Intention or “In Tension”
A map for aligning with purpose
Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker? —Garth Nix
There’s not much in life we can predict or be sure of, but two things we know: we come. And we go.
Yet what happens in between can feel like a mystery. Look no further than the $10.4 billion dollar (2012) self-help market to realize that many of us seek to understand the truth about our life purpose, and how we align with it while we are here.
But often it feels like the path is choosing us.
We don’t need to count the money people are spending on that quest to know that many of us are on it. Our fascination with neuroscience, meditation, and TED talks, for example, evidence our desire for context in our lives: ways to see the day-to-day in a framework of something bigger, something meaningful.
Believing we have a purpose in our lives is one thing. Feeling it, and feeling the power of aligning with it: that is another. I’m not in a position to say what our individual lives signify or if or how we might be part of something bigger. Yet a simple framework, one I call the “Intention Map,” provides a structure for thinking about our journey along life’s path and what signs or markers to look for to tell us we’re on, or possibly off, the road we’re meant to travel.
PART ONE: INTENTION
If we think of the course of our life, many will agree: it can feel pretty random. It’s like it’s in charge of us, rather than vice-versa.
Most of us would like the path to look more like the map below, or at least to be able to connect the dots that put our journeys into perspective.
If we imagine life has a purpose — or if we believe that; many faith practices and much ancient wisdom center around that belief — it’s not a big leap to say that we are here to achieve that purpose, whatever it may be. It may be something we learn, or do, or experience, or contribute; it may be the way we connect with someone or something beyond ourselves.
“Random,” my friend Humberto says, “is a word we use when we don’t yet understand causality.” Many of us don’t know what that purpose is, yet we all seem to admire lives lived with purpose: lives aligned with intention.
But if we arrived here with a purpose, let’s assume that in our life we will achieve it. If that’s true, then WHAT we do with our lives might be less significant than HOW, or WHY, we do it. If we are going to fulfill our intention in our life, one way or another, the journey perhaps really is the reward.
PART TWO: EXTERNAL SIGNALS
From the time we’re very young, we’re taught the lessons and skills that we need to survive and succeed.
We learn. Early in our lives, and really throughout it, this learning shapes our brains. We respond to rewards and conditioning that prepare us for the journey ahead, storing up lessons and knowledge that point us on our life course.
Our brains adapt throughout life, but especially at developmental milestones in our first two decades, “pruning” themselves to optimize the capabilities and pathways most used, rewarded, and relied upon as we learn to survive and prepare for our adult life.
We are conditioned to learn from our environments and the teachers around us. And that, to paraphrase researcher David Rock (Your Brain at Work), means “the mind informs the brain informs the mind,” so that our adaptation to life actually changes the way the brain perceives the world around us.
Our brains pick up signals from the world around us and shape themselves — and the thoughts that guide our lives—accordingly. Research increasingly validates this as a lifelong process.
These signals, or lessons, or learnings, point us in a new direction, and that can serve us well. Conditioning and external validation help us fit into society. Take care of ourselves, even survive. Let us do and make things. And they point us to the dreams and goals we should pursue to have a good life. These signals point us to new potentialities, and expand our set of possibilities as we live our life.
PART THREE: THE SHINY OBJECT
The dominant signals in our life point us — and our brains—toward goals and life milestones. If we learn this, we can do that. Once we achieve one thing, we can move on to the next. Here’s what a good life looks like and here’s how you achieve it.
It’s good to have goals: on that, I think most of us would agree. These goals may pull us away from our more natural intention line, but they give us experiences and lessons that can fuel our longer-term survival and success. They direct us along a line that can guide some of our best life experiences, pointing us to experiences or achievements that become part of our life path.
It’s easy to believe that that new line is the one our life is on: the one pointing a distant target that we see as our life purpose, or goal. The problem is, there’s nothing in our culture or condition that prepares us to really know when we get there—to say “that’s enough,” to know we’ve spent enough time following that externally-validated line to get what we need, shift course, and return back to our intention.
These days, as the examples of “a good life” glow brightly in all of our realities, what it takes to “succeed” and fuel our return to our intended purpose seems to become increasingly hard to attain.
PART FOUR: “IN-TENSION”
For many of us, this can be hard. Especially at a time when the pull of that promised “good life,” and what it takes to achieve it, can feel harder than any of us would have imagined when we were first pointed to that well-intended path. We tell ourselves we’ll stop as soon as we “get there.” But the goals and targets have a way of continuing to appear.
The pursuit of these milestones can begin to seem like the path of our life. But because the path can pull us away from our intention, at each milestone along the way, we can build tension, with its intensity increasing the further we are from our true intention line.
Think of this in physical terms, almost as if a rubber band were pulled away from a fixed point. That band can store potential energy that can accelerate our return to our true path. Or, as we’ve so often seen, the tension can build to a breaking point….
…propelling us far away from the line we were on, but often as far away from our real intention as we were when things snapped.
People talk about feeling this tension. We don’t have to look hard or far to see examples of people chasing goals or targets that define their lives, even at the cost of their own happiness. And we’ve all seen what happens when the tension builds until something has to give. The “mid-life crisis” is perhaps the most obvious example. But if we look at a wide range of coping mechansims in our society, we can think of many ways people deal with the growing tension, often at a cost to their relationships, well-being, and health.
PART FIVE: NAVIGATING BACK
How can we find our way back?
The path to the externally validated goal is marked with a series of smaller goals. Milestones, achievements, inflection points, with tension — for better and for worse — increasing as you move along.
The good thing about being “in tension” is that you store up a lot of potential energy for the return to your true intention line.
Thinking about our life path, and knowing the “markers” that signal our time to return, can be an incredibly powerful tool for optimizing our impact and happiness. Rather than chasing some distant goal or target, we can identify moments or turning points “by design” and use the momentum we’ve built to direct ourselves back to our intended path. The right “if-then” or “as soon as” statements can let us live responsibly, directing us to alignment with our true purpose, mindfully and with confidence, rather than keeping us pointed to a goal that actually takes us farther from our true course.
But it’s not that easy. For many of us, we’re well along that “in tension” path, responsible for life realities and committed to staying the course, or at least part of it, rather than snapping back over to the other side. Or we may stay on the path simply because we don’t know what our real intention line is. It’s like a story I heard about a guy who hates his job, but plans to stay in it because “retirement is only 15 years away.”
I get it. Life realities and the obfuscation of our true purpose can create a pretty convincing argument for us to stay the course we’re on—even if that course makes us increasingly unhappy.
Thank goodness there’s another option.
PART SIX: RUNNING PARALLEL
We don’t always have the freedom, clarity, or luxury to simply turn from our “in tension” path and move back toward our intention. But that doesn’t mean we have to continue building tension as we stay on the path we’re on.
The alternate is to “run parallel”—to harness the knowledge and momentum we’ve gained to simply get no further from our intention line, even if we’re not getting any closer.
It’s a simple process:
—We recognize that we are on a path that could increase the distance between where we’re heading and where we know we want to be.
—We get very clear on the “shiny objects” we’re pursuing, even if we’re not clear on our intention.
—We increase our mindfulness about ourselves and our path. We may not get any closer to our intention line. But we’re doing all we can not to get farther.
If we know this process, we can identify moments in our life where we feel the tension building. And we can simply slow the course. “Running parallel” grants us small pivots in our life where we use awareness and mindfulness simply to resist the pull of the external force, getting neither closer to nor farther from our true intention. We’re buying time.
Then, we can begin to plot how to find our way back.
See, if you can use those signals of tension growing to simply take a pause — getting neither closer nor farther away—then YOU are in charge of your line and it isn’t in charge of you.
Even if at some point you need to go back to that in-tension line — hey, we all live in reality — you’ll begin from a new point, one you’re in charge of, even if you need to move back toward the external goals, with a new perspective on how to find your way back.
PART SEVEN: A CASE STUDY
An entrepreneur I work with is absolutely in the zone when he‘s at the helm of his company. You can see it on his face, hear it in his voice. It’s like he holds a superpower and can’t leave the flow state. Watch a champion surfer at Mavericks and you’ll get a sense of how he rolls.
So you can imagine how shocked I was to see him crumble when it came time to fundraise. He stammered when he spoke. Lost sleep at night. Became short-tempered with his wife and kids. And felt inadequate as a leader, as an entrepreneur.
He and I sat down with the intention map. I’d known him for a while, so I already knew: he was aligned with his intention when he was leading his business. When he spoke with customers, guided product strategy, and helped partners see the vision, boom: he was on home turf, flowing with creativity and clarity.
But when he had to pull away from that and sell his story to investors, it was like someone scrambled the signals. The stress levels rose and it didn’t play well to the very people he wanted to pitch.
Using the Intention Map, we talked about the reality of going out to the “in tension” line for a period of time to play the fundraising game. We scoped a duration (how much time) and the specific milestones he needed to meet before he came back. We charted a few things he could do to stay aligned with the big picture by connecting with his core intention a little bit each day (working with his CTO and meeting with customers helped a lot) and helped him commit to a few practices—exercise, a weekly n0-tech date night, and extra attention to health (less coffee, less booze, more sleep, a committed family time on the weekends)—until he completed his process. Structure and mindfulness put him in control of the path.
What does this map inspire in you? What more would you like to see as I develop my thinking on the intention map? I’d love your input at chep2m@gmail.com, or on Twitter at @chep2m.
