🌱📝🌳 Why More Attention to Intention
Crafting a Vision for Your Best Life
Dear Why Team member,
I hope this week’s message finds you well, encouraged, and enjoying your life intentionally.
Attending more to why we do what we do and think what we think can reveal the importance of attending more to our intentions.
What are we trying to accomplish and why? Who do we desire to become and why? It is said that out of the heart the mouth speaks - and aren’t all our actions born from the heart of our intentions?!
If we are to improve our output, it stands to reason that we must improve our input.
In the earliest days of personal computers there was a common acronym used called GIGO, meaning garbage in, garbage out. People would complain about what they were getting out of their computer. The acronym was a reminder that it was likely user error - that what was coming out was because of what the user was putting in.
What are you regularly downloading into yourself? When you notice an output that does not reflect your higher standards, consider all the more your inputs. And to improve our output, let’s consider all the more our intentions.
Are you living On Purpose?
To significantly improve the quality of our actions, it’s important to improve the quality of our thinking.
Where are we placing our attention?
Without clear intention, our thoughts and actions will be more scattered, easily distracted, and less productive. Consider now the simple intention of digging a hole to plant a tree. Notice how your mind is immediately oriented to the task. Your mind is considering the size of the root ball of the tree to gauge how big of a hole you’ll need. You’ll think about where you keep your shovel, the wheelbarrow to move soil, whether you’ll need help from others, and so on.
The moment you set your intention to plant a tree, your mind and body become oriented toward the task. You receive more dopamine as you take productive action oriented to the completion of the task. Without a clear intention, our attention disperses, it’s less focused, we can meander and will certainly accomplish less in life without meaningful focus.
We humans are built to live on purpose. Planting a tree begins with intention that leads to purposeful action that can lead to a rewarding outcome: stepping back and observing the tree you planted - a tree, if well planted, that will grow tall and provide shade to those who will live on beyond us.
What metaphorical trees are you planting and desire to plant; trees that can potentially serve others beyond your own life. Consider the deeper intentions of your life beyond the day-to-day tasks necessary to living? How may a clearer more significant intention better orient your life?
Few of us ever sit down and write down our intentions. We must plant the acorn if we are to ever get the Oak. Consider taking a moment to write down what you would like to accomplish with your life. Don’t worry about the immediate steps, but rather establish some vision beyond your current circumstance. Think big and beyond what you even believe to be possible for you.
Write down your dreams for the future.
What legacy would you like to leave for your loved ones. How may your life be an inspiration to others. Write down your dreams knowing that thought alone precedes all that humans have ever created. It all begins in the imagination.
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18
As we begin the second half of 2024, with plenty of time left to become More in ’24, dream a bit more, write down your visions for a brighter tomorrow- making your future bigger than your past. Consider all that has already come to pass has been mere preparation for what is to come:
Your BEST LIFE EVER!!
Make it a great week!
Steve Luckenbach