For a type-A goal oriented person like myself I have set many good and worthy goals and then absolutely HATED the process of working toward them.  Its really fun to envision an outcome. Its not always so fun to sit down and do the nitty gritty work of making that vision come to life!

But recently I’ve realized there is a difference between setting a “goal” and establishing an “intention”. And this understanding has made all the difference in how I chase my dreams!

Your intentions (unlike goals) are really subtle. Goals say “I will achieve this by this date.”  Intentions say “My life will look and feel like this around this time frame.”

Intentions are rooted in feeling. Are rooted in the heart.  They don’t dictate to the world or to God how to get things done.  It’s all about you determining the destination, but the destination is not tangible, like a car or a house. The destination is feeling tone or a way of being.

Here’s an example for intentions verses goals for a career.

In this society we are told at a very early age that we should set goals. That at 16 years old when I was on my way to college, some very kind and unassuming guidance counselor told me that I needed to select a major.  That is to say as a teenager who had not even discovered what life was about or who I was, I was supposed to decide what I wanted to do on a daily basis for most of my adult life.

And that’s just how we do things here. So I did it too.  To be considered a forward thinking young lady with a good head on her shoulders, I not only had to decided on a career, but I was also supposed to set up some step by step plan to get me there.  AND I was supposed to be able to measure tangibly whether or not I had achieved my goal.

This all sounds very good in theory and for the longest time I bought into this way of thinking.

From an energetic level (and I’ve been so into understanding subtle energy lately), goal setting is a masculine energy. It’s all about doing, getting something accomplished, manipulating the world around me to meet my needs and exerting effort.

When you set a goal for a career path you decide on what you want to do, then you lay out the steps to get there.  But what about how you feel along the way?

We aren’t taught to pay any mind to how we FEEL while we’re working towards the goal.

And here in lies my fundamental issue with goal setting (in this way).

We fail to enjoy the journey. We are so busy checking action items off of our to-do list that we don’t savor or even enjoy the doing. We get so fixated on what we said we wanted to do, that we sometimes don’t even realize that what we said we wanted at 16 is totally different than what we want at 20 or 30.

I spent four years of undergraduate school studying one thing, only to realize in my senior year that what I wanted for myself as a teenager was not what 20 year old me wanted at all.

So did I fail? Did I fail to reach my goal?

By external standards I did.

By internal standards I was just taking part in the process of growing into myself.

Here’s my other gripe with goal setting in this traditionally western framework.  We often forget the reason why we want the goals we are reaching for in the first place.

Long and short of it, we set goals because we THINK achieving that goal will make us happy. We think obtaining that thing will bring us joy.  But of course for most of us, striving for the goal makes us very unhappy and sucks the joy right out of us.

This thinking is so very flawed, because we can never achieve happiness, but we can decide to be happy right now. And what would make you happy? Why doing things that bring you joy – of course.

The energy behind goal setting in this way is a lack-full state. We say to ourselves, I am lacking this thing, this degree, this spouse this new car, and I think having it will make me happy. So if I achieve and obtain it then I will be happy. But if I don’t have it then I lack happiness.

Law of attraction tells us that we attract energy that is like our own. So if our energy is that of lack and unhappiness, then we will just be attracting more of the same.

So how is this different from intentions?

The energy behind intentions are feminine.  Intentions focus on the feeling tone of what your heart desires.

From this standpoint it’s not about the “thing” you want it’s more about how you want your life to BE with the thing.  In my opinion intentions should always come first (before) you set a goal.

So if I’m setting an intention for my career, I might say “I want to do something that helps people heal physically, emotionally and spiritually.  I want to do this work in such a way that I am fulfilled and in such a way that allows me to have a full family life, with children and a husband.  I want to earn enough money that all our needs are met and all of the things important to us are paid for.  I want to have time freedom and flexibly to work odd hours so that I can fully attend to the other priorities in my life.”

I would venture to say that there are a LOT of career options that would lead me to a lifestyle like this. I could be a nurse, a teacher, a yoga instructor (like me), a physical therapist or a psychotherapist.  I could even be a minister or pastor.

But from the framework of setting an intention the details of the “job” I do is unimportant.  What’s important is all of those intangible lifestyle elements that I just mentioned.  Joy, fulfillment, time freedom, flexibility, family life, all needs met.

Those things are spiritual qualities.

My intentions then lead me to identify what goals I should set. But I have to be open and available to receiving the direction.  So maybe I start investigating careers that might allow me to have the lifestyle I’ve listed above.  And maybe one in particular resonates with me.  (again we are back to feelings).  And let’s say I go and speak with a couple people who do what I’m thinking of doing and reading some books on this work.  And it still resonates with me.  And I realize that YES this is it. This is the work that I feel like I should be doing.

It’s at this point that I set a goal.

Form comes after consciousness, remember?

In other words, first there was the Word (thought) and then all else came into existence. That’s why goals come AFTER intentions.

Intentions are the consciousness (the thought) behind what you do, or wish to do. The goal is the actual manifestation or form that the intention takes.

So you see, without an intention there really is no goal. Only a hodge podge of actions that we mindlessly move through.

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