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9 - Working with Intentions

Intentions and Patience

Happy Day! 🥳

“I’ve Been Doing This for Two Months…”

I occasionally get emails from readers who have spent fifty years — or more — thinking in ways that quietly worked against them.

Not their fault.

Conditioning is inherited.
Fear is modeled.
Scarcity is absorbed.
Self-doubt is rehearsed.

Over decades, those patterns don’t just become habits — they become infrastructure.

That quicksand gets thick. Dense. Like Glaswegian porridge.

Then they spend six or eight weeks doing TQT, reconnecting with nature, running their Mini-Mind Movie…

And they expect fireworks.

I understand that.

Because patience is my greatest Achilles heel.

I want it yesterday.

Momentum Takes a Moment

If you’ve been walking north for fifty years, you don’t arrive south in an afternoon just because you’ve turned around.

But the turning matters.

The first few weeks of Transformation are not about visible magic.

They are about neurological rewiring.
Emotional recalibration.
Energetic phase shifting.

You don’t see roots forming underground.

But without roots, nothing grows.

The Illusion of “Nothing’s Happening”

When people say, “Nothing’s happening,” what they usually mean is:

My bank account hasn’t changed.
My relationship status hasn’t changed.
My job hasn’t changed.

But internally?

Often sleep improves.
Reactivity decreases.
Clarity sharpens.
Opportunities begin whispering.

Subtle before spectacular.

Magic is often quiet before it is loud.

Quicksand Has to Loosen

If your mental quicksand is half a century thick, the first stage is not levitation.

It’s stabilization.

Then firmness.

Then movement.

Then acceleration.

Expecting instant transformation after decades of opposite conditioning is like going to the gym twice and demanding visible abs.

You don’t build muscle that way.

You build it through repetition.

My Impatience Confession

As I said — I struggle with patience.

When I set an Intention, I want the universe to confirm receipt immediately.

Same-day delivery, preferably.

But the winding staircase doesn’t operate on ego timelines.

It operates on structural readiness.

If the dream arrived before the scaffolding was built, it would collapse.

Sometimes the delay is protection.

Sometimes the delay is preparation.

Sometimes the delay is simply physics.

The Only Variable You Control

Consistency.

Do TQT.
Go into nature.
Protect your Intention.
Run your Mini-Mind Movie.
Stop analyzing.

Especially stop analyzing.

Magic hates micromanagement.

Fifty Years In. Two Months In.

If you’ve spent fifty years reinforcing the wrong patterns, and you’ve now spent two months reversing them…

You’re not late.

You’re early.

Stay with it.

The porridge thins.

The ground firms.

The staircase turns.

And one day you’ll look back and realize the shift began long before you could see it.

Even if, like me, you wished it had happened yesterday.

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The Gramophone Years

When I was growing up, we didn’t have playlists, streaming platforms, or background noise on demand.

We had a 1950s gramophone.

It came to my parents in a will, along with about a dozen vinyl records — mostly Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals.

That was it.

So we played them.

Over and over.

By the time I was ten, I was word-perfect on Oklahoma!, South Pacific, and Carousel. My parents’ favorites.

The opening song from Oklahoma! — bright, hopeful, unapologetically optimistic — lodged itself somewhere permanent in my nervous system.

I found it uplifting then.

I still do.

The Context Matters

Here’s what’s important.

At that time:

My mother was dying of cancer, increasingly impatient with the lack of effective treatments.
My father was unemployed, frustrated and defeated by limited opportunity.
My siblings and I were bullied at school and desperate to grow up so we could defend ourselves.

Objectively?

It wasn’t a carefree household.

But when we didn’t have a TV — which was most of the time — we put on a record.

And we sang.

Loudly.

Together.

Energy Is Contagious

For a few minutes, the house changed frequency.

The frustration softened.
The fear loosened.
The impatience paused.

Music lifted us.

Not because our circumstances improved.

But because our state did.

And state matters.

The Discipline of Uplift

Looking back, I realize something powerful:

We weren’t escaping reality.

We were regulating it.

We were deliberately choosing a higher emotional register in the middle of difficulty.

That’s not denial.

That’s energy management.

And it’s a skill.

Borrowed Light Still Counts

Sometimes you don’t feel awe naturally.

Sometimes you don’t feel hopeful.

Sometimes the quicksand feels thick.

In those moments, borrow energy.

From music.
From memory.
From childhood.
From nature.

There is nothing weak about that.

We sang while my mother was terminally ill.

We sang while money was scarce.

We sang while we felt powerless.

And for those few minutes, we weren’t powerless.

We were expansive.

Why This Matters Now

When I talk about awe, flow, and Intention, people sometimes imagine it must be solemn, mystical, silent.

It can be.

But it can also be loud and off-key in a small living room with a scratchy vinyl spinning.

Joy is not the absence of hardship.

It is the decision to rise above it — even briefly.

And sometimes that brief rise is enough to keep you moving forward.

Even today, when I hear that opening from Oklahoma! I feel something lift inside me.

Energy remembered.

Energy reclaimed.

Sometimes magic begins with simply turning up the volume and singing anyway.

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Why I Included Oklahoma!

My reason for including that story?

Because when I get impatient and frustrated today… I sing.

Usually in the shower.

Loudly.

“Oh, what a beautiful mornin’…”

It works wonders.

It’s a tonic. An instant state-shifter.

Within seconds my nervous system recalibrates. My breathing deepens. The agitation dissolves. Perspective returns.

I’m sure you have your own pump-me-up song.

If you don’t — borrow mine.

State management is not trivial. It is strategic.

The Chinese Bamboo Principle

After a bamboo seed is planted, you see almost nothing for five years. Just a tiny shoot.

But underground?

An intricate root system is forming — vertically and horizontally — building strength and reach.

Then in year five, it shoots up to 25 meters tall.

Explosive growth.

Visible growth.

But only because invisible growth came first.

Many things in life are bamboo.

You work.
You invest energy.
You nurture.
You persist.

And nothing seems to happen.

Until it does.

As Paulo Coelho wrote in Aleph:

“One must be very daring to reach great heights, and at the same time, have a lot of depth to stay grounded.”

Height without depth collapses.

Depth without patience never rises.

“Why Does It Get Worse First?”

I once received this email from a reader in Europe:

She had stopped watching the news.
Stopped gossiping.
Practiced quiet time.
Visualized positively.
Used past tense.

And yet…

When she visualized financial improvement, things seemed to get worse.

When she expressed gratitude for her sweet children, they became Godzillas.

She asked:

“What am I doing wrong?”

My answer was simple:

Nothing.

But decades of conditioning don’t evaporate in weeks.

When you’ve lived with scarcity thinking for years, visualizing wealth often triggers simultaneous images of lack.

You say “abundance,” but your nervous system whispers, “yes, but look at the bills.”

It’s an improvement over pure negativity.

But it’s not yet clean.

It takes practice.

The Cargo Ship Effect

I told her to imagine a massive cargo ship at sea.

It has been sailing in the wrong direction for years.

The captain suddenly realizes this and orders:

“All reverse! Hard to port!”

But for miles… the ship continues gliding the wrong way.

The engines strain.

The resistance is felt.

Momentum does not shift instantly.

Then — almost imperceptibly at first — the bow begins to turn.

Momentum reverses.

Same ship.
Same ocean.
New direction.

Life works like that.

The good captain trusts the decision.

The bad captain panics and starts changing course every few minutes — starboard, port, half ahead — and chaos follows.

Stick with it.

Don’t second-guess the turn.

A Few Months Later…

She wrote again:

She had been doubting her business.

Doubting the investments.

Doubting whether she should continue.

Then she won “Best Retailer of the Year.”

The shift happened.

Not because she forced it.

Because she stayed the course long enough for the momentum to change.

Mental Games for Impatience

When impatience creeps in, play.

Imagine success as already here.

Yes, it feels silly at first.

Stand in front of the mirror.
Pump your fists.
Sing at the top of your lungs.

“Oh, what a beautiful morning…”

As you exaggerate the state, impatience loosens its grip.

You can’t be furious and theatrical at the same time.

The Rory McIlroy Lesson

Golfer Rory McIlroy once said he had become frustrated with his lack of major wins.

A retired golfer told him:

“It’s like waiting for Christmas. You know Christmas is coming. You feel excited and impatient. But you can’t make it arrive faster. Just play as if you know Christmas is coming one day.”

Rory won the championship shortly after.

On the final holes he played as if he already knew.

Relaxed.

Certain.

Unhurried.