Setting your intent

I was struggling with expanding my business recently and had an incredibly fruitful session with Coach Tess Hardwick, www.myauthenticpath.com, another Biznik member.

During the course of brainstorming ideas, she said: "The first thing to do is to get crystal clear about what you want to do."

I knew exactly what she meant. She meant: What is your intent? What is your purpose?

"Setting your intent" is such a vague concept; it's hard to hold onto, difficult to break down into practical steps. Understanding it is crucial, though. Setting your intent is, I believe, the single greatest way to find the work you love, the clients you adore, the money you need, the life you want. It was a lesson I'd learned years before, and it was obviously a lesson I needed to learn again. I'd gotten off track, was scrambling for new avenues of work and felt like I was spinning my wheels. I needed to go back and center myself on my intent.

It took me years to really get what my intent was. First, let me tell you what that intent is. Then I'll describe the process of getting there in hopes that it will help others find or hone their own intent.

My intent is a single word: voice. My purpose is to express my own voice through fiction writing and art, and to help others find their voice, whether they want to write fiction, a memoir, a self-help book, or they simply want to express the essence of their business through their web content.

Now, here's how I got there. Years ago, a friend of mine in London, a woman I honored and admired who wrote wild monologues for Jamaican women actresses for the BBC, suggested I “set my intent”.

"What? How?" I asked. I didn't know what she was talking about.  She explained to me that everybody lives their life on soulful assumptions organic to their nature, organic to their purpose on this planet.  We do this unconsciously.  Sometimes we "hit" it and are happy. Often times we miss. If we make our intent conscious, she said, the universe provides us with a more honed package of what we want or need. We then find our life to be more successful and fulfilling.

She said it took a year to write her intent down exactly as she wanted it. After she was finished, jobs and people, friends and lovers, came to her without effort. She basically put her boat in the right river and aimed it in the right direction.

Sit down and write on the top of the paper, she said, what you think your intent is. It may not be exactly it. You must mull it. Ponder it. Let it gestate. As you go along it deepens and changes and you get clearer and clearer.

I wrote down that my intent was to “do my art”, whether that be fiction writing or visual art. After I did that, jobs working for art organizations fell into my lap. I met lots of artists and writers. But still this wasn’t exactly it. It was closer, but not exactly it. A year passed; I realized my intent was deeper.

I wrote my intent was to help women express themselves. So, I worked with women for two years, helping them explore themselves through writing. But even that wasn’t exactly it because I love working with men, as well. I love men’s voices, as much as I love women’s.

It took me a year longer to realize that my intent was to explore, nurture and open Voice, whether on a personal, group or global level. You see, setting intent doesn’t mean saying that you want a specific job in a specific city with a specific amount of money. It means getting to the core of who you are, opening to the universe, and allowing the universe to give you what you need for your greatest and highest good, and for the greatest and highest good of everyone else.

When I got to Voice, I knew I had it. Here’s why. Intent has to do with everything you’ve always been. Your intent is around you all the time, every day, in the types of friends you have, and even in how you decorate your house. It's your style. Your soul.

I’ve always been interested in voice. When I was a child, I wanted to hear everyone’s stories. I mean, I truly wanted to hear their voices in their stories and how they thought and perceived the world. I liked the eccentricities of different voices and viewpoints  – because fundamentally I believe we’re all eccentric, quirky, fascinating. And throughout the years a lot of my friends have been professional singers. As a journalist, I was interested in voices all over the world. What story did the Japanese have? What about the becak driver in Indonesia? What is the British voice? What is the Jamaican voice in Britain? The Guyanan?

I just returned to the U.S. after a year traveling Europe. During that time, I lived for six months in Budapest. Our intent can appear as its opposite, and in Budapest this is what happened. The 50 years of Communist rule had squelched many voices, and even today there is terror of speaking the truth. Speaking out used to equal death; and that energy is still prevalent even amongst the younger generation. But this is beginning to change.

All of this fear around truth reminded me of growing up in Missouri, where I felt as a young girl I wasn’t allowed to speak my truth. By this I don’t mean tell the truth, I mean express my eccentricities, be seen and heard as a talented young artist, something that seemed impossible, because it put me too far outside of the expected role of wife and mother. Budapest helped me heal the fears I still had around voice from my childhood. I saw I was not alone. Many governments throughout history have tried to squelch voice. Voice is freedom. Voice is radical. Voice is transformational.

What moving to Budapest did for my intent was this: I realized that when we find our true intent, it's implications are universal. It can be applied in every place in every part of the world. We then can find OUR place in the scheme of things. I could have chosen to stay in Budapest and work with people to help open their voices, to consciously bring my soul's path into play. I actually tried to hold workshops but it didn't work; the fear was still too high. Instead, I decided to go back to a place where I wouldn't have to fight so hard to have my voice heard.

As I write fiction and work with other fiction writers, it's amazing how often the CHARACTERS in our stories struggle and succeed in finding their own voices. Once you set your intent, it's everywhere!

What is your intent? How might you explore it? How might having a deep alignment with your intent change the message you convey via your website and marketing material? Does your current marketing material successfully convey your intent?