“It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.”
Article by Freeman Wicklund
Growing up, I read and tried to follow the guidance of many self-help books I found at the library. Most of them talked about setting intentions, goals, visions, resolutions, or some other word that meant basically the same thing.
I would dutifully set my goals, but I noticed a concerning pattern. The goals would give me a lot of hope and motivation… for a bit. Yet inevitably, my old habits would resurface, and I would behave in ways that did not serve me in achieving those goals.
When this happened, another part of my psyche would be waiting in the wings ready to pounce. It would tell me how stupid and weak I was; how ridiculous and arrogant I was to think I could change. These internal assaults would sap my energy and leave me feeling sad and hopeless.
I saw this pattern enough to become very wary of goal setting.
Thankfully, as I have grown spiritually and continued to work with goal setting, I've learned a few things which have helped me make goal setting less emotionally dangerous. In this article, I hope to share with you what I've learned so that you can set intentions skillfully in a way which allows you to live with more love, courage, and joy.
“We either live with intention or exist by default.”
The Benefits of Setting Intentions
Why set intentions? Because they help:
• Keep us both focused on our priorities
• Aid us in living a balanced life
• Provide inspiration, passion, and motivation to take action
• Inspire courage and grit when things get difficult
• Deepen our spiritual practice
• Help us identify, and let go of, the painful mental attitude of clinging. How? Read on...
Let’s turn now to tips on how to create our intentions.
How to Craft Intentions
First, it is important to live a full and balanced life. Despite what capitalism may condition us to think, our bodies are not robotic machines, whose sole value comes from how successful we are in our career. Our organic bodies need physical and mental exercise, a nurturing social life, good nutrition, hydration, meaning, and purpose to thrive.
Therefore, out of love for the body, so it may live in balance, be healthy, and thrive, we set goals within these five areas:
1. Spiritual Health
2. Body and Mind Health
3. Social and Relationship Health
4. Passions and Hobbies (the things that bring you joy)
5. Contribution and Service (career, volunteering, philanthropy, activism)
Tips on Brainstorming Your Intentions
Now, within the five areas listed above, brainstorm possible goals. Here are some tips:
1. First, give the brain freedom to generate wild dreams and fantasies. Enjoy this creative process as best you can. Invite the brain to think up everything it wants to about possible dreams, visions, goals, and intentions within each setting. Invite it to dream bigger, even outside the realm of what it thinks is possible.
2. As the brain churns up thoughts, gently notice which ones inspire you, give you energy, or warm the heart.
3. In each area of intentions, choose the top three goals that most inspire you, give you energy, or warm your heart. This will give you a total of 15 goals.
Massaging Your Intentions
After brainstorming your top three goals in each area, it is time to polish them so they help you find joy, meaning, and connection in your life. As you craft your goals, here are three things to keep in mind:
1. Are the motives behind the goal loving?
2. Does the goal promote skillful behavior?
3. Does the goal inspire me and give me courage?
Let's investigate each one of these three points a bit more.
“Intention is one of the most powerful forces there is. What you mean when you do a thing will always determine the outcome.”
Are the Goal's Motives Skillful and Loving?
To have your goals generate joy, it is wise that they be motivated by loving intentions.
American spiritual teacher and peace activist, Peace Pilgrim, says, "What is your motive for whatever you may be doing? If it is pure greed or self-seeking or the wish for self-glorification, I would say, don't do that thing. Don't do anything you would do with such a motive."
She adds, "I talk to groups studying the most advanced spiritual teachings and sometimes these people wonder why nothing is happening in their lives. Their motive is the attainment of inner peace for themselves--which of course is a selfish motive. You will not find it with this motive. The motive, if you are to find inner peace, must be an outgoing motive. Service, of course, service. Giving, not getting. Your motive must be good if your work is to have good effect. The secret of life is being of service."
For example, a self-seeking goal like: "I will lose 10 pounds and fit into a 32-inch waist pair of jeans," may become more service oriented like this, "I will be healthy and strong enough to play, wrestle, carry, and chase my kid for an hour at a time."
Do the Goals Inspire Skillful Activities?
To have your goals create harmony in your life and the world, and a sense of joy in you, they need to encourage skillful actions.
German-born spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle writes in his book A New Earth:
Make sure your vision or goal is not an inflated image of yourself and therefore a concealed form of ego, such as wanting to become a movie star, a famous writer, or an entrepreneur. Also make sure your goal is not about having this or that, such as a mansion by the sea, your own company, or ten million dollars in the bank. An enlarged image of yourself or a vision of yourself having this or that are all static goals and therefore don't empower you. Instead, make sure your goals are dynamic, that is to say, point towards an activity that you are engaged in and through which you are connected to other human beings as well as to the whole.
Is your goal "static" — seeking to obtain a want or desire— or does it encourage skillful actions that benefit and serve other people, animals, or the environment?
For example, if a realtor has the goal, "I want to make $100,000 this year," this is a very static goal. It may encourage a very egoic, competitive, and unskillful mind-set that causes her to overlook ethical practices in an effort to attain her goal.
A dynamic goal might look like this, "I treat all home buyers with respected and show them quality homes that meet their priority needs within the price range they can afford." A goal like that will help her be a joyful, well-appreciated, and successful realtor.
Is the Goal Positive and Motivating?
Your goals should inspire and motivate you to action, and give you courage to face the inevitable challenges that arise. Have your goals state positively the benefits you seek, not the misery you want to avoid.
Here is an example from Gay African-American spiritual teacher, social justice activist, and recording artist, Justin Michael Williams. He encourages his students to write visions of what their future will look like after they achieve their goals. He writes in his book Stay Woke:
Lisa is a sexual assault survivor with a lot of relationship trauma to heal, so [creating a social health and relationships vision] is difficult for her. At first she writes, "I'm grateful that I don't argue with my dad about politics anymore and I've finally manifested a loving partner despite my sexual trauma." That's a heavy vision that focuses on the past instead of the future. I ask her to keep her vision clear of words that insinuate conflict and negative energy, the things she doesn't want, and instead focus on what she does want. Her new vision reads, "Thank you, universe, for the loving, accepting, and beautiful relationship I have with my dad. I'm so grateful for him and the strength of our connection. And WOW!! I'm so thankful to have met the partner of my dreams. He is caring, tender, understanding, and loves me for who I am."
Comparing Lisa's two visions, the second one is more motivating and inspiring.
Here is another example of transforming a negative goal into a positive one. The negative goal, "I will not watch TV anymore." transforms into the positive goal of, "My life is so full of meaningful, rewarding, and enjoyable activities, that I don't even think about watching TV."
“The best way to ensure you achieve the greatest satisfaction out of life is to behave intentionally.”
Refining your Goals
Powerful, effective, and spiritually-infused goals arise from loving motives, encourage skillful action, and inspire and motivate us. For each of your goals, ask these questions to help refine them to be more powerful and effective:
1. Are the motives behind the goal pure, loving, and selfless? If there are mixed motives -- some are selfish and ego-inflating, while others are loving, cooperative, and benefit others -- purify your motives by prioritizing the loving motives and keeping them in mind as you engage with the activity.
2. Does this goal inspire you to take skillful action? If not, see if you can modify it so it does.
3. Does the goal encourage you to harm yourself, other people, animals, the climate, or the environment? If so, modify the goal so it does no harm.
4. How does working on this goal serve or benefit humans, animals, our climate, and/or our environment? If it doesn't, tweak it until it does, or pick a new goal.
5. Does the goal motivate and inspire you and give you courage to face your fears? If not, dream bigger and keep refining the goal until it brings joy and inspiration into your life.
Once you are finished refining your intentions, you may find that reading them makes you feel inspired, passionate, courageous, and hopeful. Now, let's turn to discuss how best to use these beautiful and loving intentions you have crafted.
Implementing Your Goals
Intentions work best when we review and recommit to them on a regular basis. After you first create your goals, you may want to review them daily until you remember them throughout your day. Once this happens, you may only need to review them weekly or monthly. Designate time in your planner for when you will review your intentions.
Now, if you have followed all of the suggestions up to now for crafting your intentions, you will already be sitting pretty. However, I have saved the most important suggestions for last. They are:
1. Your spiritual goals are primary and should influence all of your other goals.
2. Your happiness does not depend on you achieving your goals.
The Primacy of Spiritual Goals
Eckhart Tolle reminds us that, "the true or primary purpose of your life cannot be found on the outer level. It does not concern what you do but what you are--that is to say, your state of consciousness. So the most important thing to realize is this: Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary."
As an awakened being, Tolle says that humanity's shared inner purpose is to awaken. All other goals are secondary to that. To awaken, we need to focus on how we do what we do, rather than what we do. In every moment, are we mindful, kind, joyful, peaceful, energetic, and open-hearted?
In our trainings, we have shared several portals to mindfulness. Which ones speaks to your heart and inspires you?
• Will you live in the now, rather than in thoughts about the future and past?
• Will you be the knower and not the doer?
• Will you choose to unconditionally love all life in every situation?
• Will you resolve to do everything with peace, joy, or enthusiasm?
• Will you intend to keep steady, continuous mindfulness during every moment?
• Will you keep part of your awareness grounded in the sensations of your body?
• Will you always be mindful of the formless nature of space, silence, and stillness?
Choose one or more of these intentions, or pick another that helps you stay mindful, grounded, open, and connected with the present moment and those around you. Then lean into this intention so you live with more and more mindfulness day to day.
Because spiritual goals take priority, I find it helpful to post them on my wall and read them daily: "I am Compassionate Awareness," "I choose to love all life and all situations," "I resolve to do everything with joy." In this way, I am primed to be more mindful throughout the day.
With mindfulness as the top priority, all other goals and activities can be seen with a sense of peace, contentment, and equanimity. Mindfulness makes it clear that our happiness comes from within. This puts our other goals into proper perspective: we don't need to achieve our goals to be happy. Realizing this, all of the stress, anxiety, worry, and fear caused by failing or not performing perfectly melt away. We simply do our best to serve and benefit others through our mindful and skillful actions, being joyful and sharing that joy with others.
“Love, truth, and the courage to do what’s right should be our guideposts on this lifelong journey.”
Finding Peace in Action
You may have noticed that when I listed the benefits of goal setting I did not include "helping you create the life of your dreams!" Yes, intention setting will help you achieve more, and it may increase the chances that you create more beauty, love, and intimacy in your life. But this is where the danger lies.
If you feel you need to achieve your goals to be happy, you set yourself up to be unhappy and unfulfilled during the journey. Moreover, if you complete one goal, the mind has an infinite number of other goals waiting in the wings, meaning you will be perpetually dissatisfied forever.
This is why I found goal setting to be such an emotional rollercoaster in my youth. I pursued my goals with the mistaken belief that happiness would only come from achieving them.
In Buddhism and Hinduism, this need to have the external world be a certain way is called clinging, wanting, or craving. Craving is based on a very subtle and hard-to-see lie. Craving mistakenly believes that our happiness comes from our external situation. And while at times, this appears true, when we mindfully observe our life it becomes clearer that genuine, lasting, stable happiness comes from within.
This creates an Intention Paradox: Having goals and visualizing their achievement is important to help instruct the mind on our priorities, and provides us motivation and the courage to face our fears. At the same time, achieving these goals is unnecessary to creating genuine, lasting happiness.
This passage from the Bhagavad Gita provides the best instructions I know of on the ideal attitude to take while doing any activity, especially when goal-oriented:
Be intent on action, not the fruits of action.
Avoid attraction to the fruits and attachment to inaction!
Perform actions firm in discipline, relinquishing attachment.
Be impartial to failure and success;
This equanimity is called discipline.
The more I carry this attitude with me through my day, the more skillful and joyful my actions become. When I hold this attitude, I don't view my behavior as a means to an end, but as an end in itself. All activity can be a portal to help me connect with my inner peace, joy, and love for all life. I can find peace, love, and joy, even when I make mistakes, when I am misunderstood, or when I don't do at something as well as my perfectionistic thinking wishes I had.
This stable and reliable peace is different from the highs and lows I experience when my happiness and wellbeing depended on achieving my goals and gaining a desired outcome. Although maintaining this attitude is still a work-in-progress for me, having experienced the wonder and joy of it from time to time, I see its power and benefit. I hope you experiment with, and get the benefits from, adopting this attitude of peaceful, non-attached doing.
Key Points
In summary, to ensure you lead a full and balanced life, create goals for the following aspects: Spiritual, Physical, Social, Passions, and Contributions. Prioritize your spiritual goals that help you live every moment with more mindfulness, love, peace, joy, and courage.
Craft all of your goals so they are motivated by love, encourage skillful action, and inspire you to courageously pursue them. At the same time, remember, that your happiness is not dependent on you achieving your goals. Seek your happiness from within.
Be well, my darlings.