Align Action & Intent

Our Actions determine our results in life. At the end of the day, your thoughts, feelings, and level of success or failure depend on the actions you took during the course of the day. At the end of your life, your measure of success will depend in large part on the actions you took throughout your life; both the consistent habitual patterns of action or inaction, as well as the critical actions in times of crisis and opportunity - the defining cusps of action. You are the sum total of your actions.

Clearly then, Actions are vitally important. So how can we ensure that our actions will result in success? How can we guarantee that at the end of the day, and at the end of our life, we will have achieved satisfying results and lived up to our potential? Whatever standards you use to measure success, they all hinge upon your actions. If success for you means building wealth, your actions are the direct cause of your results. If you define success by how much good you accomplish, again, your actions are the key. Perhaps your definition of success centres around happiness, friends, family or religion - your actions directly influence each of these areas and help determine your level of success.

In order to direct our actions into optimized results we must have a clear concept of what we desire the result to be. To reach a destination you must know the destination! Where are you going? What does success look like to you?

To address the issue of direction in a more concise manner: your Actions must Align with your Intent. What do I mean by this? The direction, attitude, and motivation of your Actions must be in harmony with the direction, attitude, and motivation of your Intent. I will discuss Intent in the following paragraph, as well as in several other articles, but since I am a highly visual learner, and I know a lot of you are too, I want to show you a picture of how Intent fits into the hierarchy of controlled success.

(more about this diagram in future articles...)

As you can see, Intent is actually near the END of the control chain! To really optimize your life and your success, you will need to back up to the top of the chain and address your Purpose, then follow down to ultimately achieve success. If all the elements of the chain are aligned, success is inevitable! So are we wasting our time talking about Intent right now? Shouldn't we stop and go back to Purpose? NO!, well, Yes and No. It is vitally important to grasp and utilize the concept of Intent. Intent is the perfect starting point to consider when beginning a journey to maximized, optimized living. Why is Intent so important? It's because Intent is where the rubber meets the road when it comes to your internal processes taking control of your external actions. I'll say that again - Intent allows your internal self to begin to control your external actions.

So what IS Intent? I'm gonna roll a couple of dictionary definitions at you here, because I think what Intent really is, is a synergistic sum of all of these definitions:

(as a noun)
- something that is intended; purpose; design; intention: e.g. : The original intent of the committee was to raise funds.
- the act or fact of intending, as to do something: e.g. criminal intent
- the state of a person's mind that directs his or her actions toward a specific object
- meaning or significance

(as an adjective)
- firmly or steadfastly fixed or directed, as the eyes or mind: e.g. an intent gaze.
- determined or resolved; having the mind or will fixed on some goal: e.g. intent on revenge.
- earnest; intense: e.g. an intent person.

Now you've got a really good idea of what I am talking about. I'm using Intent as a noun, but also I include the implications of the adjective, so it's sorta like "Intent Intent", "Intent that's really Intent" Essentially, Intent is a focused, directed, significant determined purpose, will, and state of mind that directly drives an action. Intent is the key to shifting your paradigm from one of random, unintentional reactions, to one that is focused, energized, optimized, and active.

OK, so how does one align Actions and Intent? Well it's actually remarkably simple. Maybe not easy, but definitely simple. You just do stuff that will instantiate your Intent or bring your intent closer to reality, and avoid doing stuff that impedes your Intent.

Intent can be big or small, so let's start with a couple small examples. You may have heard of the idea of "Random Acts Of Kindness" This may involve going outside of your comfort zone and doing some stuff you normally would not do. But because you are inspired to do something nice, you make a conscious effort to do it anyway. That conscious effort is the Intent. Without the Intent, you would not act in a "randomly kind" way. Intent is the only way anyone has ever broken a habit, kicked an addiction, lost those extra pounds, or otherwise made an intentional change in their life. So, you may have already used Intent, without even knowing it! If not, now is the time to start. Perhaps start with something that's sort of a "timed trial", like "No TV for one week", or maybe "Only Healthy Meals on Mondays for one month". Pick something that fits with what is important to you, or something you'd like to change or improve, but don't pick something too big or too hard. This is your first try, so you want to pick something attainable with a moderate amount of will power. Baby steps, Baby!

Later on, we'll look at some more ways to use Intent, specifically, we'll get it aligned with the rest of the Hierarchy of Controlled Success, so once you get a bit of experience with Intent and Action, come back and check out the related articles, and when you're ready, I'll show you how to get aligned right up to your Purpose!

Blessings, Kenneth Goudsward

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