What is Segment intending?
Segment intending can be explained with this short quote:
“The more you take the time to stop and set forth your intentions the more pre paving meaning the more aligning of energies into your future you do”
– Esther Hicks
It’s a concept which invites you to combine mindfulness and visualization in your day to help manifest specific outcomes.
The combination of mindfulness and visualization helps build the intention needed to achieve a task.
Segment intending requires you pause between segments of your day to remind yourself of who you are and where you are (mindfulness).
Next, you set the intention of how you would like to act in the next segment of the day (visualization).
For instance, let’s say you just finished your shower and are getting ready to go the gym.
The gym is your next segment for the day, so instead of haphazardly being pulled by the flow of events you use the opportunity to segment intend.
You contemplate how you would like your workout session to go.
You visualize how easy it will be for you to break your personal record on squats, and how enjoyable the whole process will be.
You affirm that you are a healthy person who is consistent with their routine.
Doing this small ritual will dramatically increase the chances of the things you imagined happening transpiring.
Segment intending Examples in History
The New Thought teacher Esther Hicks popularized the term ‘segment intending’, however the concept is not new.
It has been around for 1000s of years and utilized by people who gained mastery over their subconscious minds.
Segment intending is just a fancy way of saying ‘living with intention’, being at the cause and not the effect of life.
People who Segment Intend understand their actions have a strong influence over their circumstances.
Those who have become good at the manifestation game can often seem spooky to others who don’t understand the mechanisms of the subconscious mind.
They speak things into existence like magic.
Disclaimer – there is no magic involved with segment intending; everything makes rational sense as I will explain later in this article.
Marcus Aurelius’ Morning Routine
If you are a fan of Stoic philosophy, you undoubtedly know about the Philosopher King Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor who ruled almost 2000 years ago.
In his diary ‘Meditations’, he wrote about a mental reminder he would give himself upon waking up.
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”
Don’t mistake the start of the quote as Marcus stewing on negativity – he is being realistic.
As the emperor he would have dealt with a great deal of people many of which he wouldn’t have liked.
To segment intend a reality where everyone he met was amazing and got along with him perfectly would be foolish and misaligned with reality.
Many fans of the Law of Attraction falsely think that by thinking positively all negativity from their life will vanish – this is not true.
Law of Attraction must obey basic universal laws; in this world you will experience good and bad.
Your use of Law of Attraction affects only the ratio of what you experience.
Marcus Aurelius focused his intention on what was in his power (Dichotomy of Control).
It was in his power not to be hurt by the people he engaged with.
It was in his power not to hate the people and have more compassion.
It was in his power not to get angry during the day.
This is a perfect example of how one can use segment intending.
The Kybalion & Segment Intending
The Kybalion, a book written by the three initiates, supposedly summarizes ancient occult teachings from ancient Egypt and Greece.
These teachings were allegedly passed down from the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus. The book is said to be the master key for understanding universal secrets of how the world works.
Principle VI is Cause and Effect, which claims the concept of ‘chance’ is merely an illusion.
Chance is just a word to explain effects from causes which cannot be understood.
The weatherman must tell you that there will be a 90% chance of rain tomorrow instead of there will be rain tomorrow (because things are never certain).
Weather is perhaps one of the more extreme examples of a chaotic system.
A system where small changes in initial conditions can strongly affect results.
If you had a supercomputer powerful enough to compute every variable in existence, you could predict the weather.
There is order behind the madness and universal laws which govern all things.
Here is what the Kybalion says about cause and effect:
“The Hermetists understand the art and methods of rising above the ordinary plane of Cause and Effect, to a certain degree, and by mentally rising to a higher plane they become Causers instead of Effects. The masses of people are carried along, obedient to environment; the wills and desires of others stronger than themselves; heredity; suggestion; and other outward causes moving them about like pawns on the Chessboard of Life. But the Masters, rising to the plane above, dominate their moods, characters, qualities, and powers, as well as the environment surrounding them, and become Movers instead of pawns. They help to PLAY THE GAME OF LIFE, instead of being played and moved about by other wills and environment. They USE the Principle instead of being its tools. The Masters obey the Causation of the higher planes, but they help to RULE on their own plane. In this statement there is condensed a wealth of Hermetic knowledge–let him read who can”
The mental plane talked about is the realm of visualization, mindfulness and intention.
When you segment intend you are consciously choosing to be the cause which will often result in your desired effect.
It’s important to note that you must obey the causation of higher planes (things outside your control) much like Marcus Aurelius.
But recognize that in your own plane you have a large capacity for influencing the outcomes of your life.
Implementation Intention
An implementation intention is a productivity tool which in studies has been proven to help people achieve their goals.
A study by the British Journal of Health Psychology was done on 248 people to help build an exercise habit over the course of 2 weeks.
The groups were split into three groups.
Group 1 was the control who were left to their own devices and asked to track how often they exercise.
Group 2 was the motivation group.
This group would read motivational content on the benefits of exercise and track their workouts.
Group 3 was the implementation intention group.
They received the same treatment as group 2 but were asked to write down the day, time and place of their workout.
An implementation intention is simply a written statement or spoken purpose in the following format.
When this happens …, I will do this ….
When the clock hits 5PM on Wednesday, I will grab my packed gym bag and go do my chest workout.
When I get home from work on Monday at 6PM, I will take a cold shower for 2 minutes.
The Results
In the control group 38% of people followed through with their exercise. In the motivation group only 35% of people showed up to the gym.
The implementation intention group had 91% of people stick to their commitments (which was an incredible result).
What do implementation intentions have to do with segment intending you ask?
They are cousins.
Segment intending is simply doing mental implementation intentions for different segments of your day with a dash of visualization to reinforce what you want to happen.
In many ways, segment intending will likely be more powerful than having one-off implementation intentions because it teaches you to be conscious throughout the day.
Abraham Hicks Segment Intending Technique
“The point of the Segment Intending Process is to clearly direct your thought to those things that you want to experience by identifying the elements of life that are most important to you in this particular segment of your life.” – Abraham Hicks
When you wake up in the morning split your day into separate segments.
Perhaps you have your morning routine, commute, work, commute back home and leisure time with your family.
These are 5 segments, but you can break these down even further if you wish to 10 or even 20 smaller segments.
We will stick with these 5 for the ease of the example.
Before starting your morning routine, you would think about how you would like it to play out.
Perhaps yoga is involved and some meditation.
Visualize how this would be and set an intention for how you would like to show up to the morning routine. Perhaps your intention is for the routine to be ‘flowy and peaceful’. Once you have set the intention, move into the morning routine segment of your day.
Upon completing your routine, spend some time to set another intention for the next phase the commute to work.
Your intention might be to drive safely and not get stressed out on the road. Once you have gone through the intending segment, let go and move into the segment physically.
You would follow this pattern for all the segments of your day.
You can even add smaller sub-segments when needed.
Perhaps at work you need to do a presentation. Spend some time thinking about you intend to show up for this presentation.
You create the rules for your segments and can be as flexible as you want to be.
The key is to move into a segment mentally before you move into it physically.
Why Does Segment Intending Work?
Segment intending works because setting your intention towards a particular outcome allows you to prime your reticular activating system to focus on what’s important.
Your subconscious mind zones into the things which will aid you in achieving your goals.
You stop leaving things to chance like “The masses of people are carried along, obedient to environment; the wills and desires of others stronger than themselves” as the Kybalion warns.
Do this and you will be one step closer to living and dying well.