Focus Your Mind and Thoughts on Creating Something Believable and Achievable
By Carole Dean
I am a firm believer in meditation. I have been meditating for more than half my life and I love it. It allows me to relax and connect to my higher self. It’s helped me with solving problems in business and life. It lowers my stress benefiting my health and my brain power.
Intention is similar. But instead of focusing on your current situation, you are mainly focusing intently on what you want.
Focus Attention on Your Intention.
Intention requires a high degree of focus. It’s more like relaxation. It’s a calm hyperawareness that you can get into through practice. You want to turn the self off and feel like you’re in a state of total oneness. This is where the miracles happen. You want a quiet place where you can put your “attention on your intention.”
You can use intention as a group and intend things for your film. I’ve covered that my blog Unleashing the Power of the Film Crew. I highly recommend it as it is powerful. Rhonda Burns had weekly meetings with her film crew when she made The Secret. She used a weekly mastermind intention group with her crew and look how well she did. She is extremely wealthy from that single film. You can do the same thing.
For your personal intentions, remember to use of all your senses to focus. You want to feel GRATITUDE for your success. You want to feel the emotion of completion. You want to see yourself with the intention completed.
You are creating what Joe Dispenza, author of Becoming Supernatural: How Common People are Doing the Uncommon, would call “mind.” You are creating new pathways in the brain and something that is believable and achievable.
You can get back to that intention area of the brain quicker each time you want to intend. With practice, it becomes easier and easier. This has been researched. Lynn McTaggart, author of The Intention Experiment, talks about seeing studies of brain waves that show when people have certain thoughts this part of the brain gets larger.
Your Brain Works Like an Antenna.
Because the brain is essentially an antenna which is receiving and sending, thoughts are not locked inside the head. That ability to receive and transmit gets larger depending upon the thoughts we have. What you are doing is building a larger channel in your brain which is your intention channel. This is how you create your future.
Studies have shown that people who are focusing on a particular object or a particular vision create cortical fitness in the brain quickly. If what you are intending is something that you feel will bring benefit to the world, then you should do it with a feeling of gratitude for universal support to enable your success.
Then that gratitude energy will be reflected in the mind area where you’re creating this intention. You need to believe this focus of intending works because the more you believe it the faster it works.
A wonderful side effect of strong intentions is that your intuitive abilities also increase.
Your intuition is your most important asset in filmmaking. Many filmmakers, including Sidney Lumet, have stated that they always used their intuition. I recommend that you always consider your intuition over logic. Using my Intuition has proved to be 90% correct.
Focus Brings Results.
Focusing on your intention is important. To get to the place where you are focusing intently, you might try little activities. Perhaps in the morning, when you’re having your first cup of coffee, you intently focus just on the coffee. How does it taste? How do you feel? How does it smell? What emotion does it bring up? Is it joy or happiness or clarity?
You should see it, feel it, taste it, focus on all your senses. This gives you an idea of what intention is. It is total focus. Being in the moment with a visualization of your intention and no other thoughts.
Focus on swallowing your coffee and how it feels as it goes down your throat. How does it feel when it gets in your body? Tune into your senses and tune out any other thinking you have at that time. If a thought comes across your brain like, what you need to do today, forget about it. Simply go back to your five senses and focus on that.
Stay in the moment learn how to intently focus even on the smallest thing. It could be eating your breakfast croissant or your oatmeal. Just focus on this action and learn how to experience your 5 senses in a focused moment. This is the same place you take your intentions.
Mentally Rehearse Using Your Intentions to Achieve Your Future.
Another key essential in creating intentions is to rehearse each stage. Mental rehearsal is used by athletes. Muhammad Ali, taught us all about intentions. He began saying in his early days in the ring, “I am the greatest!” And that’s just what he became.
He also created rhymes to tell us his intentions. He did that about his fight with Archie Moore. He said, “Archie Moore must fall in four.” He knocked Archie Moore out in the 4th round. Ali was intending on a daily basis and he had us intending for him!
Athletes practice what they want to achieve in their head. They do this while eating breakfast, driving, exercising, etc. When you get to the level of an Olympic athlete, you know that a hundredth of a second is all you need. Olympians use their minds to intend their outcome. You can too.
The same neurons responsible for executing a movement are activated when we think about doing that movement. They have found that mental rehearsal works just as well as physical action in preparing the body for an event. It stimulates those same neural pathways that are used when you’re performing. The more you intend with great focus the easier it is for you to reach that pathway.
From your own perspective it’s as if you’re really doing it. To achieve this, you want to imagine yourself having and being what you are intending. You are rehearsing an intention you also want to imagine yourself succeeding. It’s important to approach your intentions with a positive outlook and block out all feelings or images of doubt. You want to engage all your senses especially the KINESTHETIC sense.
Use your Imagination.
You must be able to imagine in detail with all your senses. Now you are really using your power to intend. Begin with the image of yourself when you achieve your intention. Surely you will be in joy and thrilled with success. Once you learn this vision and can feel the emotions and be in that moment, then you can imagine scenes that will take to you to that final achievement.
You might use this intentional focus to intend an outcome of a meeting where you are pitching your project. See yourself pitching your film perfectly and your potential donor is nodding and smiling and see yourself getting a fat check. How much? You can intend whatever you want, $10,000 or $20,000. The purpose is to intend yourself successful in making an ask. You can intend your funding.
You can also intend yourself to receive a grant. Keep focusing on the fact that you are notified that you have been chosen as a finalist and then intend that you have won the grant.
Now, to achieve winning the grant, you write a superb proposal, or you hire someone to write a superb proposal. You still have the work to do but it the intention on the outcome is your focus. You are using intention to bring your vision to life.
Be Very Clear on What You Want.
I keep my intention to one sentence and that works for me. I have it on my Mirror and I have it on my computer and I look at it daily. I’m intending my vision and I feel the completion.
When I’m focusing on that one simple intention, I am sending my request to the universe. I am being very clear about what I want. I am following what Stuart Wilde, author of Infinite Self, said, I am ordering a dress size 10 in red, and I want it delivered by and I give day, month, and year because the universe is time sensitive.
If you’re intending to raise $20,000 and you intend for over $20,000, give the universe the chance to send you even more money. Be sure to set a day, a month, and a year for the completion of the intention. And it must be reasonable, you have to know you can do it.
The biggest problem people have with intentions is they are not specific. The universe is like an online shopping service. You need to be very clear and concise with what you want. Start this intention with one thing, something you want the most. Once you achieve the first thing, it will be much easier to do the second and the third.
Remember You are the Magic!
You ARE the creator you were put here with all this talent for writing directing, producing, editing, it’s amazing the talent you have. Really, in all honesty, why wouldn’t the universe fund you? They gave you all this talent so of course you can get funded.
Creating and manifesting your intention is a great way for you to achieve.
Carole Dean is president and founder of From the Heart Productions; a 501(c)3 non-
profit that offers the Roy W. Dean Film Grants and fiscal sponsorship for independent filmmakers. She hosts the weekly podcast, The Art of Film Funding, interviewing those involved in all aspects of indie film production. She is also the author of The Art of Film Funding, 2nd Edition: Alternative Financing Concepts. See IMDB for producing credits
