PNTV: The Power of Intention by Wayne Dyer (#45)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got a great book, the Power of Intention. Can't see it. Maybe you can see it on the side here by Wayne Dyer, one of my favorite teachers and one of my favorite books. A great book. Got that? Got the Philosopher's Notes here with about 12 of maybe 15 of my favorite big ideas from the book. So Wayne Dyer, we've done three notes on his work. I could have easily done much more. The Power of Intention. Great book. Your Erroneous Zones, which is one of his first major books. And Real Magic, all awesome stuff packed with big ideas. In this note we're going to talk about the Power of Intention. The subtitle is Learning to co create your world your way. So the Power of Intention. First, the idea of intention. If we think about intention, what he's describing that as is this ineffable force that essentially beats our hearts and grows our fingernails and keeps the planets in line. That's the power of intention. Something much bigger than us that we want to align with and align to and co create with to create our ideal world. He says there are seven faces to intention. They are creativity, Kindness, Love, beauty, expansion, unlimited abundance and receptivity. The book is really based around how we can get in touch with those faces of intention. So again, creativity, kindness, love, beauty, expansion, growth, unlimited abundance and receptivity. Really big ideas. We're going to look at a few my favorites that touch on a few of those faces of intention. The first one is this idea of overdosing on serotonin. And don't worry, you can't do that in the way we're going to talk about here. But this idea that I had never heard it before reading it with Dyer, but did you know that when you do something kind for someone, let's say you open a door for someone or you go to a homeless shelter to do something kind or you do something, an anonymous act of kindness of whatever sort. When you do something kind for someone, serotonin is released in your brain. And serotonin is the same hormone, right? The actual chemical substance that pharmacological companies put into antidepressants to help people feel better. It's a very good thing, serotonin is. But when we do something kind, we have that released in our brain. It's pretty fascinating thing to imagine. God, the universe, whatever it is that you think of as your higher power has thought this one through. And when we do something nice, we feel good. There's a reward to doing that. Which is we feel good. It's a phenomenal thing. Now, here's what's really cool. When you do something kind for someone, you feel serotonin released in your brain. You feel the effects of serotonin being released in your brain, and. And so does someone who experienced your kindness. Isn't that cool? They feel better. They have serotonin going through their bodies as well. Now, that's amazing. What I found even more amazing was the fact that someone who happens to see you doing something kind for someone else also has serotonin released in their brain. Isn't that amazing? So three people, or all the people who get to see that, get to benefit. So I suggest we go out and overdose on serotonin today, find ways to embody kindness, give ourselves the world in kind and generous ways, and feel the effects on that. So that's overdosing on serotonin. Fun idea. Another big idea, one of my favorites from this note and across the thousand in these hundred books, is an idea of acting as if. Now, I had heard that phrase many times, but to be honest with you, it never really resonated with me until I read the way Dyer describes it. And it really made sense and I loved it. He says this. He says, imagine who your ideal is, whether it's as a parent, your ideal as being a wonderful parent, or an entrepreneur, what your idea would look like, what your idea would look like in terms of your health and energy levels and fitness and strength as an artist, whatever line of development you want to imagine, imagine your ideal in those domains. When you've got that imagination done, you've got that ideal conjured. Then in this moment, especially when you're feeling stuck, go into that memory of when you're about ready to yell at your kids or your spouse, and one of your ideals is to be an extraordinary partner. You want to be an extraordinary husband or wife and wife partner for the person that you're committed to or your boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever the situation is. Now you have this vision of your ideal. Dyer says, act as if this moment, act as if you already were that ideal. So when you're getting ready to yell, either at work or at home and to whoever, pause for a moment and see, would my ideal self, how would they act in this moment? Take a breath and act as if you already were that ideal self. Isn't that awesome? So when you're sitting there and you're contemplating whether you get out of bed, meditate. Well, act as if the ideal version of you, that ideal meditator or Spiritual being that you are was making the decision that morning, or if you're going to go exercise or decide whether you're going to eat this or that off of the menu, act as if you already were that person who was acting from a state of just really advanced evolution and ideal behavior. So really cool thing to think about. And for me, really a fun way to kind of come back, especially when we don't feel like doing it. So think about that. Act as if. I love that idea. We've got some other big ideas. Dyer suggests that we act as if every encounter that we have with another human being is a sacred experience. And he talks about the beautiful word namaste, which he helps define for us, which essentially is, I bow to the divine within you. Right? So when we say namaste, it's a common greeting many places in the east, of recognizing the divinity within someone with whom we're interacting with. And Dyer suggests we make every encounter with someone that. That sacred, that spiritual. It's an amazing thing that's aligning with the power of intention. Really beautiful stuff. He says how important it is to say yes to the world. We've got a cool big idea on that with some roomy poetry there. And that if we want to connect to the power of intention, we've got to connect to the power of service. We've got to give ourselves to the world, live for something bigger than ourselves. So it's really important that we develop ourselves and we become as bright of a light that we can be to give ourselves to the world. But that's not the end goal. That's a means to the end of allowing ourselves to most shine and serve and give ourselves extraordinarily to the world. We talk about Viktor Frankl here as well. An awesome thought on this idea that success cannot be pursued. It must ensue as our commitment to something bigger than ourselves unfolds. And same thing with happiness. We can't seek after happiness, we cannot pursue it. It ensues as a result, as a byproduct of us committing ourselves to something bigger than ourselves. Really cool idea. He talks about when we're inspired, we're literally inspirited, right? We're in line with spirit, and spirit is within us. We're inspired. Which reminds me of the awesome idea of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is two little Greek words. Entheos, God within. When we have God within us and we're fully plugged into God and fully expressing God, we have enthusiasm, beautiful concept. Same thing with inspiration. We're inspirited. We're inspired. Really big idea. He talks about how important it is. And many, many, many, many, many teachers talk about from the Buddha to Rumi to modern day self development. Teachers talk about how important it is that we hang out with empowering people. Right? It's really easy to get brought down when we're hanging out with people who are disempowering. We talk about Jim Rohn's great phrase that you are the average of the five people with whom you spend the most time. You're the average of the five people with whom you spend the most time. That's a powerful concept I mentioned frequently whenever I reference him that I make sure that I'm averaging up to God or the power of intention or the universe, whatever you want to call it. Through my meditation practice, journaling allows me to tap into and have relationship with my highest self. All these great teachers allows me to average up with those great teachers. And then my goddess and my close group of friends and then you and a bunch of other inspired people I get to hang out with. I'm really conscious on creating a world in which I'm hanging out and spending the bulk of my time with really empowering people. It's a really important idea that Dyer talks about here. He also talks about the fact that you need to delete. When you feel a negative thought coming up, delete it like a keyboard on your computer. Negative thought, delete. Negative thought, delete. Just let it go, let it go, let it go. And have fun with it by pressing delete. That's a pretty cool idea. Then finally, he says that you need to imagine what you want to see come into your life. He says that flotation, a ship floating on the ocean, wasn't discovered by contemplating the sinking of things. You've got to focus on what you want to see come into your life if you want to manifest that. We talk about it more in the note, but that's a quick look at Wayne Dyer's great book, the Power of Intention. Hope you dug it. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have an awesome day. See you.