Paying Attention to Intention

My Take on Intention

Intention is the driving force that motivates us to choose a thought and follow it. It directs activities and other thoughts, as well as attitudes and choices.

Ready, Fire, Aim

Are we always aware of our intentions when we take action or speak?

I’m not asking about those situations that require instant action, such as a frying pan on fire, a burglar trying to get into the house, or a car skidding out of control. Obviously during such time-critical emergencies, wasting even a split second considering the intention behind a course of action would cause “analysis-paralysis,” and in emergencies, that could 

be fatal. Besides, usually in such cases, the intention is both simple and obvious: survival!

Emergency and time-critical situations aside, I often do things with energy and drive without really understanding the intention behind my actions, and at some point, I end up thinking, “Why the hell am I doing this?” Or worse, I never even ask myself that question.

Speaking without thinking is acting before examining the intention behind a thought on a smaller scale. Not adequately engaging the brain before engaging the mouth has gotten my size 11 foot implanted firmly in my mouth on more occasions that I care to count. I end up asking myself, “Why the hell did I just say that? What was I thinking?” Answer: “I wasn’t.”

This happens when I kid myself into believing that I have to act or speak immediately when in fact there is time to think. That or I latch on to a thought, the motivating force is intense, but I just don’t bother taking the time to examine it, and I just act. Or, if I do examine the thought, it’s only after the fact, and I’m already experiencing the consequences of my actions.

It’s like setting a course in some direction—because at first glance, it looks good out there—and then simply hitting the gas pedal. My mind just focuses on driving onward, on steering the course that I’d originally set, but in this tunnel-vision mode, I have no big picture. Why am I heading this way? Where is it I hope to arrive?

It’s frightening how easily I can just set a course with no clear destination in mind.

The Lie We Tell Ourselves

Sometimes I think I know why I’m doing or saying something, but because I haven’t spent the energy required to really dig deep into the motivating force that made me latch on a thought and act upon it, I give myself some immediately apparent reason which, while true on the surface, doesn’t hold up against the scrutiny of time.

In 2004, I remember listening to a cleverly crafted message on my answering machine. The Toyota dealership asked that I contact them about my 2002 Corolla.

So I called and spoke with a car salesman. He said we should discuss options for upgrading my 2002 Corolla since my lease was expiring next year. Again, crafty wording.

I had never leased a car before, so I wasn’t sure if I was obliged to go to the dealership or not. I had the feeling he was trying to push a deal on me. After all, I did have another year on my lease. And if I really had to be there, why wouldn’t he just say so directly?

He asked if I’d like to set up an appointment.

Each passing second of silence on the line was making me more uncomfortable. The man was waiting for a reply.

It was one of those situations where I didn’t give myself time to think. I let myself believe I had to give the salesman an answer immediately, otherwise he’d realize I was hesitating and he’d somehow have the upper hand.

Ridiculous reasoning, since my answer was, “Okay, when can I come over?” So I’d basically gave him what he wanted in the first place, in order to delude myself into believing I was in control.

This was the lie that was lingering somewhere in the background of my mind: I am obliged to talk to this guy, because my lease is expiring, so I might as well get this over with now.

First let me explain that I’m not a dimwit, though at times I certainly act that way. Often, my unexamined thoughts are appallingly stupid.

If I’d taken even a few seconds to think about my real intention, I’d realize that I was in the mood for window-shopping. I wanted to see if this guy really did have the deal of a lifetime waiting for me on his lot. So I was setting a course for Unnecessary Expenseville at a time when I was in over my head in debt and had to work overtime just to make my monthly payments.

A few moments of introspection would have revealed that my intention was not aligned with my long-term goals (keeping my sorry butt out of the poorhouse), and I would have asked the salesman the obvious question, “My lease doesn’t expire for another year, do I have to come to the dealership now or can it wait until then?”

Anyway. I didn’t ask that question. I went to the dealership, which, by the way, was a forty-five minute drive from home, and got talked into paying $300 more per month to trade in my 2002 Corolla lease to buy a 2005 model.

Again, I could have examined the my intentions before handing over my credit card. Did I really intend to by a car? Wasn’t I here to discuss my obligations vis-à-vis the lease? Only a few minutes into our conversation, it had become clear I didn’t have to do anything for another year if I didn’t want to. So why was I hanging around at the negotiating table with this guy talking about buying a car? He was a pro; I wasn’t. In fact, I was the quintessential impulse-buyer, a car salesman’s wet dream.

I spent most of that day guided by an unexamined thought, and the lame intention that had motivated me to follow it. An intention that went completely against my goals.

So by not probing deeply enough, by not being honest with myself, there was a disconnect between what I told myself the reason was for going to the dealership (I had to because my lease was ending) and the real reason for going (window-shopping). Consequently, the result of my actions was not at all aligned with my goals.

Letting Go of the Steering Wheel

Sometimes I examine a thought, see the initial intention behind it, and then I adjust the thought so it’s more aligned with my goals, but I don’t maintain the constant energy required to keep that revised intention in focus. I lose track of my intention in the forest of other thoughts and actions related to that original thought. When that happens, I have let go of the steering wheel. There’s no course correction, and I usually end up heading in the direction of the initial unexamined, unmodified intention.

Let’s say I’d examined my intention when I’d called the dealer and he had suggested I come see him. Let’s say I asked him the question I should have asked, and he replies saying I have no legal obligation to see him, but he has a deal of a lifetime that probably won’t be available if I wait to the end of my lease because of depreciation of the car I was leasing at the time. In this case, I’d adjusted my original intention from window-shopping to doing what is necessary to keep above water financially, but failed to maintain my focus on the modified intention and ended up window-shopping once again, my budget be damned.

Understanding Intention and the Big Picture

So let’s say I’ve examined a thought closely and I understand the true intention underlying my thought.

The question is: “Now what?”

This is where your big-picture goals come into play. Is the intention behind this thought I just had aligned with my big-picture life goals?

It probably isn’t. In fact, most of the time my initial intentions are childish and downright embarrassing. But the thought can be adjusted and re-examined.

Let’s say I’m on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, off the west coast of Europe and my goal is to live in Manhattan, New York.

My intention is to end up in New York. But initially, I just thought of heading west. Now I see I’m heading south of course and would end up in Panama.

Now that I know what my initial intention was and I’ve adjusted it so that it’s aligned with my goal of living in New York City, all I need to do is make a slight course change. And at that distance, the course change is deceptively small.

So I modified the thought just so, in order for the intention to be aligned with my life goals.

Often, the action can appear to be the same, but the intention behind it differs in a subtle way. That subtle difference is huge, however.

Action: A father invites a young lady, his son’s tutor, to a café for a chat.

Intention 1 (Mr. Nice Dad): Learn about what progress his son is making with his lessons.

Intention 2 (Slimeball Dad): Nail her.

Maybe in order not to feel too guilty about his real intention (getting laid), Slimeball Dad lies to himself with the thought that he actually cares about his son’s progress.

The girl might be young and really pretty, but she’s not inexperienced with men. She knows what’s really going on in his mind, whether he’s aware of it himself or not. He’s asking her about his son and algebra, but he’s looking down a very different bra. And, what is that smile on his face? And why did he arrange to meet when his son and wife happened to be on a trip?

Mr. Nice Dad’s true intention would also be evident. On the surface, the action of going out for coffee appears to be the same, but the intention behind creates results (such as body language) than give away the true reason behind the action. It is this intention that will either vindicate the actions of Mr. Nice Dad, or put Slimeball Dad in deep shit with his wife one day.

(Okay yes, I did marry my son’s tutor, but it didn’t happen the way you think. I never took her out to coffee. In fact, we didn’t hook up until almost a decade later.)

No Intention and the Unexpected

Sometimes I act without any intention behind my action. Especially when I’m not attached to psychological thought and I simply act. This is different from acting impulsively on an uninvestigated thought. This is acting without thought.

Sometimes I have a clear intention in mind, and the outcome is completely unexpected.

To use the above example, let’s say something completely unexpected happens to Mr. Nice Dad as he’s talking with his son’s tutor and he falls in love. He doesn’t realize it at the time. His intentions are planets apart from falling in love with a young girl. It just happens.

When the Truth Comes Out

Sometimes the truth comes out immediately. In the example above, Slimeball Dad’s intentions become immediately apparent because of his body language and what he talks about when he’s with her. (Like how could a girl so young looking as her possibly be old enough to tutor his son, instead of talking about the boy’s difficulties with algebra.)

Other times, the truth isn’t revealed until much later. In the case of Mr. Nice Dad, his original intention, his concern for his son, is important, because years later, people might accuse him of taking the girl out for a coffee because he just wanted to get in her pants. But the evidence is on his side and as I mentioned before, the truth has a way of making itself apparent. Maybe he didn’t wait for his wife to go on some trip. Or maybe his wife was actually there, sitting at his side, at the café.

Conclusion

Knowing your true intentions is important on many levels.

The intention behind action tends to affect the outcome of your action. By examining intention and making sure it is aligned with your long-term goals, and by remaining focused on your revised intention, you will tend to attract situations that create results in harmony with your goals.

It is also important so that no matter what the outcome, your intentions are aligned with your belief system.

Action without purpose is not the same as action based on unexamined psychological thought. In fact, many of life’s most beautiful experiences come when action is without purpose or when the original intentions and the outcome are a complete surprise.

Decisions Suck

The older I get, the harder it becomes to make decisions, and the more I hate having to make them.

Is it just that I have more responsibilities than when I was younger? Not really. I was married with a child when I was twenty-two. So no.

Is it that life is simply harder now? That’s silly. It was tough as hell back then, just like it always seems to be. No. That’s definitely not it.

The problem is my experience. That’s an odd way of looking at things, right? Most people think that having a lot of experience to draw from is very helpful when it comes to making crucial life decisions.

Perhaps. To some extent. But all the experience in the world is not going to predict the future, and that’s kind of what I try to do with my experience. I compare the past to an imagined future. I paint a “realistic” picture for myself. And that picture looks a lot like William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s Dante and Virgil in hell. This happens with every option available to me.

And that brings me to the second problem that comes with age: I keep coming up with more options and each additional option make my decision that much harder.

I miss how I just knew what had to be done when I was younger. It wasn’t easy, don’t get me wrong: I’d typically make impossible choices and then break my sorry butt trying to reach the goals I’d set for myself. I’d raise the bar way beyond reach, sometimes out of sight. But once the decision was made, I never looked back. It was just a matter of how I was going to make my goal into a reality. I was single minded, focused, and extremely driven. My ex-wife says I was obsessive. Whatever.

Be that as it may, I made very tough decisions easily and I never looked back.

Today? Well today I’m not the same. My values have changed. For most of my life, I sacrificed family for career. Trying always to make family a close second to whatever I was doing, and always not quite succeeding. Because if you want to really excel in something, there’s very little room for anything else. That’s just the sorry way of things. There are 24 hours in a day and most of us spend a third of that time sleeping.

So here I am, stuck at the crossroads, so to speak, with the parking break set. Only there aren’t just two paths. No sir. There are a ton. Because I can think of many options. Many many options. I didn’t used to probe my options very deeply. Now I do. I think way into the future, drawing on years of experience to fill the canvas with the darkest of possibilities.

You can look at anything anyway you like. Having a Ferrari can be the coolest thing ever or it can be a major burden.

Really?

Sure. Look at is this way: you’ve got a Ferarri, but now you’re worried if you’ll be able to make the payments, if the damned thing will appreciate like the dealer promised or if you just bought yourself into financial ruin. And forget taking those hot wheels for a spin. What if some truck spits up a rock and scratches your ride? Where can you park a car worth the average three-bedroom home with a swimming pool without worrying about it getting stolen? And in this economy, you can’t even sell the damned thing and try and at least get your money back. A Ferrari? No thanks, buster. Not unless it comes with like a billion dollars.

And we’re talking about a Ferrari here. Not one of the typical bleak options I come up with to those impossibly difficult decisions that keep popping up.

I want to be like I was when I was younger. But I’d have to wipe my memory for that. One thing I’ve still retained, however, is the ability to never look back once I’ve decided on something.

But that’s kind of problem, isn’t it? I mean, I have to be so damned sure what I’m doing is the best option available to me that there’s no chance I’ll look back. And I’ve simply been through too much to be able to con myself into believing that so easily.

So I sit there, in the middle of the road, trying to take in the beautiful view. Trying not to panic about the traffic that’s piling up behind me. Trying to live in the now, and all that jazz.

But the reality is that setting the parking break while I keep going over my options again and again is a decision in itself. It is always now, as Eckhart Tolle astutely points out. At the same time, as Mona Lisa Vito said in MY COUSIN VINNY, “My biological clock is ticking.” Ain’t that the truth.

I’m not twenty anymore. Sorry. I know it’s a shocker, but there you have it: I’ve got four kids, two dogs, and two mortgages—responsibility up the wazoo.

So I’m getting older here just studying my options. And with each passing minute, the people waiting for me to decide (the cars behind me, if I’m sticking with my metaphor), are growing more and more impatient.

The excuses that I’ve been giving over and over again such as: “I don’t want to do anything I’ll regret.” Or—and this is my all-time favorite—“This isn’t just about me: I’ve got a big family and many people’s lives will be affected one way or the other, so I can’t afford to make a mistake,” are growing old, and people don’t want to hear them anymore. Hell, even I’m sick of the bullshit I tell myself.

Maybe I should take a lesson from the younger me and just release the parking brake and floor it. At least that way, all I’ll be worried about is steering and I’ll be driving too damned fast to ever look back.

It is just me or are you also starting to feel it’s getting harder making those tough decisions?

Are You Afraid of Pain?

William with a "Therapy Dog"

I’ve had more than my share of short-term and long-term pain, both with and without fear.  And speaking from experience, I can say that a significant component of pain is fear.

Fear and Short-term Pain

Of all the short-term pain I’ve experienced, kidney stones were the hardest to endure.

Having stitches put in my belly without anesthetic, or low gauge (thick) IV needs pushed slowly into my arms over and over again, are not a big deal by comparison.

Even colonoscopies done without any anesthesia whatsoever using those old, rigid metal hollow tubes called proctoscopes, don’t hold a candle to kidney stones. My grandmother used to say kidney stones felt a lot like childbirth pain.

But having stitches, getting slowly stabbed with IV needles, and having colonoscopies, were all procedures done to help make me better. And I knew that. There was a reason for it, and though it was painful, I knew it would be over and that it was for a good cause. That’s what a lot of women say about childbirth. The pain is mind-blowing, but most mothers tend to focus on the positive outcome: giving birth to their child.

Suffering the pain of having kidney stones, however, wasn’t for some good cause. It wasn’t going to make me better. Quite the contrary.

When I was a teenager and I had my first kidney stone, I thought the pain was related to my ulcerative colitis so I didn’t take it very seriously. Because I thought it had something to do with my ulcerative colitis, I wasn’t really frightened.  Of course, as the pain became unbearable, I finally asked my mom to take me to the hospital. But because I wasn’t afraid, the pain was entirely physical.

Afterwards, however, the urologist explained to me that kidneys stones could lead to permanent kidney damage. So from then on, whenever I had a kidney stone, the thought, “This thorny thing inside me is ripping my kidney to pieces,” would arise.

I was scared: I didn’t want to end up with just one kidney, like my grandmother. Weighed down by the knowledge of the potential danger of kidney stones, I became afraid, and from then on, every kidney stone experience seemed a lot more painful.

I’ve had colonoscopies done where I anticipated the pain and I was sweating before the exam even started. Much later in life, I had the same colonoscopies, but instead of anticipating the pain, I was focused on the present, not attaching myself to thoughts. Not letting them grow into fear.

When I anticipated the pain, the experience was definitely a great deal worse than when I had the very same exam and I was present, just observing my thoughts and what I was sensing.

While short-term pain is mostly physical, there is still a component of fear. That fear stems from the thought that the cause of the pain will lead to irreversible damage to my body—possibly even death. Either that, or the fear is created by anticipation of similar past experience.

Fear and Long-term Pain

When I was fifteen and had been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, I never took the disease very seriously—as far as I was concerned, it was just a damned nuisance.

Often during the day, I’d have weakness spells. They came in waves. Like somebody had just pulled a plug in my bottom and life energy was spilling out.

When it happened, no matter where I was—playing table tennis, doing karate, during class, or whatever, I’d taught myself to simply freeze and wait for it to pass. These energy-drain spells only lasted a matter of ten seconds at most, so I didn’t consider them to be a big deal.

I kept these spells to myself. I was worried if I told my dad, I’d end up in the hospital again, and I’d miss out on the cool things in life like my karate or table-tennis, and then I’d have to face catching up with my classwork all over again.

No way was I going to let that happen.

But one day at school, my body betrayed me, and a teacher noticed I looked zombie- pale. He forced me to go see the school nurse. Hours later, I was in the hospital, and after a month there, I was sent to London for my first major operation.

People would ask me how I coped with the pain. I didn’t know what they were talking about. What pain? I just had these annoying waves that got in the way, but I had developed such an efficient way of dealing with it while going about my life, it felt normal.

What others called “pain” was just this thing that happened to me all the time. I simply accepted it and moved on. There was no fear. Nothing could happen to me. Like many kids my age, I thought I was invincible.

I know that had I realized how serious the situation was—had I been afraid—the pain would have been much worse, and I wouldn’t have been able to function in day-to-day life.

How do I know this? Because in 2006, I had my first brush with a major problem (intestinal obstruction) that eventually was diagnosed as cancer and put me on disability, and unlike my experience with ulcerative colitis, this time I was afraid.

There were times that the obstruction was so painful, all I could do was lie on the floor in a fetal position and wait for the pain to subside. I wasn’t a kid anymore—I was responsible for myself and the fact was that if I didn’t do anything, I could die.

All I knew was that I was obstructed and I needed to find a competent surgeon. But the surgeons I was able to find were basically guessing, and that made the situation life-or-death scary. No question: fear amplified the pain.

How to Minimize Pain

Obviously, the assumption here is that you’ve seen a doctor and the cause of the pain is being addressed by a specialist. Typically, however, doctors cannot simply eliminate the source of the problem in a day or even a week.

And sometimes the cure for the pain is in itself painful.

1. Painkillers.

Don’t be a hero. If you doctor recommends painkillers, take them!

2. Don’t attach yourself to thoughts that lead to fear.

I’m not suggesting you try to ignore, or, even worse, resist pain. That’s futile. Pain demands your attention. It’s there to alert you that something is wrong.

Pain is pain. If you’ve done all you can medically to alleviate the physical pain, then what’s left is the element of fear. Fear is triggered by thought.

So how can you not think about pain? Simply let your thoughts be. Don’t chase after them. Don’t resist them and don’t judge them. Accept them the way you would a passing cloud. You will get better with practice.

3. Focused Breathing (for short-term pain).

Breathe through the nose and out the mouth. Stay focused on the continuous, uninterrupted flow of air. Remember: through the nose, out the mouth. Heard it a million times before? Not working for you? Then you’re not doing it right.

There’s no way to be completely focused on breathing and have fear-inducing thoughts at the same time. If you’re identifying with thoughts, that means there are moments where your attention lapsed and you weren’t completely focused on your breathing.

Follow these three steps and pain will just be pain. Nothing more than it ever has to be.