Intention, Motivation, and Purpose

When my children were young I had no problem getting them to do what I asked because there was always a motivating factor. Sometimes it was money, other times it was a special activity or a special treat that they wanted. Once their chores were done they got the reward. If they did not do their chores, no reward. Depending on what the reward was, they were usually very quick to do the work. And it only took one time of not getting the reward to let them know that it was a motivator for their effort and they were expected to make the effort. 

We need that kind of motivating factor too because intention is not enough. If we set an intention without a motivator we are going to be disappointed in the results or the result may take a lot longer than we want it to.

We are driven by motivation and sometimes that motivation is a serious situation that forces us to take action because we are in trouble. Other times we simply don’t want to do something and even the motivation of a dire consequence is not enough to get us excited about our intention or the outcome. And from another angle, our motivation can be based on what someone else wants or our desire to impress, manipulate, or convince someone that we are worthy of their attention, love, and acknowledgement. No judgment here but if you carefully dissect your motivation, it can be far different from the grand and glorious statements of spiritual purpose that we like to think motivates us to take action. 

To get our intention to work we need a motivator, a valid reason to accomplish something and we tend to put that responsibility onto our purpose, which we interpret to mean the overarching reason that we are alive and in our reality.

But we take the word purpose out of context and give it an important spiritual meaning, one that we may never be able to achieve, and then we use that to judge ourselves and our journey. No wonder we always find ourselves lacking and think we are not on the right path. Sometimes our motivation is not very spiritual, it is weak and needy, fearful, selfish, and even unrealistic or illogical.

How do we take our intention and give it a purpose that motivates and inspires us? We use the most important word in our intention vocabulary and that is the word ‘because’. This is the word that takes our intention out of the lofty real estate of our head and heart and moves it into the stark truth of our reality.  I want to eat because my body needs nourishment is far different from I want to eat because I am hungry and that is the stark reality. When do we eat? When we’re hungry.

Read the full article on the blog at enlighteninglife.com 

Created, narrated, and produced by Jennifer Hoffman.

Artwork by Jennifer Hoffman.

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