Intentional Living, What’s it all about?
You may be aware of the term ‘intentional living’ or ‘living with intention’ and perhaps wondered or even know what it means.
I wasn’t entirely sure and to be honest, if something keeps coming into my conscious awareness, I believe I need to know more about it. Then I saw an article about intentional living which intrigued me, so I decided to investigate further.
Read on if you’re curious.
Living with intention is all about getting off auto-pilot and going through the ‘motions’, and about defining what you do by making smarter choices and thinking about how you can improve your life by taking intentional or deliberate actions about stuff.
It’s not about having your life all sussed out. I mean, no one has that. It’s about asking yourself why you do the things that you do. It’s about having purpose behind your actions, rather than doing things through habit, those things that you do without thought or even realising you’re doing them, especially those things which don’t serve you.
Consciously paying attention to your choices and how they make you feel
is the first step to becoming aware of whether you are, or are not living with intention and if they make you feel icky, that’s a warning your not.
So, for example, towards the end of my day, when I’ve finished working and had my evening meal, I want some relaxing me time. Without fail, I sit down and turn on the tv for an hour or two and, most of the time, watch mindless rubbish. And, whilst I’m doing that, there’s an inner voice screaming ‘what the hell are you doing, this is absolutely crap!’.
It’s not serving me, all it’s doing is making me feel irritated and annoyed with myself that I’m wasting precious time watching rubbish, even though a small part of me, thinks it’s relaxing.
Well, no more Last week I set the intention that if there is nothing to watch which teaches, enlightens me, or gives me a really good belly laugh, then I will choose to do something else that will.
It may seem like a small thing, but since practicing this new intention I already feel happier that I’m doing something more positive for myself. And even though it may only be an hour or two per day, if I say conservatively 1.5 hours per day (I know it’s more) over a 12 month period, I am wasting 16 days, yes 16 days of my life watching crap! 1.5 hours x 5 days, x 52 weeks in a year divided by 24 hours in a day. That is just ridiculous!
What a massive wake-up call it has been for me.
So much so, I’m now looking at other areas of my life where I can makes decisions and choices to live more intentionally.
If you are making decisions and choices which you don’t feel that good about, think about what you can do to change that. We should be making decisions every day that help us to live our happiest and best life.
There’s no right way to live with intention. The process is as individual as you are, but next week I’ll be sharing some ideas of strategies you can put into to place to help with the process.
If you’d like more information, grab a cuppa and hop on a no-obligation call to find out how I can help and, more importantly, if I’m the right person for you and if you’d like to browse my free downloads and products click here
Love
Marie xox