You never do it well enough. No matter what you do, there's always someone who thinks something about it and who doesn't think it's good. For example, I know a story of a boy who asked his father, "Dad, how do you do it now, become happy?"
The father decided to show his child what you have to do to become happy. He went out with a donkey and had his little son sit on the donkey and so they took a walk through the village. The villagers thought a lot of this: "Oh, you can't do that to let the father walk. That child still has young legs and the father is old. This is really not right."
The next day they went for another walk with the donkey and this time the father sat on the donkey. Again people in the village responded, "Oh this is really not good. He makes that poor child walk with those short legs of his."
On the third day, they went out again and both sat on the donkey. That, too, caused reactions in the village: "Oh, how sad for that donkey. They are both much too heavy, aren't they?"
When they were at home, the father asked, "And do you have an answer to your question?"
"Yes dad, I have."
This story illustrates it very well. It just doesn't matter what you do, someone is going to care. Counterclockwise, clockwise, forward or backward, there is always someone who thinks something about it. The most important thing you have to learn for yourself in this life is to just do your own thing. What you think is best.
People respond regardless of
Of course, you can make mistakes and listen to other people to determine what is best.
But ultimately, you will make a decision about what you do. Like a decision about whether or not to stay in a relationship or whether or not to stay at your current job. Or whether or not to go on vacation.
Many decisions do get made for you in this day and age, like with that vacation question.
But you will still always make your own decisions rather than wait for someone else to make a decision and then go along with it.
That's good too, especially if this is your own decision.
But know that people like you no matter what you do.
A while ago, I had the best headline of an email ever. That one had the most impact and even made it to the Telegraph.
In retrospect, the headline may have been a bit heavy, but the article that accompanied it was good. People who had read it were happy with it, too.
Only the people who reacted violently, they reacted to the headline and read the rest of the article through the lens of that violent reaction of anger and frustration. I suddenly got all hate mail, Twitter exploded all of a sudden everything happened for one or two days.
Then it was gone again and people had found someone else to bitch at.
Then you may think you're not going to do it again or just more nuanced or calm. Then you're going to conform because you don't feel like all that hate. Then it can still happen.
So it doesn't matter what you do.
Your pure intention is good enough
If you think something is right and you do it with the right intention, it is right.
When you have an intention to spite someone, harm them or you have an ego intention of "look at me," you know that's not good or bad, but you know something can happen.
You know then that maybe you had put a little too much effort into it after all.
Frankly, I would have posted that headline as well to provoke, to provoke something.
Little did I know it would work so well. Then I shouldn't whine about it afterwards, either. The intention was to provoke and it worked, right? Then you have some kind of success.
Ideally, in my ideal life, I would set the right intention before I do anything. I'm just of the caliber of do and then think, rather than think and then do.
So often I do something and then afterwards I start thinking about how useful it was.
Of course, I think about it for a while, but not long enough to put the intention in and think about whether this is the right way.
For yourself, you must also consider whether what you are doing is pure. What is the underlying reason of why you are doing it? Then you also need to be honest with yourself.
Is it a motive to indeed provoke? That's fine if that is your pure intention.
Your pure intention offers insight
If you then try to talk it away a bit, it's not pure. So from: "No way, I did it because of blah blah blah."
It's also okay if you just did something to hurt rock hard. That's pure. You may not think so, but the intention is pure. It's not questionable then and you know it's really meant that way.
It's better to have a pure intention that isn't cool, because then you know what kind of meat you have in the tub. Then you do have someone who is honest about hating people or something like that.
You can think a lot of things about that, I do too, but this is pure.
But I think when you are pure about who you are and your intentions, it becomes very difficult to hold onto something that is not cool.
Dank is more likely to think, "Why would I do that (like hurt people), what does that even mean?"
You quickly get that feeling then, because not cool intentions are suddenly in the light. It actually holds up when it's in the dark or below the surface.
And it's very hard to be so honest or pure about yourself. You'd like to say you're not like that, but at the time you were. But being pure about it is more convenient. You don't have to share those true intentions further, but you have to know for yourself.
Because that will really make a difference.
Then the reaction doesn't hit you as hard either. Then it can still affect you what people think, but then you understand the reaction better.
My intention is that I want to inspire and sometimes I want to be funny and then I hope that succeeds. Sometimes I also want to share something that will be helpful and I hope that succeeds.
So be clear and pure for yourself about what is intended.
Sometimes you may care, but generally it doesn't matter what you do. Everyone thinks something of it. Just think about the donkey and the father with his baby and just do what you want to do.
Also listen to this podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/3750926-je-doet-het-nooit-goed?play=true
Setting an intention is good enough
So intentions offer insight and can help you do the right thing next. Setting an intention means knowing what your goal is and in what way you can achieve it. So this is slightly broader than setting a goal, and by knowing how to achieve your goal it can also improve your motivation[1].
If you want to do something, you are also more likely to do it when you set an intention. It's important then that you don't set an intention because you think your environment expects it of you. If it is a "controlled" intention, rather than your own intention, you are less likely to do what the intention indicates[2]. Then the intention is not pure, so to speak, even if for very different reasons than protecting your own ego.
Do you struggle with setting intentions or still feel that your intention is not good enough? Then hypnosis can help you figure out why you care about the opinions of others and what you can do to still do what you want to do for yourself.
During training at the Hypnosis Institute, you will get the tools and techniques to use this to help yourself or others. There are techniques that quickly help you solve smaller problems and when problems are deeper, you also have more extensive techniques to find the cause of the problem and solve it.
This kind of knowledge is ideal for yourself and to help other people with, especially if you feel it's never good enough.
Want to learn more about hypnosis? Then come to the free online master class on hypnosis.
Or enroll in one of our training courses.
[1] https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/AMR.1991.4279004
[2] https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2044-8287.1997.tb00548.x
