What is intention setting in deliberate creation?
Intention setting is the process by which you articulate into words your wish, desire, or need for a future outcome from a place of vibrational awareness. It’s a conscious and deliberate act to co-create your current and future experiences with the Universe.
If you look up the dictionary definition for intentions, you’ll get a description of “a thing intended; an aim or plan.” However, this doesn’t wholly describe or reflect the art and practice of intention setting.
How is intention setting different from goal setting?
Similar to goal setting, intention setting is about defining in words the outcome that you want to experience. In goal setting, you're taught to create specific, measurable, attainable, or time-bound goals based on actions you will take. For example, a goal would read, “I’m going to lose 15 lbs. in two months by controlling my caloric intake and exercising three times per week.”
Within an intention-setting practice, you're taught to create specific intentions that define the intended outcome, the result, or the manifestation you want to experience in a vibrationally coherent way. For example, an intention you set would sound like, “I’m so happy and grateful that I am fifteen pounds lighter and feeling strong, energized, and healthy now and far into the future.“
Intention setting is about co-creating desirable outcomes with the universe through the language of vibration. Intention setting involves not only your intention, vibration, effort, and action but also the supportive response, feedback, and engagement from the universe on your desired manifestation.
What is manifestation?
Manifestation is the term given to the process of consciously, deliberately, or intentionally co-creating the things that you want with the universe. So it’s attracting what you want into your life through the co-creative processes of intention setting, vibrational alignment, taking action, and receiving feedback and guidance from the Universe.
It can also be called manifesting, deliberate creation, or conscious creation. In manifesting what you want, you use the power of vibrational communication to ask for and receive whatever types of experiences you want from the Universe.
What is vibrational communication with the Universe?
Vibrational communication is the communication you create with the Universe or the Unified Field through your habits of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. You emit a vibration, an energetic signal unique to you because of your beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. That vibration coming from your habits of thoughts (beliefs), emotions, and behaviors communicates to the universe a variety of wants, needs, preferences, and desires.
In conscious creation, you make this vibrational communication an intentional one. You make conscious or intentional requests to the Universe by managing and directing your thoughts, emotions, and daily behaviors to align with what you want to manifest.
Does manifesting work to get you what you want?
Manifesting works to get you what you want as long as you regulate your vibration to stay in that place of receptivity and alignment. To succeed at manifestation, you have to take responsibility for your vibrational broadcast, for the habits of thoughts and emotions you live from.
When you manage and regulate this vibration, the energetic signal you're sending out becomes the kind of signal that will support your ability to attract and manifest the things you want. So when you manage and regulate your vibration and keep yourself in the positive energy states that reflect receptivity and alignment, you end up receiving the things you ask for.
What helps you become an effective co-creator in manifestation
The key to success in manifesting the things you want through co-creating with the universe is your active participation in the manifestation process. First, you have to be clear about what you want and are asking for. You have to regulate your vibration. You have to do the work of having the beliefs, habits of thought, and habits of positive emotion that help you stay receptive to the positive energy inputs from the universe.
Manifesting what you want comes from your ability to receive positive energy from the universe. To receive positive energy from the universe, you have to have the types of beliefs, narratives, knowledge, and understanding that help you be aligned with the frequency of that positive energy. Manifestation success takes work, but the effort is the kind of effort that ends up benefiting all areas of your life experience. It’s the kind of effort that brings about rewards for the rest of your life.
How does manifestation work?
The universe and everything within it has both physical components and vibrational components. One of the scientific frameworks you can reference to understand why this vibrational communication you engage in with the Universe gives you the ability to attract and manifest the things you want, why it gives you the ability to co-create with the universe is the findings from quantum physics of the observer effect.
Consciousness can influence what unfolds in the dimensions of the material. Consciousness can influence or impact spatial and temporal events because consciousness either precedes or contains these dimensions of the material world.
Because you are an expression of consciousness, you can co-creatively dialogue with this broader intelligence to influence and impact your current and future experiences through the language of vibration.
How Intention Setting Helps with Manifestation
Intention setting is one of the first or earlier steps you take in the manifestation journey. To go on the journey of attracting and manifesting something you want, you start by setting an intention. You start by defining and expressing what you want to experience.
An intention is a form of inspired thought. It is a mental event. You take that mental event and ensure that it's communicating or vibrationally conveying a clear message to the universe. If you've read or heard about setting clear, specific, and coherent intentions, this suggestion or advice speaks to the necessity for the intentions that you set to be a clear indicator of what you want to experience.
Manifesting Your Desires through Intention Setting
Manifesting your desires through intention setting involves a few different steps.
Identifying that you want to experience something new or different kicks off your manifestation journey.
Self-awareness helps you identify that you want something new, different, or improved. That feeling of “I want something different, I want something else, I want something better, I want something new” indicates that some part of your being wants to experience a change. New preferences, wishes, or ideas emerge as you experience your daily life.
That self-awareness piece has to be active and engaged in setting an intention. Awareness of your emotions and responses, awareness that some inkling is coming to the surface, is one of the first steps in the intention-setting process. You have to know that you're experiencing that internal inkling and having that wish or desire.
From that self-awareness, you get clear about what you want. Not every wish or desire surfaces in a crystal-clear fashion. The initial stage of intention discovery sometimes requires flushing out what’s coming up. You have to sift through the narrative of “I don’t like this” or “I don’t want this” and shift focus to the desired change, solution, or new experience. Some intentions may surface clearly from the start, but not all do.
To clarify what intention is surfacing, you have to ask yourself some discovery questions that help you answer the who, what, why, where, and even when of what you now want. Then, once you have that clarity on what exactly you want, what it's going to look like, what it's going to feel like, what it might involve, what that ultimate picture and experience of the new satisfying outcome is, you go into articulating and expressing what that new intention is.
In that initial discovery phase, you can think of intention setting as a three-step process.
(1) You become aware that you want something new, improved, or different.
(2) You then get clear about the new thing you want to experience.
(3) Then you set your intention by putting it into words and expressing it in written form or whatever medium you desire.
For more in-depth guidance on how to phrase your intention, check out my post How to Set Your Daily Intention.
Intention Setting Worksheet
Click HERE to download the FREE high-quality printable PDF intention-setting worksheet.
How to use the Intention Setting worksheet
To use the intention setting worksheet, save the PDF document or copy the text into a notebook and complete the exercise. While using the intention-setting worksheet, think about your most important intention.
As a best practice working with two to three intentions at a time is suggested. This will help you manage the number of intentions you focus on for manifestation. Then, as you manifest your top two or three intentions, you can create and work on manifesting new ones.
You can use a separate intention-setting worksheet for each intention to get as clear as you can about what you want and what you can co-creatively attract from the Universe.
Whether you want to manifest wealth, manifest success, manifest love, or something else, you can start your manifestation journey by first setting your intention.
While using the worksheet, think about the following:
What’s important to you right now in your life?
What would you like to attract, improve, or enhance?
What internal and external resources do you already have?
What steps can you take right now to get clear, aligned, and moving toward manifestation?
For additional tips on setting intentions, you can check out 9 examples of Magnetic Intention Statements and A 7 Question Exercise to Help You with Setting Intentions.
A Valuable Tool for Your Manifestation Success
Want a valuable tool to support your manifestation success? Check out my 52-week manifestation journal.
It's an annual structured journal with prompts and questions designed to help you get clear, manage your vibration, and create positive forward momentum. It's available in paperback and hardcover on Amazon worldwide.
About Kidest OM
Kidest OM is a manifestation author and teacher with indispensable books and online courses designed to help you attract and manifest what you want. Her books include "Anything You Want" and "Nothing in the Way: Clearing the Paths to Success & Fulfilment," which are available globally in eBook, print, and audiobook on her website and online book retailers.