Intent
In massage, everything is about intent. What you feel towards the person on your table will be perceived by them in some form or fashion. We all have that sixth sense, nothing really mysterious about the reception of feelings. And yes, I do believe that ultimately it affects the effectiveness of the massage. But today I was reading an article written after a study done by the University of Wisconsin-Madison to find out volunteers’ motives. It seems that due to competition and pressure -whether self-perceived or brought on by exterior sources, many college students who volunteer do it with the intent of adding it as padding on their resume or networking opportunities. The problem with this is while it inspires short time good will, over the long-term they find that this type of volunteer is not really effective partly because of the decline in volunteers who leave the moment they can put that volunteer “work” on their resume. Their intent had nothing to do with helping others.
*edit In my own personal non-profit experience I find these volunteers quite often and when they get to the volunteer site they rarely do much to help which really leaves us exactly where we were to begin with when we were without them. Bleh.
So how important is intent in volunteer work? In shoveling snow off your neighbor's walk? In anything we do?
*edit In my own personal non-profit experience I find these volunteers quite often and when they get to the volunteer site they rarely do much to help which really leaves us exactly where we were to begin with when we were without them. Bleh.
So how important is intent in volunteer work? In shoveling snow off your neighbor's walk? In anything we do?