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Today’s intention is:
To love.
Love your friends and find connection.
Love yourself and find peace.
Love your enemies and find truth.
A thunderous thwack of love
Facing Marcus and turned away from the wall, I bend my knees to an athletic squat position. My arms drape toward the floor while holding a ten-pound medicine ball. I step my left foot forty-five degrees toward the wall and swivel the medicine ball toward my right hip. Shoving off my right foot and straitening my left leg, I swing the ball across my body then release it. It hits the brick wall, now in front of me, and bounces to the gym floor.
Marcus shares some feedback:
“Not bad but you are working too hard. You are more than strong enough to make this throw without using your chest and arms so much. Sync up with your body’s natural motion, and your lower body strength will propel the ball faster without using so much upper body energy.”
I step into position to throw again.
As I make the forty-five-degree step this time, I wait a half-second and allow the ball to move in front of me with its momentum. Planting my left leg firmly into the ground, I release the ball at the last second, and it whips into the wall with a thunderous thwack.
The noise surprises me. I can tell the ball hit with much more force, but I feel as if I barely threw it.
Marcus praises, “Boom! That’s what I’m talking about.”
He reiterates the point that we generate significantly more power when we sync up with our body’s natural motion.
“We’re after effortless power, not powerless effort.” he says calmly.
Marcus’ words land in my ears like the chorus of a nostalgic 90s pop song. They sound familiar and new to me all at once. With a rush of enthusiasm, I grab my phone and record his words in my notepad.
Effortless Power > Powerless Effort
While I drive home from the gym, the idea runs laps around my mind as I think about how it applies to living with intention.
Like wasting upper body strength to throw a medicine ball, we generate powerless effort when we live life out of fear, obligation, or judgment. Our exhaustive acts land less forcefully than we expect. Conversely, we harness effortless power by acting with love, acceptance, and trust. We create a thunderous thwack of impact, seemingly without doing much at all.
In other words, fear reflects the fragile, needy, egoic self. On the other hand, love reflects the natural self, the Authentic Self, aligning with the Universe, the God within, Source, The Muse.
The powerless effort of fear will never match the effortless power of love.
But harnessing effortless power takes practice. We must intentionally choose love instead of fear.
How might that look for you this week?
What actions might you take that better reflect your Authentic Self?
You can draw upon the capacity of your frightened ego or summon the infinite power of the loving Universe.
Fear or Love?
The choice is yours.
Regret is mind made
Ash Kumra stopped by the podcast to wrap Season 2, share his latest journey of Self-discovery, and unpack now six-month-old, Student of Intention. In this clip, Ash shares how regrets have turned to learning lessons for his content production work.
Living with intention
Six months into this newsletter and I feel myself returning to its foundational messaging:
Enjoy the Pursuit of Purpose.
It is still how I define living with intention.
Do I wish I could hurry along some of my pursuit?
At times, for sure.
I also have gratitude for how far I’ve come, awareness of where I’m at, and trust I’ll get where I’m headed soon enough.
At times, you may want to hurry too.
Practice finding your gratitude, awareness, and trust.
Life isn’t a problem to be solved.
It’s a reality to be experienced.
Until next time,
Don’t wait. Start small. Learn as you go.
🙏🧡🤘
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