Say an Intention

This article appears in the October Issue of Jennifer Magazine. Grab your digital copy for just $11 and enjoy the best in style, wellness, art & cutlure, and relationships from an empowered point of view.

“Take a moment to set an intention for your class today.”

When I first re-established a serious yoga practice in the mid-2000s, I remember hearing teachers begin class with this invitation over and over. To be honest, I didn’t get it. As I lay on my back trying to relax, I let out a sigh of frustration. I had grown up in our achievement-based culture hearing this old nugget: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Intentions, to me, felt like something we did when we were too cowardly to set goals. Setting an intention felt like blowing out the candles and making a wish, a wish that would never come true because it didn’t involve hard work and sacrifice.

My frustration and confusion isn’t surprising, I’m an American after all. From the time we are children, our culture asks us to bypass the present and live in the future. Our every effort is graded so that we can get into a “good” college followed by a “good” job. Our imaginations are stripped away one standardized test after another. We are supposed to set goals and strive to achieve them. Once one goal is achieved, we are supposed to set new ones. Over and over and over until we die. It’s exhausting.

I bought into that story without even realizing it, and yoga woke me up to the ways I had chained myself to the altar of “doing.” Eventually, I began to understand the true power of intention, but first I needed to slow down, reflect, and figure out what it was that I actually needed and desired from my own life.

Do you want to try it? I’ll make it easy, okay? Imagine yourself answering the question, “So, what are your plans after high school?” the way the immortal Lloyd Dobler did in the movie, Say Anything. Here’s what he said:

“What I really want to do with my life–what I want to do for a living–is I want to be with your daughter. I’m good at it.”