There is a significant difference between trying to change and intending to change.
In therapy, we often hear the language of trying: “I’m trying to be less reactive. I’m trying to set boundaries. I’m trying to stop repeating the same patterns. I’m trying to take better care of myself.”
Trying sounds positive, but it can also leave us with one foot in and one foot out. We hope something will change, while continuing to live largely as we did before.
Intent is different
Intent means making a conscious decision about where you want to go and then repeatedly putting your attention and energy behind that decision.
Change rarely happens because of one dramatic breakthrough. More often, it happens in small moments: noticing an old reaction before acting on it; tolerating discomfort instead of escaping it; saying no when you would normally say yes; catching the familiar story running through your mind and choosing not to automatically believe it.
This is where mindfulness becomes essential
You cannot intentionally change what you do not notice. Mindfulness creates the space between an automatic pattern and your response to it. In that space, you have a choice.
But awareness by itself is not enough. Intent gives awareness direction
If you intend to become more assertive, for example, you begin noticing the moments when you make yourself smaller. If you intend to become less reactive, you pay attention to the sensations and thoughts that appear just before the reaction. If you intend to build self-respect, you start noticing the everyday decisions in which you abandon your own needs.
Then you practise doing something different
And practise matters, because intention is not the same as perfection. You will forget. You will fall into old patterns. You will sometimes realise what happened only afterwards. The task is not to condemn yourself for getting it wrong, but to notice, reconnect with your intention, and practise again.
This is how change gathers momentum
Where attention goes, energy follows. And what we repeatedly give our energy to becomes stronger.
So perhaps the question in therapy is not simply, “What am I trying to change?”
A more powerful question is:
“What do I intend to change – and what am I willing to do differently today in service of that intention?”
Trying expresses a hope. Intent creates a direction.
And when intention is joined by mindfulness, repeated action, and sustained energy, change has somewhere to begin.