The road to heaven is paved with good intentions

You guys know I talk a lot about how much there is that humans don’t really understand. We think just because we can explain the characteristics of a phenomenon that we understand it.



I play this game with my kids. Feel free to try at home. Here is what I want you to do.



Stretch your arm straight out in front of you with your palm turned up. Focus on your hand. Concentrate. Then close your hand into a fist.



How did you do that? My brilliant son explains to me that his brain sends a signal along the nerves that stimulate the muscles to contract.



Okay. You described the phenomenon. How did you do it? How did you tell your brain to start sending signals? How did move from staring at your open hand to staring at your closed fist? This may seem like a silly question, but it is the ultimate question.



If you keep asking you will invariable arrive at “I just did it.”



Once you reach that conclusion, you can begin to really examine what you actually did. You did one thing and one thing only. You intended to close your palm into a fist.



I say you can do anything that you intend to do. I told my son that I could make my cell phone move from a table to my hand by intending to do so. He didn’t believe me.



I stood up, walked to the table, picked up the phone, then came back. Voila.



I intended to move the phone to my hand. The rest is just a description of the process, just like the description of the process of our nervous system.



“But I can’t simply intend to fly and jump out of a window” he retorts.



But intention requires belief. No one can ever do anything they don’t believe they can do. Every once in a while a person comes along and truly believes in the impossible. They believe, they intend, and they show others the way.



Pretty soon others begin to believe. Others begin to realize that the thing is possible. What was once presumed to be impossible becomes commonplace.



The next time you perform a task focus on your intention. I think you’ll find that is all you need to do. Actually, it’s all you can do.