
Do you find it challenging to keep them?
I resolve to do better.
As I just wrote that down, I recalled something that happened years ago when I volunteered to teach art at an after-school program. The students were invited to fill out informal evaluations. Most were surprisingly positive, but certainly they all weren’t. It was my first time teaching anything and I had a whole lot to learn.
In the section on areas for improvement, one student put it succinctly: “get a better teacher.”
That stung.
But I thought about it for a while and decided to heed that student’s advice.
Ever since I got that bad review, pinned up on the wall above my desk, along with all my other favourite affirmations is this:
Be a better teacher.
These days, depending on what I’m working on, I add other reminders to myself.
Be a better writer.
Be a better friend.
Be a better partner.
Be better.
For starters, I just need to start showing up again.
And do better.
My wish for you as we begin 2024 is for happiness, abundance, good health, peace, and for your resolve to help you move further along the path you intend to follow.