The Intentional Life
Wellbeing

The Intentional Life

How to Cultivate Intentions
Maria Hawranek
Reading
time 9 minutes

Intentions are sown so that they’ll grow; you have to care for them. These seeds represent our deepest longings. Mallika Chopra found a way to discover them inside yourself and live in accordance with them.

She never has enough time; she feels guilty that she screwed up somewhere. She forces herself to do as much as possible both in parenting and in her professional life. She keeps herself going on sugar and caffeine. When she sits in traffic, she dreams about the blessed life of a person who’s rested and full of energy, eating healthy and exercising every day. She imagines losing another four or five kilos…or seven…and meditating so she can live and work mindfully. She imagines that she’s with her friends, having a quiet dinner with her husband, spending time with her daughters Tara and Leela, with no plans. And she thinks about being active in the community. This imagined reality falls apart even before the kids jump into the car and she drives them to soccer practice. Oh no, she’s forgotten to pick up the dog from the groomer, and she still has to buy vegetables for dinner! When she puts the kids to bed, she’s worn out.

Well, which adult human being isn’t? Who doesn’t lie down to sleep with a strong determination to improve some aspect of their life, starting tomorrow? From the New Year? Who doesn’t float in such

Information

You’ve reached your free article’s limit this month. You can get unlimited access to all our articles and audio content with our digital subscription. If you have an active subscription, please log in.

Subscribe

Also read:

A Voice of Hope
Experiences

A Voice of Hope

The Life of Viktor Frankl
Agnieszka Drotkiewicz

He survived the Holocaust by being hopeful about the future, and graciously accepted all experiences and people that fate brought his way. Today, the Viennese psychiatrist Viktor Frankl is recognized – alongside Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler – as a key figure of psychotherapy.

In the postscript to his most famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl writes: “[…] each of the moments of which life consists is dying, and that moment will never recur. And yet is not this transitoriness a reminder that challenges us to make the best possible use of each moment of our lives? It certainly is, and hence my imperative: Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.”

Continue reading