... Is Setting Your Intentions.” — Judy Stakee
Or, put another way: A + (?) = X, whereby ‘A’ is where you are currently at (in your career, relationship/s, life, etc...) and X is your intended outcome! It’s where you intend to go, what you intend to accomplish/achieve. By setting your intention FIRST, you declare to yourself and to the Uninverse exactly what it is you want and what you are going to do to get it. you paint the target first, and then it’s a much simpler matter of finding the path, your (?), that will lead you to your desired outcome.
I realize that ‘simple’ is subjective, and that it’s much easier said than done in many if not most cases.
But, consider, how many of us live - or have lived - our lives like this: A + X = (?), where by ‘A’ is where we’re at (in our careers, relationship/s, life, etc...) and we’re dissatisfied. But, we don’t know exactly what we’re wanting, only that we need to make some changes in order for our quality of living to - hopefully - improve.
So, we fill it with ‘X’ - in this case, random stuff - in hopes that it will create for us a better standard of living, or more intimate relationships, or more...whatever it is that we feel like we’re lacking. The problem, of course, is that we don’t know IF those changes will indeed guide us to where or what we’re really wanting, because we haven’t set our intentions/target, so we don’t know exactly what ‘X’ will bring us, or where it will bring us to in our lives.
It’s a hope at best.
This is a HUGE concept to wrap our heads around that has lifelong implications if we take it seriously. But how does this affect us in the more immediate and smaller areas of our day to day living? How is this relatable to music and being a musician or artist?
Let’s take our practice time with our preferred instruments as an example. For some of us this will be our voices, or guitar, or keyboards, or drums (or triangle or cowbell...). But, the next time you schedule practice time, try this. Pick one thing, and one thing only, to focus or rehearse. For example, if you feel like your vocals lack (breath) support, and you discover that you are actually (unintentionally) singing in a tone that is imbalanced toward a too-breathy tone, set the intention for the next couple of passes through those trouble areas of whatever song you’re working on that the ONLY thing that matters is that you sing those passages in a more balanced, less-breathy quality.
Pitch, intonation, style, delivery...? Forget about those things for the moment when singing with the intention of a less breathy, more supported vocal tone. Once you have achieved THAT, and can replicate that with consistently, then you expand your intentions to include one more thing. And, once you’ve achieved THAT, expand again... Wash, rinse, and repeat until you are consistently hitting ALL of the intentions you set with your practice time.
We start simple with a narrow focus. We hit that goal. Then, we expand our intentions and raise our expectations. And, then we hit those goals. And so on and so on...
Before we know it, often in a much more condensed time line, we are constantly creating magic in our lives on a daily basis.