How Can I Direct My Energy to Get What I Desire?
Listening Inwardly and Directing Your Energy Toward Meaningful Change
Sometimes we sense that we want something before we can fully name what it is.
We may long for change, healing, connection, rest, purpose, creativity, or a different way of moving through our lives. We may have a specific goal in mind, or we may simply know that the way we have been living no longer feels entirely right.
Setting an intention allows us to pause and listen.
What am I hoping for?
What matters to me now?
What would I like to create, experience, or become?
How do I want to show up for what comes next?
An intention begins with our relationship to what we desire.
An intention may be aspirational. It may include a concrete goal, an emotional quality, a source of motivation, or a particular energy we want to bring into our choices.
We do not have to separate these completely.
We may intend to complete a meaningful project, and to approach it with courage and curiosity. We may hope to strengthen a relationship, and intend to bring greater honesty and compassion into it. We may want to care for our bodies, and choose to do so with respect rather than criticism.
The aspiration and the way we live toward it can belong together.
An Intention Begins With Listening
Before setting an intention, we may need to become quiet enough to hear what is asking for our attention.
Four soul questions were foundational in my Chopra training:
Who am I?
What do I want?
What is my purpose?
What am I grateful for?
These are not questions we answer once and resolve forever.
Our responses may deepen and change as we move through different stages of life. Sometimes an answer arrives clearly. At other times, we discover it gradually through meditation, journaling, relationships, dreams, creativity, loss, transition, and the experience of living.
The questions invite us to listen beneath what we believe we should want.
Who am I beneath the roles I perform?
What do I genuinely desire?
What gives my life meaning?
What is already present that I value and want to recognize?
An intention can grow from that listening.
Aspirations, Goals, and the Way We Want to Live
A goal often gives an intention a more specific form.
If I intend to care for my health, I may set a goal of walking several times a week. If I intend to create more space for my creative life, I may choose a morning to begin working on a project. If I intend to deepen a relationship, I may decide to initiate an honest conversation.
The distinction between a goal and an intention does not have to be absolute.
A goal may name something we hope to accomplish. An intention can hold that aspiration while also reminding us why it matters and how we want to move toward it.
For example:
I want to complete this project, and I intend to approach it with patience rather than perfectionism.
I want to establish a boundary, and I intend to speak with honesty and respect.
I want to become stronger, and I intend to care for my body without treating it as a problem to solve.
I want to make a change in my work, and I intend to remain curious about both my hope and my fear.
The goal gives us direction. The intention helps us remain connected to ourselves as we move.
Intentions for the Whole Self
Another foundational practice from my Chopra training involved four soul intentions. I have continued to carry these with me and have adapted the intention for the mind by adding the word alert:
A joyful, energetic body.
A loving, compassionate heart.
A calm, reflective, and alert mind.
Lightness of being.
I appreciate these intentions because they include more than accomplishment. They invite us to consider our relationship with the body, heart, mind, and our overall experience of being alive.
They are aspirational, but they do not demand that we feel joyful, loving, calm, or light at every moment.
A joyful, energetic body may also become tired, ill, grieving, or in need of rest.
A loving, compassionate heart can still feel anger, disappointment, and hurt, and can still establish boundaries.
A calm, reflective, and alert mind does not have to be free from conflict, uncertainty, or distraction.
Lightness of being does not require us to deny the weight of our lives.
These intentions offer directions we can return to, not standards against which we must constantly measure ourselves.
We might ask:
What would support greater energy and joy in my body?
How can I meet myself and others with compassion and appropriate boundaries?
What helps my mind become calm enough to reflect and alert enough to respond?
What would allow me to carry this day with a little more lightness?
What Do I Hope to Receive, and What Am I Bringing?
At every Windows to Wisdom® retreat, and at the beginning of other meaningful gatherings, we pause to set an intention.
I invite each person to consider two things:
What are you hoping to receive, discover, or experience here?
What part of yourself are you bringing, and in what spirit do you want to show up?
Someone may hope to receive clarity, rest, connection, courage, renewal, or a deeper understanding of herself. At the same time, she may choose to bring curiosity, openness, honesty, playfulness, compassion, or a willingness to participate even when she feels uncertain.
Both directions matter.
We cannot control exactly what an experience will give us. A retreat, gathering, relationship, creative endeavor, or new chapter may unfold differently than we imagined.
But we can listen for what we long for and become more conscious of how we want to meet what unfolds.
This makes intention both aspirational and participatory.
What am I seeking, and how do I want to enter this experience?
That question can guide more than a retreat. We can ask it before a difficult conversation, a new relationship, a period of healing, a creative project, a transition, or an ordinary day.
An intention helps us name what we hope may become possible while also recognizing that we have something to bring.
An Intention Is Not a Demand
An intention can lose its meaning when it becomes another way to control, criticize, or pressure ourselves.
We may begin with:
I intend to care for myself.
And gradually turn it into:
I should be doing this perfectly by now.
We may set an intention to feel peaceful and then judge ourselves whenever we become angry or anxious. We may intend to remain open and interpret a necessary boundary as failure. We may choose lightness of being and then feel ashamed when grief arrives.
An intention does not guarantee a particular emotional state or outcome.
It does not mean that we can create everything we want through thought alone. Our circumstances, bodies, relationships, resources, histories, responsibilities, and the choices of other people all influence what becomes possible.
An intention is not a command issued to life.
It is an orientation, a conscious relationship with what we desire and how we hope to participate.
We May Feel Ambivalent About What We Want
Even a deeply meaningful intention may evoke resistance.
We may want greater visibility and also fear being seen. We may long for rest while equating productivity with worth. We may intend to establish a boundary while fearing that someone will experience it as rejection.
One part of us may feel ready while another remains uncertain.
This does not necessarily mean the intention is wrong. It may mean that the change carries emotional meaning we have not yet fully understood.
Instead of forcing ourselves forward, we can become curious:
What do I hope this intention will make possible?
What might change if I live it more fully?
What am I afraid I could lose?
Who else might be affected?
What familiar identity or role could be disrupted?
What support would make this intention feel safer?
Is my hesitation resistance, or meaningful discernment?
An intention becomes more honest when it has room for our ambivalence.
Bringing an Intention Into the Body
An intention becomes livable when it enters our actual choices.
If my intention is compassion, how will compassion appear in the way I speak to myself today?
If my intention is courage, what conversation might I begin?
If my intention is rest, what am I willing to stop doing?
If my intention is creativity, when will I make space to begin?
If my intention is connection, whom might I reach toward?
If my intention is lightness, what burden am I carrying that may not belong entirely to me?
Embodiment does not require a dramatic transformation. It may begin with one small, honest response.
Over time, we may move through a process like this:
Awareness → Intention → Choice → Practice → Growth → Wisdom
We listen.
We name what matters.
We make a choice.
We practice returning to it.
And we allow the experience to teach us something we could not have known in advance.
Returning Without Beginning Again
We will forget our intentions.
We will become distracted, tired, reactive, uncertain, or absorbed in the demands of ordinary life. We may discover that an intention no longer fits, or that it needs to take a different form.
Returning does not mean we have failed.
It is part of the practice.
We can revisit an intention and ask:
Does this still feel alive for me?
Has my understanding of it changed?
Am I using it to guide myself or judge myself?
What have I learned since I chose it?
What is one way I can embody it now?
Is there another intention trying to emerge?
A meaningful intention gives us direction while leaving room for discovery, contradiction, and revision.
Looking Through This Window
Pause and consider one experience, relationship, goal, or transition that matters to you now.
Ask:
Who am I as I enter this part of my life?
What do I genuinely want?
What gives this desire meaning?
What am I grateful for as I begin?
What am I hoping to receive, discover, or experience?
What part of myself do I want to bring?
In what spirit do I want to show up?
What resistance or ambivalence deserves my curiosity?
What is one embodied choice I can make?
Complete these sentences:
My intention is…
I hope to receive…
I choose to bring…
One way I can live this intention is…
You do not have to know exactly where the intention will lead.
Let it open a window into what matters now, and into how you want to meet what comes next.
Continue Exploring
Why Can’t I Follow Through, even When I Want to Change? Explore resistance, ambivalence, and what staying the same may be protecting.
Can You Analyze Yourself? Discover reflective practices for listening inwardly while recognizing what we cannot see alone.
How Can Journaling Help You Know Yourself More Deeply? Use free association, dreams, gratitude, prompts, and possibility journaling to explore what is emerging within you.
Source acknowledgment: The four soul questions and the foundational four soul intentions described in this article were introduced to me through my Chopra training. I have continued to integrate them into my personal practice and my work with Windows to Wisdom®, including adding an alert to the intention for a calm and reflective mind.
About Jamie Cromer Grue
Jamie Cromer Grue (Jamie Cromer, LCSW, ACSW, FABP) is a licensed clinical social worker, board-certified psychoanalyst, and Training and Supervising Analyst. She is also a Certified Ayurvedic lifestyle instructor and the founder of Windows to Wisdom.
Jamie brings more than 30 years of clinical experience to an integrated approach drawing from psychoanalysis, holistic wellness, contemplative practice, creativity, and the wisdom of everyday life. Through Windows to Wisdom, she makes complex ideas about the inner life more accessible, inviting people to listen more deeply to themselves, recognize meaningful patterns, and develop greater self-awareness, resilience, and freedom.
Jamie’s psychoanalytic knowledge and clinical experience inform the public education offered through Windows to Wisdom. Windows to Wisdom is separate from her clinical practice; reading these materials or participating in its programs does not constitute therapy or establish a therapist–patient relationship.
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