Our positive intention reminds us of the life goals that dwelling on painful experience has shifted aside.
The biggest drawback to telling grievance stories is they keep us connected in a powerless way with people who have hurt us. When we mull over our past wounds and hurts, we remind ourselves of a part of our life that did not work. Reconnecting with our positive intention reminds us of our goals and enables us to move forward.
Positive intention can be defined as the strongest positive motivation we had for being in the grievance situation in the first place…. All grievances start with a situation that did not work out. We had an experience where either we did not get what we wanted or we got something we did not want. In either case, we wanted something for our well-being. Our positive intention is remembering what that something was and expressing it in the most beneficial terms we can find.
— Fred Luskin, Forgive for Good, p. 142
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, May 15, 2019