A Conversation about Intention

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This morning reminded me of something important I’d like to talk about for a bit- that is, the value of bringing intention into our lives. Let me preface this by saying, I hate long distance running. It’s not my strong suit, nor will it ever be. However, in the last couple of months I started trying couch to 5k for the third time in my life.

Today I tried to go for a run in intervals- 5 minutes running, 2 minutes walking, for 4 intervals. A little more than I’d done before, but shouldn’t have been a bother- except for the fact that I had a cold recently so I hadn’t gone for a run in two weeks, and the cold weather has started to arrive. 

Not only did I forget to start tracking my run until 4 minutes in, but I couldn’t even deal with the first full 5 minutes. It was like I’d never even improved my stamina at all. I kept stopping, then changing the intervals mid run- but I just felt so dejected by the whole experience, until I started to consider why I had started running.

My original intention with running was to build up the stamina for an 8k obstacle course run I’ll be doing next week- and I knew I had built stamina for sure, as I can run short distances now without getting too tired too quickly. But then I got distracted along the way, and got caught up with the idea of being able to run a full 5k without stopping- even though, when I looked at the statistics for my runs, I wasn’t going much faster running 8 minutes and walking 5 minutes, than when I was running 90 seconds and walking for 2 minutes. 

That’s when I realised, my intention wasn’t simply to build up the stamina for the run- it was to not get left behind. And I quickly realised that because of how fast of a walker I am, it didn’t matter that I can’t run for 5 minutes straight. It’s not a race after all, it’s a run, and I can only run as fast and as much as I can before having to take a break- and that’s okay. So, to celebrate my realisation that I can only do my best, and there’s no point in getting down over feeling like I’ve regressed- I bought cheesecake on the way home, of course.

Intention is something I value a lot in life, even if it’s not something that I always check in with myself on. I think so often we’re drifting around in autopilot mode we don’t really stop to consider the “why’s” behind the things we’re doing- then one day we end up in a life we didn’t really sign up for, without knowing how we got there. Or sometimes, we’re still running with old intentions that we don’t really resonate with anymore, and it’s time to reassess what our new values are.

If there’s a life decision you’ve been struggling with, try thinking of what your intent for the outcome of that decision is, and what the best decision you can make with that intent is. It’s easy to think of things as black and white at times as if there’s right or wrong decisions, but sometimesthings aren’t so simple. 

Even from when we reach adulthood and are supposed to choose what we want to spend our lives doing, we don’t necessarily have to make the right decisions straight away- we just have to make decisions with the right intent, and we’ll end up in the right place in the end. I went to college to become a science teacher, because I thought I could help people to love learning. Interestingly, computational physics, my only programming related module, was the only thing I did any good in in my final year. 

In the end I became disillusioned with the education system, but I never stopped wanting to help people be their best in some kind of way. I started making more art while I was going through a difficult part of my life, and eventually when I came to a better place, I tied my love of art with my love of programming, and decided I wanted to make games that could help someone who might need it feel the joy that I had felt when I played old jrpg’s during some difficult times in my life- maybe in another video I’ll talk about my biggest inspiration for that, Final Fantasy 9.

Things we create have intent behind them, always. When I used to paint oil paintings, and tried to make a living from it for a little while, the intention behind the art didn’t really resonate with me strongly enough to stick with anything. I was creating art out of hurt and grief, and I thought maybe others might feel the same kind of hurt and resonate- but really, I wanted to be able to spread joy to those people, I just wasn’t in a joyful enough place to know how I could yet.

Because I love video games and the way a lot of them make me feel, I know the feeling I want others to have as they play my video games- joy, whimsy, nostalgia. I never had that kind of clarity with art of “what feeling I want to give others”, so it’s nice to know what my intention is with what I’m creating now. 

Of course, intent doesn’t always have to be about big life decisions or creating something. Sometimes you can just bring intention into conversations and interactions, thinking about what kind of person you would like to be in that interaction. Some people might call something like that “fake”, but bringing empathy and kindness into all aspects of our life, for example, is something that takes energy and work- it’s bringing the intention to be our kindest selves as much as we can.

So, if you could choose what kind of person you could be today, what would you choose, and how can you bring that intention into your interactions today?

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