Setting intentions is more than just a self-help trend—it's a transformative practice that influences how we navigate our daily lives.

My memoir, Little Fag: A Journey of Self-Acceptance & Healing is filled with examples of how my life unfolded both with intention & without.

Intention is about cultivating a mindset and heartset that guides our actions, emotions, and thoughts toward a desired way of being.

Since beginning to partner with intention, which I know to be the creative energy of the Universe, my life has been extraordinarily - even when I struggled to share my authenticity with the world. In everything I do, intention is my partner.

Wayne Dyer describes intention as “a strong purpose or aim, accompanied by a determination to produce a desired result…[it’s] a power that’s present everywhere…”. Intention isn’t a physical action, per say, but a force.

Another way to think of intention comes from Carlos Castaneda:

“Intention is a force that exists in the universe. When sorcerers (those who live of the Source) beckon intention, it comes to them and sets up the path for attainment, which means that sorcerers always accomplish what they set out to do.”

In this podcast I’m going to talk about creating more life with intention, walk you through what intention is, speak to the benefits of intention setting, be practical and give examples of intentions you could set, dive a little deeper into how intention has lived for me and then close with how to set intentions.

What is contemplation?

The Oxford Dictionary describes it as a noun meaning “deep reflective thought”.

I would never have thought I had a contemplative bone in my body, but of course that narrative is bullshit.

My intention with this episode and perhaps every 12th episode, is to share the workings of some level of contemplation from my life.

I’ll focus on the impact of the contemplative thought and choose to be vulnerable in terms of how it has coursed its way - or not - through my life.

In this episode I’ll share a contemplation I call “hang on tightly let go lightly.”

My family taught me to hang on tightly. They had much fear that what we had, which wasn’t much, would disappear if we didn’t white knuckle our grasp onto it. It was clearly a philosophy born from the perspective of lack.

And of course, the tighter we gripped what we had, the quicker it disappeared.

Think about attempting to hold onto a handful of water by grasping it tighter. What happens to the water?

There are so many reasons why people don’t let go of things. Inside of their own brains, those reasons usually make sense, too!

I’m not the only one who holds on to lots of things tightly - a lot of people.

As Joseph Campbell said in The Power of Myth:

There’s a centre of quietness within, which has to be known and held. If you lose that centre, you are in tension and begin to fall apart.

The Centre doesn’t have a location, yet, there are physical regions associated with it. It’s more of a dynamic point of psychic equilibrium or inner balance.

When you’re in the Centre, there’s no internal resistance. Everything simply is.

You are alive, alert, and active. An inner calm prevails.

Abiding in the present moment, you act spontaneously. You don’t try to achieve this present awareness; it’s a result of being in the Centre - human be-ing, not human do-ing.

Happiness and sadness are not experienced in the Centre. You don’t feel “positive” or “negative.”

In the Centre, you are neutral.