Practicing building faith through intention, attention, and surrender!

Nowadays, many of us are so busy with so many things. We fall into our favorite furniture at the end of the day feeling exhausted and wondering how we got through it all!

Yet, oddly enough, some of us feel pressed by the need to do even more. It’s wild. 

Sadly, many of us don’t always recognize the hazards of pushing ourselves too far until we are at our wits end! Believe me: I have been there more than a handful of times myself!

Thankfully, during one particularly maddening phase of my life, I met with a counselor who also practiced shaman and spiritual healing. During those visits with him, he repeatedly shared the idea of balancing intention, attention, and surrender when seeking to bring greater peace into my life.

I felt what he shared with me was meaningful enough to share with you in the hopes that it helps others who are seeking greater inner peace:

>> Setting an intention

To adopt this practice, we must first set a positive intention. This practice helps us form a clear picture of who we want to be, what we want to happen, and how we want our lives to unfold. We can usually tell when we are setting an especially wonderful intention because it makes us feel a certain something emotionally.

The best ones are also so vividly enticing that we can almost live the future moment already in our mind’s eye. It’s almost like a kid imagining their ultimate summer vacation and thinking of the feeling of splashing in the lake or the taste of freezer pops on a hot day. Yet, a positive and meaningful intention can be as simple as:

“I want a peaceful and loving life for my loved ones and me.”

Make it especially honest, wonderful, and true!

>> Place some attention

The next step often requires a careful balancing act because many of us are mixed up about how much attention is enough. This may even be a foreign concept for us to consider because many of us have gotten used to shouldering the painful belief that we must push the boulder up the entire hill ourselves or toil endlessly without a break. We may even enforce such a rigid routine for ourselves that we feel we are faltering or starting to break down.

The goal is to recognize what amount of attention and effort feels joyful and self-honoring each day. We only want to push until it feels good to do so and for as long as we feel comfortable. This is contradictory to the traditional way of seeing things that dictates that we must push for an externally designated amount of time or effort instead of listening to our inner needs and capacity.

>> Surrender

It may be so hard to even imagine surrendering when we are trying so hard to fulfill our intention and greet the life of our dreams. Yet, the charming part about this faith exercise is that it is of utmost importance to take significant breaks along the way.

On a practical level, this state of surrender and downtime revitalizes us, helps us to reframe our intention, and gives other circumstances the chance to fall into place and help us along the way. From a spiritual or faith perspective, it helps us to believe that we will get some divine help along the way!

I hope that this activity blesses your journey and eases the burdens in some small way!