Intention is what makes your goals happen.
Have you ever dreamt of anything? „To dream of“ is not the same as „to dream about“. When you dream about something, it means you sleep and this dream happens during it. However, when you dream of something, you are awake and fully concentrated on your life thinking about what you would be extremely happy about if it happens to you in reality. Everybody probably has a dream, we might as well call it a goal. It is something what we want to achieve in our life. It can be a Porsche, the ability to speak five languages, happy marriage or wealth. As you can see, we may dream of both concrete and abstract things, depending on what we prefer. We can dream whenever, however, of whatever. There are no limits to this activity, as you probably are aware of. Nevertheless, do our dreams always come true?
You are likely to answer „no, they do not“. Why? You might have experienced it in your life already. You have had a dream and you wanted it to happen. But we usually don´t dream of anything what happens every day. It often takes effort, time and sacrifice to achieve it. And this is the core of the problem, the explanation why dreams aren´t always fulfiled. Let´s have a look at it. People are able to dream, they know what feelings are desirable for them and enjoy thinking about themselves being successful. But! Once they have a dream and want it to happen, what follows? Usually nothing special. They just live and hope their dream will happen to them. Unfortunally they do not understand that they have to happen to their dream. How? The answer is intention.
Imagine doing something. Whatever. Doing the dishes, reading a book, cooking, doing your homework. What´s the purpose of this activity? Why are you doing it? Usually when we decide to do something, our goal is to finish it. We are washing the dishes so that the dishes would be clean. We are reading a book because we are interested in its content and want to know what it is all about and how it will end up. We are cooking to prepare a meal for ourselves or our family. We are doing our homework so that we could get better – and for that we need to finish all the tasks which it takes. And now, try to answer: Why do we dream? Why do we make our own goals?
Is the purpose of setting a dream just to have one? To be able to say „I have a dream.“? To possess it? No, it is not. The purpose of spending time and energy to find something we would love to reach is not anything I have mentioned. What we want to achieve is the dream coming true. Experiencing it in reality. Living it. But how to do it?
When we talked about doing the dishes, cooking etc., we defined a particular goal which this activity should result in. To achieve this, we need to make an effort, sacrifice some time, hope, believe and mainly turn up our sleeves and work hard. When we manage to join all this together, we will be successful. There will be clean dishes in the cupboard, done homework ready for correction, a delicious meal for our family to enjoy. And what do you guess will happen when we are able to do the same for our dream?
It is probably not difficult to agree now, however, you might ask about hurdles. What do I mean with these? Hurdles are obstacles which stand in our way and their goal is to mislead us. Hurdles look like problems for those who are too shy, scared or lazy to think of a solution. However, they are called hurdles because there is always a way to get over them. In fact, hurdles exist to examine our intention. They test our persistence, belief and persuasion of going the right way. The ones who are not sure enough of the way they have chosen, of the decision they have made or the goal they have set, will fail when overcoming the hurdles – these will be too difficult for them and they will give up and fall down in the middle of the fight in en exhausted way. On the other hand, the ones believing that their goal is right, desirable and worth all the suffering will win the fight. They will be able to accept the hurdles as a necessary part of their way while their strong and convincing intention will not enable the hurdle to beat them.
This is intention – the ability to stay strong in any situation and mostly in the most difficult ones. However, intention is not what happens to us. It is us who happen to it. We are the ones to create it.
EXERCISES:
Matching the synonyms:
a hurdle to persuade
to convince a goal
tired to reach
a dream an obstacle
to test to overcome
to achieve exhausted
to get over to examine
(Answers: a hurdle – an obstacle, to convince – to persuade, tired – exhausted, a dream – a goal, to test – to examine, to achieve – to reach, to get over – to overcome).
Defining words:
What is the meaning of the word ________ in your own English words?
- intention
- hurdle
- fail
- fight
- sacrifice
Use it in a sentence, please.
Write the right past forms for these words:
to take
to dream
to fall down
to give up
to fight
to make
to decide
to understand
to set
(Answers: took, dreamt/dreamed, fell down, gave up, fought, made, decided, understood, set.)
