HIGHER INTENTIONS

The aim of the game “Higher Intentions” is to help the participants recognize that,

in any given situation, the results of their actions depend on their intentions. The

game helps them recognize the relationship between useful and useless intentions

and the effect of such intentions on their real life performance. 

The essence of intentions is that the results of a person’s decisions and actions in a

certain situation are exactly proportional to his or her main intentions in a given situation.

In any situation, a person goes through 4 stages – the initial situation, feelings resulting

from the situation, a decision in reaction to these feelings, and behavior or actions. 

Each behavior or action creates a new situation, the situation results in new feelings and

based on these feelings, a person makes a new decision, the decision then is followed by

a new specific behavior, which, in turn, again creates a new situation, and so on and so forth. 

If there is no intentional intervention in these stages, the direction of the decision made,

only intensifies, for example, pain following a certain situation creates a decision to cause

pain to another, hence, the decision leads to a respective behavior, the behavior worsens

the situation, which again creates new pain. This becomes an outward spiraling, vicious

circle until intentions are consciously changed.

This cycle can only be stopped at the decision or feeling stages. Often, it is not effective

at the decision level, because the internal state of intentions unconsciously causes one to

act opposite to what his or her decision might otherwise be.

The game “Higher Intentions” helps participants recognize others’ intentions and learn to use

different levels of intentions in cooperation with other people. The game shows how useless

lower level intentions are in dealing with constructive tasks and that higher level intentions

make it easier to find solutions. 

Furthermore, the players learn about the practical impact of intentions on life and are presented

with the benefits of acting with higher (more useful) intentions.