The book ‘The Intentional Being’ by Damini Grover, which was on display at the recently held World Book Fair 2023, explores how humans create meaningful shifts within themselves with the powerful phenomena of intention. The power of intention refers to the ability of one’s thoughts, beliefs, and desires to influence their actions, behaviors, and outcomes. Essentially, it is the idea that our intentions can shape our reality.
While it is true that we cannot control everything, setting clear intentions and focusing on them can manifest our desired outcomes in their lives.
Our inner worlds were shaken during the pandemic, as many of us tried to make sense of living without any human interaction. While it turned life upside down in some ways, it also straightened out a lot. Being in lockdown forced every one of us to take stock of our lives. It made us come face to face, with certain realities that we were better off avoiding. It also gave us a chance to make some constructive changes in our lives – changes, which would have continued to take a backseat for some more time to come.
“This book will guide readers through the fundamental conflicts and enable them to look at their life more intentionally. The self-reflection exercises at the end will help them to look at certain areas of life more carefully so that they can make the desired changes,” says Grover
The book explores the importance of intention with both psychological and creative dexterity.
Excerpt from The Intentional Being:
Imagine you’re driving on the road, lost in music or lost in your thoughts, and suddenly the person sitting next to you yells ‘watch out!’ and you wake up from your slumber and slam the brakes. Whoa! Quite a scene, yeah? In a matter of seconds, you are dragged into reality, where you realize that you weren’t aware of what you were doing, yet you were doing it — just like any other day. This is what the word ‘Intention’ feels like for most of us. A simple word, which underlies an even simpler question – “What do you want?” Yet, for most of us being asked this question, it feels like we were forced to slam the brakes on our lives. The kind of lives that most of us lead is a life of convention. There isn’t a handbook of what to do and how to do it, yet there is.
What does it then take to step up? To move up this ladder and progress towards our need for self-esteem and then self-actualization? It takes Intention. It takes courage to ask yourself: Am I happy with my life and what I’m doing? Is there something that I want to do differently? It takes effort to start recognizing your own thoughts, emotions about your own life and choices. It takes willingness to be able to initiate a change. It requires us to take off our sunglasses at night! I once read in a book that whatever you focus your energies on, it expands, and I have discovered that it’s true. Most of us spend more than half of our lives seeking approval and validation; it’s this need within us that keeps growing. Instead of keeping ourselves at the centre of our own existence, we make people and their opinions the centre. Before we know it, they have occupied all this space within us that was meant only for us. We get so caught up in living a life that is predetermined for us, that we overlook the fact that we have our own thoughts, feelings, dreams and the capability of turning them into reality.
Grover is a trained psychologist, author and runs the clinic I’m Powered – Center for Counseling & Well-Being in Delhi.
