Are You Aware of Your Intentions?

Inspired by the Podcast Dharma Talks: Realizing Your Deepest Intention by Tara Brach  

I was talking to marketing expert Pam Hausner recently about heart-centered marketing and working with creatives and healers in growing their businesses. She sent me this podcast with the message; “Hi Larissa! I listened to this podcast this morning and thought it would be a wonderful orientation as heart-centered people work on their business and marketing.”  She was absolutely right. 

I listened to it, and thought I need to share this, but also why I think it is important messaging.

As a healer, a creative, a heart-centered business owner you may think that you are the odd one, you just don’t fit in, that you are the problem. But, it’s just not true. We have been been told to get into a box, and if we don't fit in the box, that we are being difficult. Trust me, I am the cat with the splayed paws when it comes to the box, I was called rebellious most of my life, and yet I still tried to do all the things I was told, get married, and have my 2.1 kids, a dog and go to work in a cubicle. It nearly killed me. So I started my own business (again) and a few years in realized that doing all the things that I had been told was just leading to overwhelm, burnout, and hating my “job”. 

I wanted to quit, but I knew that if I went back to the cubicle it would kill me, so what could I do instead? I had to start looking at what filled me up, what I loved about the work I do, and then do more of that. But, how do you do that when you still have to do all the other things to run a business?

Well, first you figure out what is in alignment with you and how you want to live your life, and then you delegate, get rid of, or amplify.

Oh, and then start a side gig that catches women healers and creatives before they do all the wrong things and burn out and hate what they do.

Some of the messages from this podcast really resonated with me, and the work I share.

Tara mentions a statement said by Zen Masters “The most important thing is remembering the most important thing.” This to me is all about coming back to your Why. Why do you want a business? Why do you want to share what you want to share? Why are you doing this? We often lose sight of our Why when we get bogged down in the minutia of doing, doing, doing. What is your Why? And, do you keep it front of mind when deciding your next steps? Or do you think that this one more thing will be the thing that makes it all work? The one more thing that will make the sales, bring in the people, build your thriving business?

She goes on to tell the story of the King who invited people to apply to be the heir to the Kingdom, and he invited them to come and eat, bathe, dress, play, and then they could come up for an interview. In the end, no one had come up because they all got so distracted by the “party” atmosphere they forgot why they were there. This is very common, we get so distracted trying to do all the pieces “correctly”, making them look good, and rush or forget the most important part, what will they get from what you have to offer, and Why you are so excited about it.

Instead of creating the “perfect” landing page or finding the “perfect” graphics, let people know why you are excited about it, why you think it could help them, what YOU love and how it changed YOUR life. There is no “perfect” and you will often find reasons why it wasn’t “good enough”. Work towards your best landing page over time, work towards changing pieces over time, put it out, be excited, and share with even a small group of people to start with. Who knows what even one person will do with what they learn from you.

The other part of that story was that the King had done this event because he thought it should be fairer in how an heir was chosen, he wanted to please everyone. Forgetting that “every day we move through carried by what we might call habit energy. We all have it. In every one of us and to different degrees we’re in some way trying to control our way through the day, trying to get other’s approval or to get gratification, get things done or make money or whatever it is in terms of meeting other people's expectations, trying to protect think ourselves against making mistakes in some way, manipulating behaviors. So we basically get what we want.” 

When we try to please everyone, we end up pleasing no one. It is a vicious cycle that we get caught in, and can be a hard one to learn. Be your most authentic self, say what you believe, and speak from the heart. Not everyone will love you, but that’s okay, they are not supposed to. Your people will love you, and you will have built a community of fans who want to support you and hang on your every word. The fancy landing page or professional copywriting will not change that. It can amplify it, but you don’t need it to get started.

Tara goes on to explore that your intention creates your experience, so if you move from a space of intention you can create the experience that you want. But, first, we need to be aware of our intentions, so that we can be aligned with what we intend to have happen. Our intentions often come from fear, and so what we may think we intended isn’t what was actually behind the intention. “So each moment, our intention is either I want more of this or I am afraid of that. Or it might be that as we're waking up more, that our intention is towards connection or towards spiritual realization, it could be any of those levels of our being. And in any moment, if we can see what's running our intention, then we can drop into a more pure expression.”

I often describe this as sitting in the emotion you are feeling. Whether anxious about trying something new, afraid it won’t work, or one of the many other emotions we get caught in. We often get caught in that space, that intention, and try to work from that space thus it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, but if we can feel into that emotion, understand it, and move it up into our awareness we can feel through it and change that fear of trying into excitement to see what happens, or that anxiety of learning one more thing to the curiosity of finding out how it works. These are simplified examples but very much speak to the energy, or intention behind our actions. What intentions are not in your awareness?

We often do all the things we think we should do, or we think we are sabotaging ourselves when we don’t do things we know we should do, but have you really looked at what you are feeling? First off, is what you think you are “supposed” to do, is it in alignment with what you want? Or that thing you are avoiding, but not sure why, have you stopped to ‘feel’ into why? Our lizard brains are programmed to protect us, new or different is seen as a threat, so allowing ourselves to feel into that feeling, and then asking what is the worst that can happen, what is the best that could happen. Stop and feel into your feelings to move forward.

Just today I had a conversation with my assistant, she asked if she should take an item off the todo list that had been there for months, and I realized I hadn't done it because I was worried about having to learn one more thing, and I had put it off every time it came up on the list because it seemed overwhelming. I sat with it for a few minutes and it ended up taking less than 5 minutes to knock it off my list, it was super simple and I had built it into something much larger.

Take a listen to the Podcast episode, Tara goes on to share some stories and other ways in which not realizing your intentions can be adding to your struggle. Take some time to stop and feel into what you are feeling when you have some resistance or find yourself putting off things.