Intentions

Sometimes a moment catches me and I can't stop thinking about it until I write it out. Other times a myriad of thoughts join into the essence of a concept that is harder to capture in words, but is just as important to me to record. I'm dealing with the latter at the moment.

I left my last post without much of a conclusion, having expressed only where I was in that moment. But there is more to it.

Again, the idea that changing my thoughts allows my state of being to change is not a new concept to me. It is, however, daunting. Eliza pointed out the same fact last week. "I liked your post." She said, with clear hesitation hanging over her statement. "But you can't just change your thoughts." She is right. In fact it is empirically proven that the more you tell yourself not to think about something, the more you will think it. But my yoga teacher was right too in that if we are miserable then our thoughts need to be different for our state of mind to be different.

I went to another yoga class the week after my mini epiphany in Hannah's class. I went thinking that I would approach it with a kinder, softer mentality toward myself and see if it was different. Sarah, my friend, and teacher, had a better idea. As she was leading into the practice, she invited us to think about why we had come that day, and encouraged us to dedicate our practice to something, or someone. Better yet she asked us to set an intention for our practice. I loved that word "intention." As she said it the thought came to me that I wanted to practice yoga that morning with the intention of showing gratitude to Heavenly Father for the body that he has given me. The class felt much like a prayer to me. I found that I wasn't changing my thoughts as much as I was consistently re-focusing them back to my intention. Instead of focusing on, or pushing away the negative, which almost always breeds more negativity, I allowed myself to recognize my straying thoughts, and turn back toward my set intention. I think I've accepted that I will always have the distracting and negative thoughts floating around in there, but I don't have to give them my attention. Of course I do, and I will, but it is that much easier to ignore them when I have set an intention for my thoughts, and given myself something helpful and good to focus on for a class, or a day, or a week. In the end it was the intention that allowed me to have a softer, kinder experience with myself, as opposed to just telling my self to be soft and kind.

It is true, if we are miserable we need to change our thoughts. It is also true that accepting our thoughts as they come, and re-focusing on an intention we have set for our thoughts allows us to hold on to the ones that are helpful, and sort out the ones that aren't.

Clearly the application of this is easier said than done. I've only gotten as far as thinking about trying to set the intention for my thoughts at the start of my day. And I guarantee I will never master it. But I feel softer, and more calm when I let myself try. Maybe that is where the victory is with this whole business of thought management. It's in the daily efforts we make to be kind to ourselves, it's in our failures to do so, and then getting back up and trying again.