How to Get the Outcome You Want

intention-unlocks-success

"If you can change your mind, you can change your life. What you believe creates the actual fact. The greatest revolution of my generation is to discover that individuals, by changing their inner attitudes of mind, can change the outer aspects of their lives."

The above quote was written by William James who wrote "The Will to Believe" in 1897. No, that's not a typographical error, he actually wrote this in 1897.

The concepts of the laws of attraction and living with intention have been around for a long, long time. There is no way to dispute the connection between intention and outcome.

Here's an intention experiment by Bob Tschannen-Moran of Life Trek. Look around and focus on something you can pick up that's within reach. Now pick it up. Look at it carefully, even appreciatively, and notice one thing you may not have noticed before; then put it back down.

What determined the outcome of your picking up and studying that object? In part, it had to do with your physical and mental capacity to conduct the experiment. But it also had to do with your intention. For whatever reason, you focused on one particular object. And that focus – your intention – combined with your capacity and action, produced an outcome.

It's a simple formula:
Intention + Capacity + Action = Outcome.

From the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad IV written in 500BC: "You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny."

One important thing I have learned about positive intentions is that with them, you truly live your life in choice. When you live a life in choice, you cannot be a victim. It is impossible to be a victim if you know you have choices. It is also very freeing.

Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist, conditioned his circumstances in a Nazi concentration camp by choosing the attitude he would take in relationship to his oppressors and the lessons he would learn from his terrible losses, including the extermination of his wife. Frankl could not change his circumstances, but it was his intention to survive with dignity and grace. And his choices enabled him to do that.

I hope your choices enable you to live a life of dignity and grace.


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