We all know intuitively what it feels like to "intend" a certain outcome or action. However, knowing what a thing is intuitively is different from having a deep introspective take on how the thing actually plays out in your own brain. In this Mental Model Monday, I go deep into the phenomology of intentions, and how you can create intentions and intentionality, as well as decide how much intentionality to have in any given situation.

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Edited Transcript Below

What I Learned About Intentions from Hypnotizing My Hands Together

I first started playing with intentions when I was maybe about 13, 14.

I was playing around with self-hypnosis. I a common hypnosis exercise where I hypnotized myself into believing my hands were glued together, that the harder I tried to get them apart, the more they would become stuck together. Then, I tried as hard as I could to pull them apart. I found no matter how much I struggled, I couldn't get them apart.

What was happening was my arms were tightening and doing some of the things you might do when you're actually trying hard to pull your hands apart, but they weren't actually moving outwards. After I played with this for a while, I decided to stop trying to pull them apart. Instead I focused on the part that was blocking me from pulling them apart. For me, it was located up in the right area of my forehead. Instead of pulling harder, I had to consciously let that block go. After I let it go, my hands came apart with no struggle at all.

I did this a number of times with various hypnosis exercises like forgetting my name, not being able to say my name,and not being able to say the word 'the', until I could implant that thing in my forehead without the hypnosis, and I could get rid of it when I wanted to. That part, it turns out, was how I experienced intentions.

Intentions Vs. Other Things

Intentions are different from desires. What you want is different from what you intend to do. I think there's value in separating the two and not getting them confused, so take some time to feel the difference between what it is to want something and what it is to intend to get that thing. They're also different from expectations or should. An intention is not this thing that you're supposed to do, it's something that you are going to do. It's a sense of resolve and purpose in you...

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