Intention Surpasses Your Winning Recipe And Copes With Grief

YOU CREATED A winning recipe as a young child in order to compensate for not being extroverted enough.  Today the recipe allows you to hide inside a socially acceptable way to be – agitated, detail-oriented, generous, relatable, or slow. Or any of the thousands of other ways introverts act to be successful.  For example, my recipe is to be methodical by building step by step procedures to cope with life.

In Post #15 we talked about how taking responsibility for a complaint about something you have lost can relieve your grief over it. Here we look at intention as another tool for handling anguish over a loss.  In both cases you must go outside your winning recipe for a solution. Left to its own devices the recipe is probably failing to address the grief.

As in the previous post let’s look at a loss that does not involve another person, only yourself and something treasured that you no longer have.

In 1981 such grief triggered the deepest and most dangerous depression I had ever known.

How I Discovered The Intention Solution

A YEAR EARLIER I had taken the est Training, a New Age personal development course.  I got wonderful benefit from it, shedding both an unworkable job and a broken marriage.  Afterwards I felt more freedom and joy than I had known in decades. 

But when the initial bloom wore off I descended into a deep depression, ruminating about past and present failures.  They haunted me with the notion that I could not provide for my two young children.  I was unemployed, grasping at any deal or job offer where I could run a financial management process to earn money.  But despite taking full responsibility for my situation I got nowhere.  My despair was so deep that I no longer wanted to live.

Yet at the same time I was able to watch my own mind as it operated.  The Training had coached me to do that, and as I did, and I saw a glimmer of hope.  I noticed that amid all the despair what was missing from my life was intention.  In my journal I wrote extensively about this. As I did, the stirrings of a nascent willingness to create a plan began to emerge. I saw that if I had a clear intention I could handle any circumstance, no matter how bad it was.

I built on that notion, and concluded that my intention was to empower small business owners (I had recently been one) to use personal computers to transform their lives.  The Apple II had just come on the market and intrigued me with its possibilities.

Two days later I walked into the largest Apple computer store in Coral Gables, near where I lived in Florida, and got myself hired as a rookie floor salesman.  I had no sales or computer experience, but having owned a business myself I knew the market intimately. 

Within 48 hours I had a $1,100 commission check in my pocket from a big sale.  The solution to the grief was not my winning recipe. It had only driven me to implement step by step processes in a closed loop that led nowhere.  The answer was intention – finding enough of it to chart a course out of the swamp of my negative emotions and the rat race imposed by my recipe.

Unpacking The Intention Solution

IN THE EST Training I had learned that in life you do not get what you want, you get what you intend.  And if you want to know what you have intended so far, look around at your life. 

I also learned that like generating responsibility (see Post #15), creating intention was not complicated.  All it took were repeated proclamations from me, backed up by an unwavering commitment.  Over time that offset the default intention that I created by not being conscious about it.

A consciously-driven intention is the product of passion.  And a great way to kindle it is to ask how you can contribute to others in some way.  As soon as I did that a vision of the Apple II appeared in my head and I was on my way.

How To Build Purpose Out Of Your Grief

1. If something has turned out poorly in your life, look at your grief about that.  The result you are living with is likely due to a default intention.  You have probably gotten to where you are today by intending to be the way that the recipe has called you to be. 

2. What way of contributing to others would arouse passion within you?  Your winning recipe knows little or nothing about contribution; it only wants you to compensate for not being extroverted enough.  Step outside of that box and find some way to make a difference for others that would completely turn you on if you could achieve it.

3. State your intention, commit to it, and act.  Write down what you intend.  Build out the scenario so that it becomes so real that you not only commit to it, but also are so passionate about it that you can hardly wait to begin.  Note that this commitment lasts only as long as you declare it.  But if you are excited enough about the intention to begin acting on it, the commitment will gradually become easier to generate.

I found that once I was in action selling computers and helping business owners transform their companies, the grief about my past poor judgment evaporated.  Your grief can too if your intention is broad-based enough, and your commitment is unwavering.

I Invite You To Use Intention To Dispel Your Grief Today

• What way of contributing to others are you passionate about?  Based on that, what do you intend, and how is that working out for you?  If you would like us to consider sharing your story with The Satisfied Introvert community anonymously, please email it to me at thesatisfiedintrovert@gmail.com.
• How can I help you to create a powerful intention? Please go to the Contact page and enter your name, email, and questions. I cannot answer everyone, but will do my best – especially if the answer could benefit others.
• To be notified of new posts to The Satisfied Introvert blog, please go to the Subscribe section at the bottom of this post and enter your name and email.  Under no circumstances will we share your information without your express permission. A new post appears every two weeks.  Coming up next: “Acceptance Outshines Your Winning Recipe And Handles Grief.” If a particular post does not apply to you, future ones most likely will! 

Welcome to the passion that comes from committing

to an intention that helps other people,

and to the satisfaction of watching

your grief dissolve

© 2022 The Satisfied Introvert LLC