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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

What are your intentions with my daughter?

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Intention: a determination to act in a certain way; to aim at a target; the resolve to will something into being; to focus one's capacity to choose on an object or course of action.

I have heard it said that a healthy life cannot be lead without intentionality. Do you think that is true?

In my opinion, while there are good and bad intentions…there is no way around them (there are many today who would disagree with that statement and associate intentional living with having an agenda or manipulation). If we look up at the definition again we see that anytime we "focus our capacity to choose on an object or course of action" we have become intentional. Intention is unavoidable. For example, if you are thinking about San Francisco, the increased cost of living there, or about your meeting someone there at AT&T Park…your mind, your thinking, is directed toward San Francisco. You are showing intention towards San Francisco.

Our intentions reveal themselves in our thoughts, how we spend our time, where we spend our time, with whom we spend our time, how we spend our money, how we speak to others, and the list could go on and on.

Our intentions are revealed in the living of our lives.

If we value our health, what will we see? We will see someone who snacks on celery and peanut butter, splits their chipotle burrito (I usually get extra chicken, what does that say?), and goes to the gym at least twice a week. If we value a future career in law, what will we see? We will see a Wall Street Journal, books thicker than most mattresses, school debt, time with respected lawyers, and thoughts revolving around the legal ramifications of the Starbucks employee who won't stop commenting on how much he loves your new Rock and Republics.

Our intentions speak loudly of where we place value.

The problem we often face is that our minds are bombarded with so many thoughts each day we simply overlook or forget about many of our desired intentions. Our desired intentions are often quite different than the things we appear to be intentional about.

So how do we then acknowledge our intentions as an individual or an organization? We look at our actions. We discover our real values or our real ethos by looking at how we live. You may say that you love Suzzie Q but you have not called her in weeks. You may say that you are a company that cares for its employees, but you have not had "Fun Friday" since you were first hired. You may say that you are a church that is intentional about prayer, but it is not practiced in the context of a service. Our actions may not align with our intended intentions.

Look around. What do we do? Where do we spend our time? Where are our thoughts directed? Where is our money spend? Where do our intentions show? Does what we intend to be intentional about show up in our lived intentionality (good sentence, eh)? Psych students, weigh in on this one. Where do our intentions come from? Should we even be intentional or should we simply allow who we are to "organically" manifest itself in life? Is intention dishonoring of who we are created to be?

Let's take some time and really ask…what are my intentions?

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