The Direction of Intention

592. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

This has been a week with a theme: limitations. All week, clients, friends, people on the street, have wanted to talk about their limits. Actually, they have wanted to talk about transcending their limits. And, although they think they have been talking about freeing themselves, their focus has been on the limit and not on the freeing (“Pay attention!” I say to myself. When conversations come in clusters there is a boat I need to catch and am about to miss).

The question comes in this form: How do I get beyond my limit? Or, how do I stop limiting myself? This is a very specific question that can only serve to reinforce the limit: it is a “how” question with the focus on a limit. The verb or action is rooted in wrangling with a limit. Wrangling with a limit will only make it stronger.

Recently, at a wedding reception, I met a woman who was recovering from a motorcycle accident. She said, “I know better! You go where your place your focus. I saw a pothole and thought, ‘Don’t hit the hole!’ and went right in it.”’

How you ask the question determines the possibilities you see or don’t see. How you ask the question determines the actions you take or don’t take; like the motorcycle woman told me, you go where you place your focus.

How would the action change if the questions were asked in this form: “How do I create more freedom of movement?” Or, “How do I fulfill my potential?” Place the focus of the question on the freedom or on the fulfillment and an entirely different field of action becomes available. Instead of wrangling, why not create?

We go where we place our focus. Pay attention to your language and you will see where you have chosen to go. Sometimes the only thing necessary for a breakthrough is to ask your question another way.

Filed under: Language, Truly Powerful People |