Align your intent and do something great
Understand intent to realise your purpose and intensify your actions
It is a new beautiful day.
I love to write.
I want to write.
And I want to do it now, this morning.
I have the idea, enough free time ahead, and the desire to write.
I just have to sit, open my laptop and write.
Easy.
I love to write.
I want to write.
And I want to do it now, this morning.
I have the idea, enough free time ahead, and the desire to write.
I just have to sit, open my laptop and write.
Easy.
And this is what I do.
I find a comfortable place to sit.
I open my laptop.
I just check that article that I didn’t finish reading yesterday.
And then I get lost between irrelevant articles and meaningless videos.
By the time I realise I haven’t written a word, the morning is gone.
Sounds familiar?
How often do you want to do something but you end up doing something different?
I lost the count of how many times it happened to me.
This disconnection between “what I want” and “what I do” has troubled me since forever. It has been a source of frustration, stress and guilt for years.
Then, a few years ago I decided I had enough.
It was time to solve this mystery and find the source of this disconnection.
In the beginning, I thought the problem was in the “want”. Maybe, to write wasn’t really what I wanted. Perhaps it was not my purpose.
So I dug deep inside. I asked myself uncomfortable questions and went through various exercises to discover my purpose. My WHY as Simon Sinek beautifully described it in this book.
It took a while, and I’m still refining it because, as I discovered, our purpose transforms with us.
But I have it. Now my writing has a purpose.
I know why I want to write. Yes!
With this clarity about why I want to write, you would expect the disconnection between wanting and doing to disappear.
Unfortunately, it didn’t.
There were days when I could comfortably write pages. But there were also too many mornings when time vanished leaving behind a lot of guilt but no words.
Knowing the why was not enough.
I had to keep searching.
I realised soon that it was not a matter of skills. I’m not saying that the quality of my writing doesn’t need improving, quite the opposite, but the issue was that I wasn’t writing in the first place.
It wasn’t about writing something good.
It was about writing something.
Luckily for me, at this stage of my quest, I began a training program to become a professional coach. One of the lessons was about intent, and one sentence, in particular, struck me.
Intent is extraordinarily powerful. It determines an outcome.
I am not a native English speaker, and I couldn’t grasp the meaning of the word intent immediately. But I felt that maybe, in that word, there was the connection I couldn’t find. So, I kept digging.
What is intent?
My favourite definition comes from the Merriam Webster dictionary.
Intent is the state of mind with which an act is done.
It is more than wanting to do something. It is also more than having a plan in mind. It is the mindset that guides our action. Behind everything we do or say there is an intent. Every word, action or behaviour is the result of intent.
Intent drives our commitment to act.
If something is stopping us from achieving what we want, maybe our commitment is somewhere else.
So, it was true. The intent is the connection I was looking for. The one connecting purpose (what we want) and actions (what we do).
When purpose, intent and behaviours are aligned, energy flows free from our core into our actions maximising the outcome. But when they are not aligned, energy goes wasted in other directions compromising the outcome of our actions.
There is always an intent behind our actions, but too often we are not consciously aware of what it is.
In my case, my intent was apparently somewhere else.
I just didn’t know where.
- How can we discover our intent?
- How can we align our intent with our purpose to improve the impact of our behaviours?
Self-awareness
The first step is to understand where our intent is and to do so we need to ask ourselves two vital questions.
- How does this situation serve my purpose?
- What do I believe about myself, in relation to this situation?
The first one is about getting clarity about why we want to do something. What is the purpose motivating us and how does that behaviour support our purpose?
We may discover that we need more clarity about our purpose or that what we want to do is not aligned with our purpose.
The second one will help you uncover the underlying beliefs that may hold you back from taking action. They are all the ideas, thoughts, and assumptions that we perceive as truth and make up our mental model of the world. They define our reality, and because we can’t change the reality, we adapt our behaviours to conform to it.
Becoming aware of our underlying beliefs is the first step to reframe our perspective of reality and regain control of our intent.
It may not be easy to answer those questions on our own. In my case my coaches, yes I have more than one, helped me a lot. If you are committed to change and grow, a coach would be a spectacular partner in your journey.
Back to my story.
I knew my purpose and the reason why writing was aligned with it. But I discovered two beliefs that were holding me back.
The belief that what I wanted to share wasn’t interesting for others and, the worst one, the belief that I wasn’t fit for discipline. Including the discipline of writing regularly.
Becoming aware of the first one helped to reframe and solve it. I re-connected with my why, and I realised that I wasn’t writing for others but for myself.
The second one has been more challenging to overcome, and it brings me to the next point.
Environment
Our environment is a reflection of our intent. When the time to act comes, we can’t rely only on our willpower. We need structures that express our purpose and support our behaviours.
If we are not getting the results we want for ourselves, it may be the right time to take an honest assessment of our environment.
- Is my environment serving my purpose?
- What structures are in place in my life, are they serving my intent?
- What about the people around me? Do they share my values? Are they supporting me?
You can try to swim against the current, and it may work for a short time. But soon it will drain your enthusiasm and energy until you drown or you accept to get carried by the flow.
Because we are part of our environment, it may be difficult to get the awareness we need about it.
A practice that worked well for me was to measure my behaviours. Inspired by the Good Time Journal Activity Log presented by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans in their book Designing Your Life, I started tracking my days. I kept track of the moments when doing what I want was more natural, and I felt in flow, but also of the moments when I struggled to keep my focus. Then I analysed what was around me in all those circumstances to identify what was working and what not in my environment. Sometimes, numbers can be harsh, but they can help us gain new perspectives.
In my case, they revealed to me that I can be disciplined, but I needed to schedule my day differently and take more care of my physical environment.
And it’s working. I’m not where I want to be yet, but I’m improving day by day. Most of all, this new self-awareness helps me in dealing with failures. I just have to breath, relax and recenter trusting that my intent will take me where I want to go.
A coach can be beneficial also in this case. Together, you can uncover what structures or beliefs are holding you back and replace them with new ones, that will support your purpose.
If you feel you are stuck and not able to do what you want to do, it is probably the right time to check the alignment of your intent. Asking yourself some tough questions and assessing your environment are excellent first steps to get the awareness you need to realign your purpose, intent and behaviours to create the impact you want.
As a coach, I would be happy to partner with you in this journey. Please, reach out for a free session at me@fabiosalvadori.com
