Intro: 00:00

Welcome to the Infinitely Precious podcast produced by Infinitely Precious LLC. Your host is James Henry. Remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.

James: 00:12

Hello, beloved. It's me, James, and I have some thoughts to share with you today. We have entered a season in western in the western church, in the western Christian tradition, a season of Lent. It's forty days of preparation for, for Easter. And those days are often in, characterized by self reflection, self awareness, sometimes self denial.

James: 00:45

I talked about this last week on the podcast. And this week, I thought I might, talk about a specific practice that I've taken up and, how it has sort of brought clarity and help to me in this season of Lent when I'm trying to strengthen my heart and focus in a bit more. The practice that I have used on and off for a number of years, but that I have been more intentional about in the last week is setting an intention each day. Trying to begin as close to the beginning of my day by setting an intention. You might ask yourself, what does that mean?

James: 01:35

And I don't even know if intentions are a good thing to set. After all, if you're anything like me, you grew up with a phrase that said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And, you know, I don't need to argue whether that's true or not. If intentions are not your thing, don't do them. But for me, setting an intention opens me and my awareness to what's coming today and tries to bring focus to what I'm gonna try to do today.

James: 02:07

Just one thing. I started to say, and it came to my mind just because of cultural realities that it was a way of measuring my day. I want to discourage you if you're going to set an intention of using it to measure your day. We don't need any other measures placed on us based on how our days are going. And sometimes we arrive at the end of the day with the feeling that we have failed anyway.

James: 02:35

So we don't need one more thing that we can potentially fail at. However, we do need to set up, perhaps, some ways to kind of bring focus to a day. So for instance, on Saturday, I had noticed, that I, have spent a little bit too much time at various points on my day off on Friday and some other days, getting a little bit too focused on watching, on on my phone. Whether it was reading posts on somebody's, social media or news or other things, I I really got lost in it all. And oftentimes, I found myself walking away frustrated and struggling, irritated sometimes as well, maybe even anxious.

James: 03:26

So on Saturday, I set an intention to look at my phone less. That was it. It wasn't not to look at my phone at all. It was to look at my phone less. And so on Saturday, as it turns out, by the end of the day, I had not even realized I had looked at my phone so little.

James: 03:49

I had not even realized that Saturday here, particularly in The United States, is, you know, was the beginning of, the time change when we set our clocks forward here in many parts of The United States. And fortunately for me, I didn't oversleep on, on Sunday morning because my watch, automatically adjusted for it. It's smart enough to do that. But I didn't even know because I looked at my phone less on Saturday. Now am I gonna walk around and celebrate how great I was because I didn't look at my phone on Saturday?

James: 04:28

And maybe other people did? No. No. But for me, I found that how much I got caught up picking up the phone almost as a reaction to being alive. If I got bored for a minute, reach for the phone.

James: 04:42

If I, found a free moment, reach for the phone. If, you know, if I was taking a walk and it wasn't enough to be enjoying nature and the cold wind in my face, was it was chilly on Friday, I was picking up the phone. What would it have looked like? So on Saturday, I set an intention to leave the phone and to to to not pick it up as often. And by the end of the day, I found that I hadn't.

James: 05:14

And, you know what? I was okay with not having done that. Setting an intention allowed me to be freed from something that I saw as, constricting my life. Now looking at your phone may not be something that constricts your life. It may be watching the news.

James: 05:33

It may be, it may it may be, something else altogether that I'm not aware of. Because for every one of us, there are different things that seem to block our path. So my suggestion to you would be to find that thing that today seems like, has been in your recent memory something that has blocked your full enjoyment of the day, your distraction from being alive in the moment. And setting an intention for that day allows you to kind of just remember at the beginning of the day as near to the beginning as possible. Now if you're watching this, you're if you're watching this, on on the stream, this is, noon eastern time on a Tuesday.

James: 06:30

If you're listening to this on the podcast, because Tuesday's daytime stream is a Tuesday afternoon's 03:00 podcast. If you're doing it at 03:00 in the afternoon, you might think, oh my gosh. The day has already passed me by. That, it's never too late in the day to set an intention, and to try to get a sense of what, what you'd like, to see happen in this given day. So setting an intention can be a way of just kind of setting yourself up to see your day through a new set of eyes.

James: 07:11

And for me, on on Saturday, it was not so much, getting, involved in my phone. Last week on Thursday, it was not taking myself so seriously. I have that, propensity. And so I I probably am gonna come back to both of those intentions again because I found them rewarding. Sometimes I take myself way too seriously.

James: 07:37

Sometimes I spend too much time on my phone as a distraction as a way of keeping me out of anything that feels out of my control in the moment. It's a way of avoiding the moment sometimes, and I found both of those helpful for me. It's probably something else completely different for you, but it's worth giving it a try. During this season of forty days of preparation for, Easter, the Lenten season, if you will, it's a perfect time to try something out. Forty days is plenty of time to kind of prepare your heart and set yourself up.

James: 08:15

But wait, James. We're already, we're already seven days into the Lenten season. Isn't it too late? Is it too late? Is it ever too late?

James: 08:26

If there's something worth practicing and you've missed a week of practicing it, that doesn't make it any less, good of a practice to start now, to start now. And you can kind of change your perspective. Another side effect of intention, just to throw it out there for me, for you too, is when is when I set an intention during the day, what's interesting is the way that my mind works. Because I've set that intention when I do reach for, that which my intention has, made me mindful of. When I reach for that phone or when I start to take myself too seriously or whatever it may be, a little little not so much an alarm, but an awareness arises in my mind and says, I was gonna do that phone thing less.

James: 09:23

I was going to do that taking myself too seriously thing less. Does it mean that sometimes I mindlessly pick something up and still do that which is the opposite of my intention? Absolutely. The important thing is once you've set the intention, and even if you fail in your intention, once, twice, three times, all day long, it doesn't become another moment to judge yourself. You come to the end of the day, you take a look at it.

James: 09:56

If the intention helped you, that's great. If you think that the intention, you're more aware of it because of the times that you tripped, tripped up during the day and caught yourself, then tomorrow, you could set the same intention again. There's nothing to stop you. Nothing to stop you. But an intention just brings to mind that which you want to work on today, that which you're hoping to try.

James: 10:21

It can be something that you leave aside. It can be something that you take up. I'm going to be intentionally kind to everyone I meet today, whatever that means to you, whatever it means to be kind. No matter what the other person says to me, kindness. Am I gonna fail?

James: 10:40

Possibly. Is it still worth doing? Absolutely. So set an intention for your days. It's worth giving it a try.

James: 10:50

Maybe it'll be helpful to you. If after you've tried it for a little while, it doesn't work for you and you find that instead it's just another opportunity to beat yourself up, let it go. Set an intention not to set an intention anymore because the intention is just another opportunity for you to think less of yourself. And that's not what a practice is about. It's about drawing you closer to yourself, to the divine in your everyday moments.

James: 11:17

That's what setting an intention has done for me. I hope that it might do the same for you, but it's a thought. It's worth doing. It's worth trying, seeing where it goes. So until the next time you hear me or see me in, one of these various locations that I am, I want you to remember, remember, keep it in your heart and your mind, whatever else you're doing, that you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.

James: 11:48

Thanks so much for joining me today, and I'll see you the next time.