Intent

April 10, 2013

My intent is to start writing a blog…..

Intent

During a client’s session yesterday I stopped and wrote the word “intent” on my hand. A reminder to myself of how important the intent of my thought was.  I was explaining how we don’t always follow our own intentions.  She wanted to lose weight but wasn’t doing anything to reach the goal.  So clearly her intent to stop eating wasn’t strong enough to override her other intentions.  Like stuffing her face with crap food late in the evening… or the excuse of constantly having to eat at restaurants for her work.  She tried to convince me how impossible it was for her.

In my mind I felt that what we did each day was a huge indicator of our intentions.  I am clearly wrong.  We may have great intentions but never fulfill them.  This thought made me realize where we go wrong so often as human beings.  Our intentions are not always apparent.  Crap. This is not good.

This leads to confusion and too many arguments amongst people. Of course it does.  Someone does something and it pisses you off…. Do you calmly sit down with the offender and ask if that was their intention?  Never. We just get mad.

Assumptions probably lead to more break-ups than affairs.

There are two issues.

One is pretty easy.  We fully intend to do or act a certain way and we don’t.  Very straight forward.  There is a reason for you to get upset at yourself and for others to also get upset.  Yes, you can also throw forgiveness in the scenario and we should.  We are not perfect and life is hard.  We do the best we can.  We fuck up.  The only time I get pissed off in this scenario is when people give me long blablabla’s of excuses which can only mean they are entrenched in denial.  Every personal trainer has heard too many false claims to ever think it’s anything else.

The other situation is when you are working away, living your life, pursuing your intent with all you have and it’s misconstrued.  “What… no, I didn’t do that because I wanted to screw you around… I did it for a good thing”.  Even if you are intelligent, honest and have tons of integrity things can go wrong.  You can screw up with the best of intention.   This is the really sad scenario.  You are left broken.  You did your best with an intention of only good and things still fell apart.

This sucks.  It’s heartbreaking.  We want the people around us to give us the benefit of the doubt.

When I’m mad at someone I first try to say to myself. “Did they get up this morning with the intent to hurt me? Was that the goal, to make me cry or cause me pain?”  If the answer is no, I like to think my next question would be to ask what went wrong. I try not to judge.

We are only frail people and we make mistakes all the time.  Very few of us wake up wanting to cause someone else pain.

I hope I get the benefit of the doubt.  I want my friends to always know my intent is for their happiness.  A simple fact I don’t feel should be questioned.  It’s who I am.  It’s who most humans are.

As for the clients that abandon their intent to lose weight.  Make peace with yourself and your excuses and stop eating.  Your lack of intent isn’t working anymore.