Are Good Intentions the Road to Hell?

No doubt you’ve heard the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This is usually explained as being about the difference between what someone intends and what they actually do. In other words people can sometimes have what they think are the best intentions, but if they don’t follow through so their efforts may lead them into a worse situation than before.

That may be what the guy meant when he said that a few hundred years ago, but that is not what the words say. Good intentions are the cornerstone of successful relationships and positive outcomes.  Good intentions are the driving force behind strong communities and fulfilling friendships.

Sustained Good Intentions
Yield Good Outcomes

In the realm of subtle energies intentions are the driving force of creation and attraction. Often the outcomes are not immediate, but if the intention is held over time they will produce the results intended.

The key comes down to the words “good intentions.” At its core, good intentions stem from a place of goodwill, kindness, and understanding and they project images of a positive outcome.

Good intentions mean taking positive action in response to situations that align with high moral and ethical values followed up with positive actions while maintaining integrity.

Good intentions must stem from your deepest inner beliefs and desires without undermining negative programming. Maybe you haven’t realized it before but you had thoughts and intentions about everything in your life and it is likely you had thoughts and intentions about most of the things in your life before they came into your life.

For instance, you had thoughts about where you live such as whether to buy or rent, what part of town to live in, how much to spend, what kind of person you’d like to have a relationship with, etc. These thoughts and good intentions are what move your life in the directions you find yourself heading. All choices and decisions stem from intentions.

Good Intentions without Negative Counter Programs
Are the Key to Success

The programming most people have which shapes their intentions is a combination of positive, supportive, and loving ideals along with limiting, self-doubting, and negative points of view. In some cases a small amount of negativity or doubt can undermine a mountain of positive hopes and dreams. That is why sometimes the best of  good intentions don’t manifest a positive outcome, but that is not because there was something wrong with the good intentions, but rather the good intentions were undermined with unconscious beliefs and programs that sabotaged a positive outcome.

Most of what motivates you are your beliefs and programs that operate at an unconscious level…and you are most likely unaware of most of them. Some of the negative programming come from your conclusions about what you have witnessed or experienced over the years, but also many sources of the programming is from what others have projected on you over the years.

Thankfully, you can override most of the negative programming. So it doesn’t matter what you have believed in the past or how traumatic the circumstances may have been. You can regain positive control of your life.

Life Gives You What You Expect,
Not Necessarily What You Want.

This is why there are so many people living lives that are not happy. Your subconscious mind tends to fixate on whatever negative beliefs and opinions you have, and it works to bring about the manifestation of whatever it is fixated on whether it is positive or negative. This is the force that undermines your best good intentions.

Your subconscious mind naturally orients your life to attract and create what you don’t want if that is what you have put the most energy into and what you feel the strongest about. You probably have a strong aversion or fear of certain circumstances and these feelings are what serve to energize the subconscious mind to create or attract it. This is because your subconscious mind fixates its attention on what you feel the strongest about and fear is one of the strongest of all emotions. The good news is that you can make this trait of the subconscious mind work for you by energizing your thoughts about what you do want.

From the time you were a child you have been absorbing input from the people around you and forming conclusions about what is true and what isn’t. You took on or rejected the opinions of others. You  analyzed outcomes and judged and stored all of these outlooks which then become the operating systems you have been basing your life on. This forms your inner thoughts, opinions, and beliefs.

Most of the time this happens without you paying much attention to the process, but none-the-less it goes on almost non-stop. Sometimes it comes in twinges in your gut, or a weight on your shoulders, or tightness in your neck or chest, and at other times it can be a forceful opinion or emotional reaction. Is the road to hell paved with good intentions?

Every time you hear or see something happening you automatically form an opinion about it and store it in your memories. Similar memories tend to cluster together as you formulate your ideas and pictures of how you see life. Over time you have a pretty big storehouse of self-concepts and projections of how you think the world operates, and you tend to attract more and more similar ideas that agree with your own. You are then convinced what you think is truth. The longer you have believed something to be true, the more true it seems to be, but many of those beliefs are simply opinions no matter how strongly you believe in them.

The vast storehouse of everything that’s ever happened in your life, everything you’ve ever felt – failures and successes, happiness and unhappiness – as well as every idea and conclusion about yourself you’ve grown up with – has influenced the formation of how you see yourself and what is stored in your subconscious mind. You have essentially brain-washed yourself into your beliefs that you tenaciously cling to, but that is not a guarantee they are absolute truth. Many martyrs have died for their beliefs that from the perspective of others were mythological.

If you heard or thought some negative things about yourself when you were young some of those beliefs may have become what you believe to be true. You then look for facts to validate your truth or other people who agree with you which reinforces the belief sand embed them more strongly in your subconscious. Normally your conscious mind monitors what is going into your subconscious, and it may edit or add commentary to the input.

For example, suppose you hear the statement, “You are so smart.” Your conscious mind may respond by saying, “Are you kidding me?  Me…smart? I don’t think so. I didn’t get straight A’s in school.”

So with responses like this your subconscious rejects the new positive input that you are smart. If you own some negative ideas about yourself your subconscious mind directs your life to conform you to the negative person you believe yourself to be. Here are a few more examples:

• There is something wrong with me.
• No matter what I try, it doesn’t work.
• I seem to have bad luck.
• I’m not talented.
• I’m just like my father/mother.
• What next?
• I’m shy around people.
• When it comes to my eating habits I can’t help myself.
• I never get a break.
• I’m over my head.
• If only I were taller, smarter, had more money, etc.
• “What’s the use in trying?”
• “If I get it, I’ll just loose it.”
• “Life is so unfair.”
• “Life is such a struggle.”
• “I’m not good enough.”
• “If something can go wrong, it surely will.”

Fortunately, you can reprogram the beliefs running in your subconscious mind by utilizing some of the same techniques that put the programs there in the first place.

Repetition is one of the best ways to reach the subconscious mind. It is important to develop a positive relationship with yourself and this includes respecting yourself and being positively oriented toward life. You can utilize affirmations like the ones below to solidify a positive attitude toward yourself.

• I feel good about myself.
• I respect and value myself.
• I appreciate and love my body.
• Every day I am becoming more positive, healthy, and successful.

At first repeating those statements may elicit a questioning or negative response from your mind discounting the validity of the statements. Practice repeating statements like these several times every day can erase the negative thoughts and  replace them with positive beliefs. You can also record them andlisten to them while you exercise or get ready in the morning.

This is a way you can make sure that your good intentions produce good and positive results. There is more on this in my free e-book Power of Your Mind.

This approach has been foundational to all of my programs and teachings for over 50 years. If you haven’t yet taken advantage of my Quick Self-Clearing program or Discover Your Core Issues you are probably either sabotaging your many positive and good intensions or feel like you are stuck and not progressing in the ways you hoped for.

Start now to reboot your life with positive subconscious forces to insure all of your good intentions manifest positive results.