How To Set An Intention for a Spiritual Journey

Focus on the vibe the intention will give you.

When embarking on a spiritual journey, you can’t fully know what to expect. To a large degree, you have to let go of control and allow your feelings to unfold.

Accept them as they are — if you have an agenda, you’re likely to manipulate your experience to fit it.

But letting go of control is not the same as having no purpose — or intention behind what you’re doing. Having an intention is helpful when you feel lost and confused. In those moments, it acts as a life raft — and reminds you of why you got yourself into this “mess” in the first place.

The moments of “mess” and confusion are to be expected on a spiritual journey. Most of it can’t be navigated mentally. As Jack Kornfield’s teacher put it, “If you try to understand it intellectually, your head will probably explode.”

But as long as you have an intention, you don’t need to worry about being confused.

“Confusion serves us. It prevents us from attempting to barge our way into the emotional realm mentally. By giving ourselves permission not to have to understand our experience for it to be valid, we ensure a gentler and less frustrating ride through this part of our journey.” — Michael Brown, The Presence Process

But how do you set an intention that’s specific enough to hold on to in times of confusion — but also, open-ended enough to incorporate whatever experience you’re having?

Intentions vs. Goals

For starters, let’s make a distinction between intentions and goals. They are not the same thing. In my experience, working with an intention tends to be more beneficial when it comes to inner growth.

Setting a goal may come from a place of believing that what you have right now isn’t enough. It’s the “fixing” mentality that tells you there’s something wrong about you. While the goal approach may work in many external pursuits — such as building a business, hitting a specific sales quota or writing a book — setting rigid goals for spiritual growth is a tricky business.

Especially when we start without sufficient self-knowledge, setting goals in personal growth can invite a certain form of self-aggression. You may pursue them as a means to finally feel worthy. I’m not saying you should never set spiritual goals.

But consider this: putting pressure on yourself to “resolve your childhood trauma by the end of this year” can drive you in the opposite direction than intended.

Goals are usually focused on specific outcomes we want to see in a specific time horizon. These outcomes are often framed as black or white — either you have resolved your trauma, or not. But spiritual growth rarely works in this way. Yes, you will have breakthrough moments — but rarely will they put a definite end to a particular problem.

When it comes to working with your emotions — the central theme of spiritual growth — precise outcomes are hard to conceive. From the point where you’re standing, you probably can’t imagine where this journey may take you.

So, instead of manufacturing a goal, try to set an intention.

Focus on the How

Intention is about focusing on the how rather than the what of your growth. It’s about deciding those aspects of your life that you can control. Usually, this means being deliberate about how you want to relate to your experiences — regardless of what the current experience is like.

Let’s say you want to set an intention around being more self-loving. A useful approach here may be to ask yourself: How can I formulate my intention so that it’s possible to enact regardless of how I’m feeling?

Many people associate self-love with feeling good about ourselves. But this isn’t always possible. Sometimes, we just feel bad, embarrassed, humiliated, unworthy. Resolving to “always feel good about yourself” would be setting a goal — one that’s unrealistic taking the nature of the human mind.

Instead, you may reframe “loving yourself” as a response to whatever you’re feeling — regardless of what it is. This way, even if you feel like a piece of crap, there’s a possibility of responding to this with self-love.

For example, your intention could be:

I honour what I feel and I acknowledge that I have a right to feel this way.

Notice — this doesn’t encourage you to act upon these feelings necessarily. It doesn’t incentivise you to project them onto others. This intention recognizes one simple fact of life — if you feel a certain way, it’s already happening anyway. Instead of trying to deny it, you may as well acknowledge it as a perfectly natural and valid occurrence.

This way, at least you won’t add upon the suffering of the world. You may still feel the anxiety, embarrassment, humility — or whatever else you were feeling to begin with — but at least you do so without denial. This in itself is a great act of self-love, and it can be performed regardless of the circumstances.

With this, it’s good to acknowledge that you’ll most likely not always enact your intention. There will be times when you forget about it. There will be times when you’ll fall for automatic behaviours of suppression. That’s bound to happen.

But as long as the intention is in the back of your mind, you always have the option to bounce back and grab it — just like a life raft on the stormy sea of confusion.

Final Words

To conclude, here are a few practical tips to keep in mind when setting your intention.

1. Phrase it as something you can be in charge of. To not turn intention into a goal, aim for a response to your circumstances — rather than particular circumstances themselves. Usually, this will involve an aspect of your mindset. How do you intend to relate to your thoughts, feelings, behaviours?

2. Phrase it in the present tense. Setting the intention in the present drives you away from wishful thinking (I’d like to…, I will…) and towards the present moment (I do…, I recognize…, I honour…). This makes an intention valid from the moment you set it — rather than planning for it to come to life in a distant future.

3. Focus on the “vibe” the intention will give you. Your intention is something that should inspire you — or “resonate with you,” as some people like to put it. Make it personal and relevant to what you know serves you in day-to-day life. Make it sound like you — authentic, beautiful and moving in your own eyes.

4. Write it down in a place where you look often. Writing down an intention doubles its power. Putting thoughts into the written word is a signal to your subconscious that they’re important. Additionally, if you write the intention where you see it — e.g. on your whiteboard or the cover of your journal — you’ll strengthen it every time you look at it.

5. Keep it to yourself. This is my big discovery from the past few years: keeping some things to myself can be extremely powerful. By consciously choosing not to share your intention with anyone, you turn it into something sacred — it remains yours and yours only. This can elevate your relationship with yourself to a whole new level because it shows that you can trust yourself.

Remember that your intention isn’t carved in stone. Once you have it, it serves as a map to reference the path whenever you feel confused.

But there’ll come a point in your spiritual journey when you’ll enter a brand new territory. The old map will become irrelevant. When this happens, don’t hesitate to throw it — and reach for a new, updated one.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, you can support my work by buying my book Ego-Friendly on Gumroad.

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