Is Setting An Intention Like Having A Magic Wand?

What do you want to have, be, feel, experience or learn?

Have you ever heard of Intention Deficit Disorder? My friend and brilliant hypnotherapist, Shelley Stockwell-Nicholas, coined this term. We all have it or experience it too often in one of two ways. First because we don’t set our intentions regularly and second because we don’t always know what we want. 

One of the first things I do before writing is set my intentions because then I know exactly what I want the readers to learn. In essence, I ask myself, ‘what do I want to achieve?’ An intention is a purpose or desired outcome.  Generally speaking always state your intentions in the positive. For example, instead of saying ‘I want to stop being so stressed.’ say, ‘I want to feel calm and confident.’ 

My intentions are to provide you with enough wisdom and inspiration that you consistently include this as a strategy to create your life by design.   When you are clear on your intention, you naturally get focused on the particular outcome. When you set an intention, you create a target. We all know that when you want to hit a target you have to know what the target is. Right? 

Setting an intention makes you think. If you ask yourself, what do I want to have, be, feel, achieve or learn from this experience, your mind has to answer the question. When you ask yourself resourceful questions you get resourceful answers. The opposite is true too. When you ask yourself lousy questions you get lousy… But the questions we ask ourselves needs to be reserved for a different blog post. 

Here’s the thing. You are either consciously or unconsciously setting intentions whenever you go somewhere or do something. If you want to ‘Take the bull by the horns,’ and take charge of your life, set your intentions.

Is it really that simple? Is setting an intention like having a magic wand? Set an intention and it comes true? There is some scientific research backing the power of setting intentions. But the research makes it very clear that in order to produce an intended effect you must be in a positive state AND focus on the outcome you want.

Here’s one study:

Dr. Glen Rein, from the HeartMath Research Center in California, conceived of an experiment to test healer’s ability and their affect on biological systems. In Dr. Rein’s experiment, he first studies a group of 10 individuals who were well practiced in creating ‘heart coherence.’ What this means is they can produce strong elevated feelings such as love and appreciation, which can be easily measured with an electrocardiogram. (ECG) These 10 people in the study held vials of DNA samples suspended in deionized water. When the samples were analyzed, no statistically significant changes had occurred in the DNA.

A second group of trained participants also focused on positive feelings of love and appreciation AND they simultaneously held an intention to either wind or unwind the strands of DNA. This group produced statistically significant changes in the shape of the DNA samples. In some cases the DNA was wound or unwound as much as 25%.

A 3rd group also trained in heart coherence techniques, held a clear intent to change the DNA but they were to NOT enter into a positive emotional state. This group had no changes to the DNA samples.

Whether you implement the second component of getting into a resourceful state or not, setting an intention allows you the opportunity to become present and get focused on what you want.

At this point you might be wondering what the difference is between an intention and a goal.  While very similar, intentions are short-term and present oriented. With an intention, you also let go of the how. Goals, on the other hand can be short or long term. They are usually future oriented and include a process to achieve them. The how or tasks must also be created to achieve the goal. 

What are your intentions for reading this? You can write the answers, state them to yourself, out loud or do all three. Either way, I suggest you remember this statement and utilize it. 

“Vividly imagine the end result with a great feeling.” Randi Light