Why counter intentions hold you back in life? A counter-intention can be a subtle thing, such as the need to maintain an old habit, keep someone happy, or hold on the certain lifestyle you once wanted. Because these subtle counter-intentions are often unconscious, they sabotage our other intentions of attaining something important to us, such as a career goal, a relationship or an achievement.
Here’s a quick example of a counter intention. Say you join a gym and decide you want to get fitter, and shift some belly fat. You set a goal to drop a stone in 6 months and trim down and get yourself in better shape. While writing out your goal, and thinking of it, you become motivated and start feeling good about it. You join a gym, and start eating better. Things are looking good!
But two months in, you start getting bored of the regimen. You go out for a few drinks one night and the next day you don’t feel much like training, so you skip them gym that day. Pretty soon, you’ve forgotten about your best intention and fallen back into your old lifestyle habits. What happened? Old counter intentions took over. Those old habits which were your previous lifestyle habits took over, and you fell back into an old pattern.
Why Counter-Intentions Hold You Back – Old Habits
Your life is made up of intentions and counter-intentions which make up your “comfort zone”. Somewhere in-between your highest goals and your lowest acceptable standards is where you reside in your life.
Sam Ovens “We are not the highest version of ourselves that we can imagine, we are the lowest version of ourselves that we can accept”
When you set a goal for yourself, you change some habits in order to achieve it. But you’re working against inertia – that inertia which has built up in your life already, and runs the show from behind the scenes.
Here’s a few possible other counter-intentions, or “mini-contracts” you might have made which keep your best intentions in check:
- I want to lose weight, but I can’t give up ice cream and pizza
- I’d like to earn from an online business, but I don’t have the time/ my friends don’t support me
- I’m determined to find that relationship, but I’m afraid of the rejection
- I’d like to travel, but my job never gives me the time/space
Our prior commitments are often the reason we don’t follow through with a goal or an intention. In this case, it’s useful to decide what is really important to you, rather than continue down a path because you’ve always been on it. This is a strong case for contingency goals.
Why Counter-Intentions Hold You Back – Contingency Goals
“If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got!” – Jim Rohn
Most people are living lives of quiet desperation and part of the reason is that they never re-examine their life’s choices/set new goals. They continue down a path they chose years ago! Since they have put so much energy into it, their lives are often built around their past choices.
But there’s always a choice to change your behaviour, if you want to. The problem is that there’s an inertia behind your previous choices which have led you to your life as it is right now!
Contingency goals are re-alignment goals for when you have either achieved a goal/intention or if you have changed your mind about a particular direction in life. If you’re changing direction in life, or have set a new goal, it’s useful to know that your past behaviour will act as a hand break for your new intention.
Imagine an oil tanker changing direction and doing a 180 degree about turn. It doesn’t happen quickly. So if you’re setting a new intention, this is worth remembering. It will take some time and effort to change something in your life. The longer you have been running an old habit, the harder it is to shift.
Re-Aligning With A New Goal
So if you have a new goal or intention, it’s well worth examining your counter-intentions to it. Will friends/family support you? Does your previous habits/lifestyle support this new direction? Are you fully aligned with your goal, or do you need to change it? Do you really want your goal, or is it influenced by someone else?
You can save yourself a lot of time and hassle by examining your intentions and getting clear on them. When you’re clear, you can align yourself much better. When some kind of block comes up, such as the need to have a beer when you’re trying to lose weight, you’ll have already made preparations for the eventuality.
To do this write out your goal several times, examining how you feel about it as you do so. If the goal doesn’t give you a 10/10 for desirability and a 10/10 for achievability (i.e. you don’t think it’s possible), you may need to alter your goal a little so that it is better aligned with exactly what you want.
For example, if you want a better body and to lose some weight, but you also want to have a pizza now and then, and a few beers, you can accommodate for this in your goal setting. See also the power of intention journalling.
You may have to alter your goal to accommodate for a lifestyle choice, such as eating! But if you don’t want to give up the old behaviour, you may have to realise that you don’t really want the outcome enough.
Why Counter Intentions Hold You Back – Summary
Counter-intentions conflict with our goals and halt our progress towards them. But often, we don’t really want the goal enough, and our old behaviour is preferable to achieving what we say we want.
It is often only when we are resolute that we must create change, and have had enough pain that we will set an intention which we follow through on. If our goals are whimsical and we don’t follow through, it’s often because of a counter-intention:
- Our friendship circle doesn’t support us and we prefer to have their blessing
- We are too addicted to our past behaviour, can’t give up the cake!
- We don’t want it enough to sacrifice our old patterns
- Out lifestyle takes the front seat and we only want our goals when life gets dull again
It’s worth re-examining our goals and intentions from our past regularly and making contingency goals – both for when we are out of alignment or changed our mind on a goal, and/or have achieved a goal we desired previously.