Power of Intentions

Transcript-

Hi there, I’m Kaden James and you’re listening to Spirlit. Take your life to the next level. Stop playing small. It's time to light it up.

Hi my friends and welcome to the podcast. Now today has been a super rainy day. It's been like cloudy for the last week and just a lot of rain here in San Diego. Yes, it does actually rain in Southern California believe it or not. But I am just feeling like really cozy and I just wanted to tuck in to this very special podcast because what I want to talk to you today about is intentions.

So and I thought a lot about intention going into this. Like, what is my intention for this podcast? What is my intention for even just speaking right now to all of you? And my intention is to create a safe space of love, harmony, and to bring people a sense of home. So I just want to encourage everybody out there to get cozy. If you're at home, you know, if you're driving, obviously don’t but if you're at home, grab a blanket, put it around you, or light a candle and get a beverage that just warms your spirit, alright? Because that can be the intention of just feeling cozy, feeling at home, at peace and that's really the energy I want this podcast to have for everybody out there. It’s just to feel like you're at home with a friend. I'm just talking to my friend here, and that's my intention behind this. I want to bring you great concepts that I've learned through coaching, through life, through working with clients, through just all the adventures of life and also the hope for the future. So that is what this is about. That is my intention, to just show up with love and to send it to all of you and to help you have tools to better navigate your life.

If you ask yourself, “what is my intention” for anything that you're doing, it's for one of two reasons. It's to avoid pain or to seek pleasure. Alright, so ask yourself that right now about anything, even just listening to this podcast. Why are you listening to this podcast? Hopefully it’s not causing you pain. Hopefully you are listening to this because you are getting some pleasure. You're getting some benefit out of it and maybe you're going to listen to something and it's going to resonate and you're going, “oh, I'm going to apply that to my life and it's going to make my life a little bit better”. That is pleasure. And it is a little bit of avoiding pain because some of these tools will help you avoid pain in your life so that you can experience more pleasure.

Alright, so when we think about ourselves when it comes to intentions, and that's what I want to start with in this podcast, is just thinking about ourselves, the intentions we have behind what we do. “What is motivating you every day of your life?” And if you ask yourself that question, it's going to raise your awareness around what is motivating you in your life. And for some people, they become very startled when they start to see this because they may have a lot of fear and anxiety and worry in their life and all of that is a level of fear. It just might not be like, pure terror but anxiety is a low level of fear. It's being upset with what it is, and you're feeling anxiety, it's because you're worried that something might happen in the future, or you're stressed out. And when we act from that place, sometimes we become really irritable. Sometimes we get angry, sometimes we take it out on the people we love the most. It is wild that we do this, but we take it out on others but we really take it out on ourselves.

And the interesting thing about our minds is we get to choose what everything means for us. Let me repeat that again. We get to choose what everything means for us. So that means when somebody is rude to you, you get to choose what that means for you. When it's raining outside like today, you get to choose what that means for you. You know, there's some people that wake up and it's raining out and they're just like dreading the day. And there's some people that live with that all the time in the Northwest. But imagine being upset about the weather, right? It's something that's out of our control. It's actually a gift, I mean that it rains and things become green and beautiful and they bloom when the sun comes back out. You know, it's it's actually really beautiful and lush after it rains, but there's some people who really dread it. But it's just their thoughts about it. There's other people, like me who you know, I was out there dancing in the rain when I was heading into the gym. I just felt so good. It was like that misty rain, almost like when you're by a waterfall. Which I also got to do about a month ago. I was by a huge waterfall and I just let them mist, just cover my face, and it was awesome. It was in North Carolina and it was beautiful. It was called the Looking Glass Waterfall and it was just really, really stunning. But that's kind of how I felt today. It kind of brought me back to that moment. Because I just closed my eyes and I felt that mist just blowing onto me and it was just so empowering for me. I just put my arms up in the sky and I didn't even care who was looking. I was in the gym parking lot and I just was enjoying myself. Luckily, I didn't get hit by a car. But I headed into the gym. I had a great workout and I felt good about the day. I felt empowered about it. I felt a lot more satisfaction. Now, that's not to say that I don't sometimes have dips in mood based on my circumstances. I do.

There are things that come up in this world that are not ideal. You know? You find out about a bill, you got to pay. That you didn't know about, which just happened to me recently too. I had some insurance on one of my cars and for some reason it didn't get taken out of the account. So I had to pay that and I was like, OK, I didn't expect that, but we're just going to roll with it because at least it didn't hit my credit, you know, like we just have to see the good even in the negative situations there is. Always something to be gained. There's always something good there.

So getting back to intention, when we recognize that we're doing something based on fear, and that's the motivation behind the actions that we're taking or the lack of actions that we're taking, maybe it's you're not putting yourself out there to apply for work because you're scared that you're going to get rejected over and over again and you hate that feeling of rejection. You're afraid of that pain of rejection. Explore where it's coming from.

I f we're experiencing anxiety, for instance, or discomfort or worry, we got to look at why are we feeling that way, really? Because those are all like blankets that are covering something else. It's almost like when you're afraid of monsters under your bed or something, you pull the covers over yourself. That blanket is protecting you, in your mind, not in reality. But in your mind it's protecting you as a child from something scary and that is what saying I'm worried or I'm afraid that's what that is. It's a blanket that is covering us from the truth of why we're feeling this way and when we pull the blanket down and we face what's causing us the fear, we can actually see that, oh, that's just a shadow on the wall because of the tree or the wind is blowing that window and that's what's rattling that sounds like something's knocking at the door and we're freaked out. And a lot of times we find that the things that we're afraid of, we don't really got to be afraid of them. You know, there's very few things that actually are going to harm us more than our mind. Because when I look back on my life and I think of all the times I've had fear, all the times I've been stressed out, all the times I've been worried, I've gotten through all of that. And so have you, you're all listening to this podcast, you've all made it. Congratulations, We've all made it. We've all gotten here through a lot of stuff and. A lot of that stuff was not ideal. I've been through some real difficult things in my life, but we're here and we've gone through it and we're better for it. So that's something that we can take from this. That's a place of power. When you realize that your past has made you more strong, it's made you more powerful, more courageous, hopefully. And if you're still fearful, well, we just gotta look at the fear, assess it, and then just move ourselves a little bit in the right direction. And to be honest, if the fear is causing you to shrink and to stay in place and not go out there and do the things you really want to do and share your gifts, your talents, and all the good energy and love that is inside you, then it's stealing life from you. And for most people, they're most fearful of death. Well, that is robbing you of your life, thus killing those moments that you could have had. So every time we stay in one place, we're losing something.

If you know that there is more for you, that you're meant to do more, be more, show up more than it's your responsibility to do that because you don't want to lose all these moments. When I look back on my life, it's the times when I didn't take the action. That's what I regret the most. Why didn't I do that? Why didn't I go for that? Why didn't I believe in myself more? And I'm not saying this to beat up on myself or for anybody else to do that. I use that now as power and motivation to take the action, to show up. So fear can actually be our friend. It's teaching us. It's saying, hey, something's going on over here, you might want to look at this. So that's really what fear is here to teach us. It's here to be like an alarm that goes off, that goes, whoa, you need to pay attention to this. So that's the fear side.

Now when it comes to pleasure, I mean, there is pleasure that is temporary but then causes us pain later, and then there's pleasure that's lasting. There's pleasure that brings us more meaning and fulfillment and joy and exuberance and all the good stuff, right? That's what I'm after. You know, the ice cream in the fridge that you eat and then you don't feel so good afterwards. And maybe you do that for a while and you just start to notice your body isn't functioning at its highest level and you're just not feeling good when you look in the mirror. That is the pleasure that is temporary, right? We're seeking that temporary pleasure, but overall, it actually brings us pain. So we want to be aware of the areas where we are using things like food as escapism to cover up the emotions that we're actually feeling, the things that are really going on. You know, you're stressed at work, so eat or you drink too much because you're upset with your relationship and you're just like consuming more of that to kind of self medicate. There's many ways that people do this and it's important for us to just notice, hey, is this temporary pleasure or is this lasting pleasure? Is this going to bring me overall pleasure in the future?

You know, I recently bought a guitar and I started playing guitar Whenever I'm feeling like, alright, work is getting a little overwhelming. I take a little break and some people would take like a smoke break, right? Like they'd go outside and have some puffs, but I just pick up the guitar and I just play a couple chords. You know, I'm new at this and I'm just having fun with it, but it's just a healthy outlet. I'm gonna feel good having that skill. So like, when I go to the beach with my friends, I can just, you know, strum something or, you know, write some songs. It'll be a lot of fun. So finding outlets like that that are going to bring you lasting pleasure, you're going to feel better about yourself. Maybe for you it's Duolingo and you learn a different language or you know, you read a book. Just take those moments for yourself whenever you wanna go buffer or whenever you wanna escape something in your life. Escape to something positive, escape to something that brings you joy. Maybe it's a comedy special and you just laugh. You know, that's all things that are going to bring good things into your life. You're going to feel better and you're going to have less regret after you've engaged in those things as opposed to, you know, the hangover the next day or stepping on the scale after three weeks of eating cookie dough ice cream every day. These are just ways. That, you know, we get the temporary pleasure right, but ultimately that's leading also to pain. But the lasting stuff is what I'm after, alright. When we find things that bring us lasting pleasure, when we have meaning in the work that we're doing, when we're doing it because we care and that is our motivation, that's our intention, we know we're in the right spot.

Now if you don't care about the work. You're doing. I want to encourage you to get out of that work as soon as you can. Because if you don't care about the people you're serving, if you don't care about the products, or even worse, if you know that the products that you're selling or the services that you're selling are not healthy and beneficial for people and they're harming people straight up, it's time to get out. There's something better for you. No, I'm not telling you to just jump out of your job immediately if it's not really harming anyone. But I am saying that if it's not fulfilling for you, if it doesn't feel right, look into that and find something that feels a little bit better, that you could be doing, a way that you could be spending your time. Because we spend a lot of our lives at work and if the motivation behind it is not there, it’s time to look for something different. It's time to do something different. You're being called to something better for yourself and your family and the world.

There are so many companies where the number one intention was money and that has gotten us into a complete mess. Capitalism has completely gone off the rails because it's not conscious capitalism. There's a force out there seeking profit over people, seeking profits over the planet, seeking profits over animals and wildlife and nature, and we are making this world worse, when we put profits at the forefront of why we do anything, because we'll cut corners and we'll do things that are not good just to make more money.

Now I have been noticing a huge influx of people becoming marketers, and what I mean by this is they are selling everything to us and they're learning from the same people who maybe have been successful at selling and making a lot of money and I'm not here to say that making money is bad. It's not. It's wonderful and I want you all to be completely abundant. But I will say that there's a way of doing it ethically, and the intention has to be there.

Now, I have become very tuned into spotting the energy that people are coming at me with whenever they try to market a product. I can see it instantly. It's like a sixth sense and I don't know if you've picked up on this as well. Maybe you have, but there are a lot of people out there who are trying so hard to sell and they're trying to do the hard sell where they're like pushing their product over and over and it's so self-indulgent and there's so much ego attached to it and there's manipulation in saying you need to buy this now and if you don't buy this now, you're going to be left behind. It's like there's a script going around that a lot of people are grabbing onto and they're just like trying to sell, sell, sell, and they're sending emails where you can tell they just don't care about you at all. They're not really looking at your content, they're not really caring about you at all. They're just trying to make money and that is a very low vibrational way of existing in the world. If you're just trying to take, take, take that is gonna come back to you and you are gonna spiral and it's not gonna be a good life.

Now when we give, we receive. And if there's anything that's lacking in your life, if you start to give, and maybe some other ways, you'll start to receive more in your life. You will get more energy, You'll get more love, you will get more money. You'll get all those good things that you want anyway. But somewhere along the line, people started thinking like they need to act like these corporations that have a lot of money and make their money in ruthless ways and I'm not saying all corporations are bad, but I will say there are a lot that are not worried about you or me.

What's really wild that we're having to navigate through now? That didn't always exist, OK? There used to be a little bit more obvious. We need to raise the bottom line. We need to get rid of employees so that we can, you know, push profits and get more investors. It used to be a lot more obvious what they were doing, but what I have noticed now is a term that I call righteous washing.

So, there's a term called greenwashing, and it's when a company tries to use PR and marketing tactics to seem like they care about the environment. So they might change their packaging to be green and put trees on it and grass and make it seem like it's a healthier product. There might be pasture and there's like one chicken or one cow in the advertisement. But then if you were to actually see the cows or the chickens, it's horrendous. They're in terrible conditions, they're in the mud and there's no grass anywhere. Greenwashing, a something a company will do to change perception.

For the last several years I've noticed a rising trend in what I call righteous washing. Now when I've worked with Fortune 500 companies and when people have tried to work with me and some of them I've passed on just because I could see this right away. And what righteous watching is, is they appear to care for people to gain more in profit. So, it's inauthentic to the core. It's literally they're just trying to, hey, how can we market this in a way that seems like we care about these people, but in all actuality, we want to sell them junk and just make money off of it. So it's manipulating others to believe in or work for a cause because they think that everyone's gonna benefit from it, and then what ends up happening is they usually watch them greedily gain more just for themselves.

So they actually don't care about the people or the cause that they're actually behind. They're just trying to seem like they care. So it's all PR, it's all an illusion. So it's when a company will say, ohh, we care so much about the needy and we're gonna give to homeless causes, then you look at the actual numbers and you find out it's less than 1%, So they're really just saying it to boost their profits. They're trying to look and appear like they care about people and that PR ends up helping that company tremendously because some people will buy that product just because ohh, it's going to charity. Ohh they're giving to charity they care about us or they care about a cause that I care about, but we have to be vigilant. We have to look into this because it is just another way that they market.

Billions of dollars are spent on marketing and brands know how important it is that they are perceived in a positive light because the moment the tide turns. A brand can completely tank. If they can keep the brand perception high, if they can do little things that, you know, make people like them a little bit more, It's good PR for them and it's good marketing. Knowing the intention behind what we're doing is so powerful and it's important that we ask this of corporations, of politicians, of everyone out there. It's so important that we are aware that other people might not have good intentions or motivations for us.

So we need to know and get in tune with energy and understand that you can feel into it. You can tell when somebody means you well and when they don't. And even when they don't, you don't have to hate on them. You could just move yourself, sidestep it into your path. And if you're working for somebody who doesn't mean you, well, it's time to be intentional about going after what would serve a higher purpose. And I can't tell you what that is. And no coach should. So that's something that's very important too. Coaches don't tell us what to do. I wish they could. Sometimes I would love to just go to a coach and be like, what do I do? And I've done that many times in my life with friends. And my friends will sometimes try to tell me what to do and sometimes I take the advice and sometimes I don't. But ultimately we are the ones who know we have to check in with ourselves and that's when going out in nature and just talking to your higher self, your higher power and just feeling that connection, that strong pull that helps guide you where you're meant to go.

So thank you so much for being here and listening to this. This was a meaningful one for me as well, and a good reminder of how important it is to set proper intentions for your day and to check in with yourself. What is my intention behind what I'm doing? Ask yourself that often and you might be surprised at some of the results and if it's not desirable intentions or motivation behind it, you can shift it. Once you're aware of it, you can change it, and you can start to really have the best, highest intention and motivation behind what moves you and you'll float through life. I'm telling you, you will have this force, this energy that is of love guiding you. Magical things will happen if you live your life this way.

Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.

-Kaden