How to Set an Intention that Gets You What You Truly Want

BY Maria J Lopez May 19, 2016

Set your intentions from an honest heart place, from a place of love.

When setting a clear intention, be sure to look at it closely and try to become aware of any unconscious energy that might be tinting it.

What is the feeling behind your need or desire when you ask the universe for something?
Is it pure or is it hiding something negative?
Is your focus based on fear or love?
Is your intention ‘I want to love more?’ or is it ‘I don’t want to suffer?’

If you are negatively motivated, that negative energy will deplete you. If you are positively motivated, you will be able to hold the intention with ease.

So, look at the energy your intention is feeding you, and be careful how you phrase it. If you’re still not sure how to do this, ask the universe to support you and show you how.

This is a simple exercise to help you explore your real intentions. Create two lists:

1. The ‘I don’t want’ list: This list helps you to see what you are avoiding.

2. The ‘I really want’ list: This list is not about things, people or experiences. If you can set your intention for the feelings you want, then the things, people and experiences will show up by themselves. It’s best not to be too specific about what tangible things you want. It’s more about what your heart wants: real happiness, ease, peace, joy.

Connect with each of these lists, but be honest with yourself. Why do you want these things?

It’s important to phrase your intentions in a way that is both truthful and that vibrates from a place of ease. If you hold your intention from a place of centered ease, then it will be motivated by love, not fear, and the result will match the intention.

For example, if you set an intention to find outward harmony as a way to avoid conflict, you will never find true harmony because your real focus is on avoiding conflict. If you can be comfortable with conflict and accept it, you will see conflict as the opposite of surface harmony, without having an attachment to either. Then your need won’t be fear-based. You won’t be running away from conflict, but toward a deep inner harmony.

Here's another example: When you say, ‘I want to love myself,’ what's really happening there energetically?
What you are really saying is: ‘I don’t love myself right now.’ But the fact that you’re reading this is a sign that you do love yourself now, so focus on the thought, ‘I love myself now, and I’m learning to love more and more parts of myself.’

If you can stop identifying with the movements of the psyche,
if you can stop resisting the different energies of the soul
and accept them as part of life,
then you can find that place of balance and ease.

This is true happiness.

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Maria J Lopez

An author, international speaker and empowerment teacher, Maria has spent the last 15 years helping people to become empowered in their relationships with others as well as themselves. Maria is the author of several successful books on the topic of self-empowerment and relationships. Among them: How to Heal a Broken Heart, The True You Shines: Let Go of Guilt and Shame, Empowerment: What is it? and Archetypes.