The Power of Intention Summary

In The Power of Intention, self-help author Wayne W. Dyer reframes intention not as willpower or goal-setting but as a universal, creative energy that individuals can learn to connect with and draw upon. Published in 2004, the book sits within Dyer’s later, more spiritually oriented phase, following earlier works such as Your Erroneous Zones, and draws heavily on his readings of transcendentalist and New Thought writers. Dyer organizes the material around what he calls the seven faces of intention: creativity, kindness, love, beauty, expansion, abundance, and receptivity. Each face is presented as a quality a person can embody rather than merely pursue, and the book argues that aligning with these qualities puts a person in harmony with intention itself. He contrasts this with what he terms an "ego-driven" orientation, which he associates with scarcity, competition, and separation. A central claim is that intention is not something a person possesses but something a person is connected to, comparable to the air or the sun. Drawing on this, Dyer offers practices such as morning contemplations, acts of kindness performed anonymously, and deliberately shifting attention away from judgments about others. He also discusses the distinction between intention and desire, arguing that desire implies lack while intention implies connection. Later sections address applying these ideas to relationships, work, health, and the experience of aging, often through anecdotes from his own life and from readers who wrote to him. Though empirically unverified, the book remains one of Dyer’s best-known titles and was adapted into a public television special.