Intention is the steering wheel of your universe; the slightest turn of the wheel can set you on a completely different course with dramatically altered outcomes. Intention is not just motivating your actions – it’s hardwired into your DNA and soul. Jesse van der Velde shares how intention paved the way for his path as an entrepreneur and guides you in exploring:

• When you set a goal, do you feel pure joy?
• Why are you truly looking to achieve that goal? 

Click here to listen to the episode on Spotify.

Intention

Intention is the steering wheel of your universe; the slightest turn of the wheel can set you on a completely different course with dramatically altered outcomes. Intention is not just motivating your actions – it’s hardwired into your DNA and soul. We also exercise intention in our daily actions. My own path as an entrepreneur has been driven by the power of intention and the laws of attraction. Today I’d like to explore this with you, as well as how intention is at the steering wheel of your life.

A New Professional Chapter

In 2011, I met a girl named Shazzie raw food author and chef who started the company, Detox Your World in the UK. I met her at Business Mastery (one of Tony Robbins’ events). At the time, I had been in the process of buying an e-commerce business called Superfood.nl, which was originally called RawFoodSuperFood.com. 

RawFoodSuperFood was a startup founded by raw food superfood pioneers in Amsterdam. Its founders weren’t interested in bringing the business to the next stage, so they asked me if I wanted to take over the business. It was so aligned with my mission of helping people with their health and with my mission to “make the medicine the medicine again,” and so I had taken the leap of faith and agreed to take on the challenge.

When I met Shazzie, I had been in the process of taking on this new business. As we chatted, I got the sense that she was feeling distant from her own business, Detox Your World. I asked her, “Do you want to sell your business?”

And to my surprise, she responded: “Actually, we’ve already put up our business for silent sale.”

And this is how a very important chapter of my life began. 

The Law of Attraction

Detox Your World was bigger than my business was at the time and no bank was going to lend me the money I needed to buy and expand. Even so, I believed in the endeavor and knew that, through the law of attraction, owning this business would become my reality.

So, I set a clear goal of buying Detox Your World, knowing that I would also need an investor – someone to finance this business. Rather than actively seeking an investor, I decided to let go and trust the universe – to trust the Law of Attraction because, in the end, only the universe and God and the great spirit can guide what comes in our life.

We are simple passengers on this spaceship/space rock called “Earth.” We don’t have much control here on Earth – we are at the planet’s mercy. Our Mother Earth is more powerful than we are and that means we can only live in harmony with her – we can only respect Her and her true creation.

We did not invent Planet Earth, we are simple passengers. And in order to invite the Law of Attraction into your life, you have to be willing to let go, surrender, and trust in the Great Spirit.

“Great Spirit, this is what I want; this is what I believe in; this is my intention. It is in your hands. Great Spirit, I know that ONLY you truly know. I am humbled by your wisdom; I am humbled by all of which that you bring. I know that only YOU truly know.”

Meeting my Business Mentor

Through the law of attraction and mutual friends, I came to meet the man who later became my business mentor. I said to him:

“I want to buy this business with the e-commerce site, Superfood.nl, which I’m already buying, and this business combined – it will be the biggest superfood businesses in the UK and the Netherlands – and this is only the beginning…”

That was my pitch.

He was kind of intrigued by the young, passionate, and energetic entrepreneur that I was. Eventually, he agreed to invest in my endeavor and guide me in this new part of my professional life.

In July 2012, my business mentor and I bought the business a week before my wife and I got married.

And ironically, the first thing that I did when we bought the company was fly away to South America for four weeks to spend time in the jungles and beaches of Costa Rica for our honeymoon. My mentor respected that and even visited the new business a few times in the UK in my absence.

This is how our whole journey together started.

Why I REALLY Needed a Mentor

A few years prior to meeting my business mentor, I had been saying out loud to many of my entrepreneur friends, “I want a business mentor. I want to have someone in my life who has built a 100 million-a-year business that I can learn from.” 

I knew that the fastest way of learning something is to be around someone who has already walked that path ahead of you – to have a mentor by your side. I envisioned a wise business mentor – a man with so much experience; so many business skills; so much wisdom.

I needed to have a strong person next to me and, as I shared with you in a previous episode, I was silently looking for a father figure. I wanted someone who could act as kind of a substitute Father – to teach me the things that I didn’t learn from my own father.

I wanted to learn:

• How to deal with money
• How to be strategic
• How to plan, stay consistent, focus, and believe in myself 

Also, something in me knew that what I truly needed was a sense of power – a sense of self-worth – a sense of strength.

But silently, the fact that I desperately wanted a business mentor implied something that I didn’t see: 

It implied that my current life situation wasn’t good enough.

It implied that it had to be more, that the business needed to be more, and that I myself needed to be more.

It implied that I wasn’t good enough because I wasn’t ready and hadn’t achieved my goals yet, therefore I wasn’t ready.

And this is why I needed a strong figure next to me: because silently, I believed that I wasn’t good enough.

And in this, I wasn’t living simple JOY.  I wasn’t living passion. I wasn’t living from the mindset of, “I’m going to be going on a beautiful journey. I’m going to be creating something beautiful that I love that comes from the deepest of my core and being – my soul’s calling; that I can wake up for every single day because it gives me so much joy.”

This wasn’t my intention. My intention was: “I need to build a 100 million-euro-a-year business.”

And because of this, I subconsciously attracted exactly the kind of business mentor I needed for that intention.

But little did I know that I had attracted a man who didn’t live from joy and passion, but who lived from CONTROL, who lived for WINNING and for doing anything he needed to do: be it games he needed to play or strategic moves he needed to make.

I got my business mentor – YES! The law of attraction worked. But in the process of attracting my mentor, I wasn’t looking within. I was a young man with big goals and big ambitions who didn’t understand the simple fact of finding presence, finding stillness, closing my eyes, and looking within to ask: 

• “What is it that I’m truly seeking in this big goal?”
• Why am I setting this goal in the first place?
• What is the emptiness that I’m trying to fulfill?

When You Have Negative Intention 

So he and I got on a path and found great success after I opened our e-commerce site to my mailing list of nearly 120,000 subscribers, as well as those who followed my YouTube channel. In fact, we doubled in revenue in the first months after I took over the business.

Because we were doing so well, my business mentor thought that we would also be able to double our revenue in the U.K. 

But when he said that, something inside of me said, “That is not going to happen.” 

I wanted it to happen. I saw the vision and I went for it – it was also my goal. 

But I knew deep down that it wasn’t going to happen.

Consciously, and also unconsciously, I was living with a new intention: even though we had bought the business in the U.K., my belief was that it was not going to go well and that it was going to be a struggle.

What I didn’t know back then was that at that exact moment I had a choice. One choice was to continue believing that the business would be a struggle. But as long as I continued living that belief, that was what I would be creating; that is what I would be sending out to the universe. No matter how hard I tried to pursue a goal, it would never happen because I silently didn’t even believe that it could happen in the first place.

What I didn’t realize then was that I had another choice – that of surrender. I had the choice to simply close my eyes, give it my breath, and ask myself: “Where is this feeling coming from? Why am I not believing that this is going to happen? Is this intuition?”

Intention is the Steering Wheel of the Universe

Intention, more than anything else, is the steering wheel of the universe. You are not creating through your actions – they come second. You are more creating through your intention.

Let me give you a simple example: if you are struggling financially, and someone a dear friend comes by and says, “I know that you’re struggling; let me help you out. I love you; I care about you; here’s an envelope of cash. I just want you to have this. I love you brother; I love you sister. You be well.”

Maybe you are touched by the gift. Maybe it brings you to tears and you guys hug and say I love you – it’s a beautiful moment and intention.

But what if three weeks later, this person comes by again and says, “I just bought a new house, I need some work done. We need to paint the walls; we got to do this, and this, and this…I need you by my house tomorrow morning.” 

And you’re like, “Well…I actually have work to do.” 

And then this person says, “Well, do you remember three weeks ago when I gave you that cash? …Now it’s time to return the favor.” 

Now – how do you feel about this same money?

It’s the same action and the same envelope of cash, but suddenly you understand that the intention was completely different. The intention wasn’t because he or she wanted you to have it. Your friend actually had a different intention behind their actions.

Suddenly everything changes: the action is the same but the intention is different.

We Manifest What Lives Within our DNA

Everything in our universe is created through intention. If a man and a woman have sex, maybe it is with an intention of having pleasure. However, in our DNA, it is an intention of replication.

It is not just the act of a man sharing his sperm with a woman that creates new life – it is also the intention.

We know of couples that have tried everything to become pregnant – they’ve done everything they could do – but still, they aren’t pregnant. And at some point, the couple even stops trying and simply lets go. And just like that – three weeks later, the woman is pregnant.

Having the intention to surrender and believe, this changes the outcome massively and influences our genetics.

I once learned from a gynecologist that, for a woman to get pregnant, 50 genes either need to be activated or deactivated.

And maybe, through surrender and belief, we influence the activation of our own genes?

What we live inside of us will always become our reality. For this reason, we go through the process of healing. And when we heal, we let go of our identities and stories, our beliefs, our fears – everything we are holding on to – consciously or unconsciously in our energy field.

Our Energy Fields

If we look at the body, we see a body of flesh and blood – that is the hardware. But we also have a soul that travels beyond this lifetime. We have an energy field around our body that is influenced by our soul, emotions, and our experiences in this life. 

You can see this energy field as a kind of code – you can see it as a source of information influencing our emotions and DNA.

Memories aren’t just stored in our brain – we can have memories from past lifetimes that we aren’t aware of because they are stored in our energy field. 

Through my own process of healing, and through others and their healing journeys, I have come across so many examples of things that we have been creating in this life – sometimes the things we don’t want – because it is a piece of information in our energy field from a previous lifetime.

You are a physical body. You are a soul. You are an energy field.

Your energy field holds onto memories and emotions and you get re-informed through this.

How do you Relate to Your Own Goals?

If you come across certain emotions or beliefs, you connect with them in some way.

Beliefs and emotions will come up when you set a goal and intention. The most important thing for you to observe is: when you set a goal, how do you feel when you set that goal? Do you feel pure joy and purity? Or do you start with a certain struggle, stress, and doubt?

I’m not saying that you should delay going for this goal until you’ve solved everything – I’m saying that you should connect with it; observe it; and then also take action.

When you connect with your goals, also connect with how you relate to your goals. How you relate to what it is that you want to achieve. Because you aren’t just creating your goals; you are creating from the intention with which you have set that goal. YOU are creating the energy that is behind the goal, and that energy should be one of JOY. It should be one of PASSION. It should be one of EXCITEMENT. 

Finding the Intention of Joy

When we observe successful people – we can see that many have become successful through stress and by trying to keep control. This energy is also there and it can get you to a certain point.

However, true greatness comes not just from the desire to “win,” but also the JOY to win – seeing the pursuit of your goals as a game to constantly be playing.

You can only “win” from that joy – from the love of the game – that is the highest form.

The only thing you cannot do is your passion:

• It doesn’t matter if you don’t start that new business.
• It doesn’t matter if you don’t do what you are capable of.
• It doesn’t matter if you don’t take full advantage of an opportunity in the market

Because in the end, those things don’t matter when you are about to die. They just don’t matter. 

The only thing that matters is whether you did your PASSION – whether you did the thing that gives you most JOY.

And in this way, you can then ask yourself when setting goals:

• Is the goal the right goal? 
• Is this goal truly what I want?

If it’s not giving you any excitement, then why are you doing it in the first place?

What’s YOUR Intention?

Think of something that gives you pure joy (and if you can’t think of something, that says enough!). Understand how that makes you feel – what does pure joy feel like?

And now, identify a goal you are currently looking to achieve. Investigate yourself and your feelings, asking yourself:

• Why am I truly looking to achieve that goal? 
• What are my associations with it? 
• What feelings are coming up?

Search within by giving it space – inhale and open up. With every breath you surrender and become more humble, allowing your body to speak. Allowing your soul to speak.

Does the goal give you the same sense of joy that you feel when experiencing true joy?

The purpose here is to experience joy and test your goals against that joy: your goals should also be giving you that joy.

Don’t think from your head down – feel from your heart up. Feel, inhale, and investigate what’s within.

Get to know your intention because, after all, intention is the steering wheel of the universe.