Do you remember when the law of attraction hit the public psyche on the back of the movie, The Secret?
Sorry to offend if you think otherwise, but The Secret was a travesty of a book/movie/compact disc/cuddly toy/whatever.
All it did was sell a big fat lie that appealed to a lot of people – many of whom were desperate and couldn’t afford to get ripped off.
It suggested, that if you want anything badly enough and you place your intention in the right place for long enough, then voila, it will be yours.
They even added a Genie and lots of gold into the movie trailer to demonstrate its mystical powers.
The movie spawned an entire industry of people who were suddenly experts at manifesting their dreams using the power of intention.
And the good news was, you could hire them to help you do the same.
Except, they couldn’t deliver.
Sure, there may have been a few coincidences here and there, which is what the movie was based upon. But that was about it.
Because the reality is, that intention is largely superficial.
Most obese people intend to lose weight.
Most smokers or drug addicts intend to quit.
And most people who hate their job intend to walk away and do something more meaningful eventually.
Yet, for the vast majority of those people, nothing changes. Or at least not in the way they’d like it to.
Intention is a prerequisite in making a beneficial change in the same way that eggs are a prerequisite in making a soufflé.
Soufflés are difficult to make, but that difficulty morphs into impossibility if egg whites are the only ingredient you have.
Making big life changes is difficult, but that difficulty becomes insurmountable if intention is all you have.
Most of those self-proclaimed experts are now long gone – ironically because they couldn’t attract coaching clients.
The tiny few who remain are now claiming they didn’t mean you only needed intention.
Ho-hum.
The crux of making a beneficial change is to move from intention to values-based decisions and then to action.
Deciding to do something leaves no room for doubt. A decision is a decision. The derivation of the word in Latin means to cut off.
When you truly decide, you remove yourself off from all other options.
So yes, all conscious change starts with an intention and it’s necessary, but that’s not where the power lies.
The real power is making a decision that is in alignment with your highly personal, core values.
Because it’s awareness of your core values that will keep driving you forward
But, you may be thinking, how do I make decisions that are always in alignment with my core values?
