The difference between having good intentions and living with intention

Happy Sacred Sunday!

I’ve been thinking a lot about intention lately.

My son got in trouble at school the other day. When he told his teacher that they had misunderstood his intentions, she replied to him, “No one cares what your intentions are; what matters is how your actions are perceived.”

She was right.

People don’t care about your intentions. They care about your actions and your results.

But I decided to dive a little deeper with my son on this nuance. I asked him some clarifying questions about what happened, what his intentions actually were, and if he could understand why they were perceived the way they were.

The conclusion we came up with was that his behavior wasn’t intentional … and that was the problem! He acted mindlessly. He didn’t think about his actions or about how someone may perceive them. His behavior was short-sighted.

Intending something (or not intending it) is not the same thing as being intentional.

🔥Having good intentions is a passive process that occurs in your thoughts.

🔥Living with intention is a proactive process that dictates your actions.

The former is irrelevant without the latter.

Now, you could argue that there are times when you have good intentions and behave intentionally, and still your outcomes aren’t what you wanted them to be. Maybe your intentions didn’t produce the results you aimed for. Maybe someone didn’t perceive your actions favorably.

And you’d be right. That can happen.

But that is dipping into territory that is often out of your control. Life is going to “life” even if you do all the right things. 

That’s why I live by the mantra: Do the work, Surrender the outcome.

Because I believe that in that process, there are lessons for you. There is growth for you. There are outcomes that are even better for you than the ones you were working toward.

My son had to pay the consequences for his incident, and I didn’t try to save him from those consequences. This was a huge opportunity for him to realize the difference between having intentions and living with intention. 

I want him to learn early on that simply having good intentions will turn him into a drifter, making him a victim of his circumstances — while being intentional will turn him into a leader, making him a victor over his circumstances.

This week on the podcast,  I’m talking about this distinction between having good intentions and living with intention, and I’m sharing the story I previewed for you last week about my mom and her home office.

You won’t want to miss the lessons we gleaned from that story and the perspective shared in this episode. It could literally change what your life will become 1, 5, 10, 20, 30 years from now.

As always, I’d love to know where this lands for you. Hit reply and tell me: where in your life are you having good intentions but not quite living with intention yet?

Sending you so much love today and always,

P.S. The first 10 women who join The Well get an automatic upgrade to VIP at no extra cost. That means four private quarterly calls with me throughout the year to make sure you are on track, supported, and building the intentional life you came here to build. This bonus closes the moment the 10th woman joins. No deadline extensions.[Join The Well]