Living intentionally is a concept that has been around for the better part of a century, but has really taken root in recent years. In his 1941 book, Training for the Life of the Spirit, Gerald Heard claimed, “Our whole life must become intentional and purposive, instead of a series of irrelevant events, adventures, and accidents, happy or unhappy.”
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What Does Intentional Living Look Like?
What is intentional living? In short, to live intentionally is to live with a purpose in mind and alter choices to meet that purpose. It sounds simple, but accomplishing this style of living can be a bit more complicated than it sounds. Why? Because we’re human. There are a number of concepts that we must fully grasp when we are living with intent. This starts with knowing your core values.
What Are My Core Values?
An individual’s core values are their own personal belief system and morals. What makes you happiest? Is there something that you feel strongly about? Defining your core values requires looking deep within yourself. It means you have to get to know yourself and know what’s important to you.
Personally, my core values lie with God, my family/ close personal relationships, kindness and equality, and serving others. Core values differ for everyone, but listing your own can help you to grasp what purpose you need to be chasing.
What Questions Should I Ask Myself?
There are numerous questions that you should ask yourself in order to identify what’s important to you. Doing so can reveal your reasons for current actions.
| What do I get from my current relationships? Why do I spend my free time the way I do? What goals do I have for the long-term? How do I take care of myself? What do I enjoy about my work? |
The answers to the above questions can help you to determine what’s important to you. If you feel that you get nothing of value from your friendships, ask yourself what you want to get from those relationships. How can you be more intentional about drawing out those things from friends and family? Or is it possible that you need different people in your life?
If God is one of your most valued parts of life, yet you spend none of your free time reading your Bible or in prayer, how can you be more intentional about Him? Examine your habits and daily life and see where you might want to make changes. Most people live lives where they go through the motions or have no real intent behind their day to day actions. Do you?
What is My Motivation for Living Intentionally?
Why do you want to live more intentionally? Are you sick of feeling like you’re moving in circles or making no progress in life? Have you realized that you need to live more for Him and less for your daily desires? Whatever your motivation is for wanting to make a change, know it. Write it down. It will help to remind you why you are taking this journey.
How Can I Be More Intentional About My Choices?
You may be wondering, what does it really mean to make intentional choices? How can I be more intentional about day to day choices that have little effect on the rest of my life? If you’re faced with the decision to eat stuffed french toast or egg whites, which would you choose? If you’re trying to be more intentional about living, you would look at your values and life goals.
The person that values health and fitness would likely choose egg whites. However, the person that values happiness by way of food would choose the stuffed french toast. One person’s intentional life doesn’t have to be the same as his/ her neighbor’s. Our intentional lives are defined by the things we want most out of life.
To determine how to be more intentional about choices, we must look at why we make the choices we make today. What motivates you now to make the decisions that you do?
Why Do I Have the Habits that I Do?
Are your habits just bad habits that you’ve picked up along the way? Or, are your habits ones that you’ve developed over time to create a better life for yourself. The latter is the individual that’s living intentionally. The former, however, is living a life without much intent behind their choices.
Look at the habits that you’ve developed. Why did you choose your particular breakfast item this morning? Did you exercise this morning or sit on the couch drinking coffee? Do you shower in the morning or at night? When do you spend time in the Word? Do you smoke or drink for any particular reason?
Of course, there is no wrong answer to these questions if your answer reveals your intent. Maybe you chose a granola bar this morning so that you’d have time for morning run. This indicates that you value fitness. Perhaps you drank your coffee in your few minutes of leisure time as you lounged on the couch today because it is one of the few moments of self-care that you can get. Maybe you use your lunch break for your daily devotional time because you don’t have a moment of quiet otherwise.
No matter what habits you’ve developed, you must examine why you’ve developed them. Then, it’s important that someone wanting to live intentionally makes changes to those habits to reveal their true core values.
Do My Choices Make Me Happy?
Do you find happiness in day to day life? If you’re looking at your daily choices and frowning, it may be time to re-evaluate. On the other hand, if you truly enjoy the choices you’ve made throughout the day, maybe you should evaluate why they make you happy. You can then expand your happiness into other areas of your life.
An intentional life should be a happy one. There is no reason to live intentionally miserable. So, evaluate yourself and your decisions and see where you can make changes to bring happiness into your life.
How Do I Know I’m Making the Right Decisions?
You’ll know that your decisions are heading in the right direction if they align with your purpose or life’s intent. There is no ‘one size fits all’ answer to this question. I cannot tell you, a stranger, if you are making the right choices for your intentional life. I can tell you that it is okay to stumble – but you must remember why you want to make the right decisions for you to begin with.
You Don’t Have to Know Your Life Plan
It would be nice to have a nice, laid out plan for our lives. I know a lot of my decisions would be a lot easier if I was given a roadmap. But, we aren’t given that. We are left to make the decisions that we do of our own volition. Even if we did have it all figured out, who’s to say that our plan was God’s plan? He has a whole plan for us that we cannot see. Does this mean than an intentional life is useless? No!
We’re given free will – free will to make our own choices and free will to follow him. Most Christians understand that making a plan for ourselves is smart, but it doesn’t always happen that way. When God changes our path, we have to roll with the changes and re-evaluate. We have to listen to what he wants out of our lives and not focus on our own desires. There is comfort in knowing that we can’t plan out our lives completely.
That means we don’t have to know it all. We just have to take aim at our values and charge in.
Recognize Responsibility
We are given the responsibility to make choices. Although many choices seem inconsequential, it is still a responsibility. See it for what it is and ensure that you are taking the right steps to meet your purpose. We are called to use these earthly bodies for His purpose, but He has given our lives a purpose, too. It’s our responsibility.
“We are called to use these earthly bodies for His purpose, but He has given our lives a purpose, too.”
How Can I Hold Myself Accountable?
Habits are habits for a reason. In fact, studies have shown that habits represent approximately 40% of our actions in a day. That means 40% of your day is done with little thought. How do you hold yourself accountable for the actions that you take when you’re not thinking about it? You start by setting goals.
Set Goals for Intentional Living
Goals are one of my favorite things in life. I know that’s nerdy, but hey, it’s who I am. Goals motivate me – and they should motivate you, too! How should you set attainable goals for an intentional way of living? Goals require a timeline and a plan. If you set a goal with no real idea of how to achieve it or when you want to achieve it by, is it really a goal or is it a dream?
So, to set goals, focus on the when and the how. It can also be motivating to remember the why as well.
| Goals must explain: – When you want to accomplish it – How you plan to accomplish it – Why you want to accomplish it |
Be Prepared to Grow
A person striving for an intentional life must be ready to change. Change can be hard, but it can also be good. If you are not prepared to grow via thoughts and actions, you may want to work on your growth mindset. The ability to grow is ingrained in all of us, but many fear the changes that come with that growth. If you are striving for an intentional life, growth is imperative.
What are the First Steps to Living Intentionally?
To live intentionally is to be mindful of your thoughts and actions. The first step is to evaluate your life and what’s important to you. Are you headed in the direction that you want to go based on those important things? If not, you must stop. Think. And then take action.
Only then can you truly begin to intentionally live your life.
Sharing Intent
In the coming months, a recurring theme will be on being intentional. Being pregnant with my third child has left me extremely exhausted. You might wonder what that has to do with being intentional. In truth, spending lazy days on the couch (despite my good reason) made me realize that so many days go by without any intentional action.
“…so many days go by without any intentional action.”
Have you ever lived like this? You go to work because you have to – it’s expected. You go through the motions and at the end of the day you aren’t even sure what you accomplished. I’ve done this. It’s especially true for me in recent months.
What Does it Mean to Be Intentional For Me?
Throughout my first trimester, my days were mostly the same: wake up, let the dogs out, feed my toddlers, turn on a Disney soundtrack, lazily watch them dance around for a couple of hours while I sip on my decaf coffee and struggle to keep my eyes open. My sister (check her out over at Archer Homeschool Academy!) kindly informed me that having my kiddos dance around while I’m feeling too exhausted to take part in any activity is just like gym class! Maybe my kids didn’t notice, or maybe they just really love Disney soundtracks, but they never complained about my sudden lack of involvement in their activities.
Now that I’ve finally reached my second trimester and my energy is slowly coming back, I am making it a point to live intentionally. I don’t want to sit on the couch and watch life pass me by. I want to do something. Throughout this series, you can expect to learn about my experiences when I live more intentionally. What happens when prayer becomes more intentional? Or what if I intentionally workout every day? Will being intentional in teaching my toddlers result in any big changes?
My (Rough) Plan
The planned components of this series include:
- Intentional prayer
- Daily Bible study
- Homeschooling for Preschool
- Planned exercise
- Intentional exercise for my kids
- Reading books daily
- Self-care
- Planned sleep schedule
- Encouraging people toward Christ
- Eating better with intention
- Achieving WAHM goals
Intentional Action Brings Changes
Living life intentionally has to result in some kind of positive change, right? That’s my theory. Subscribe if you’d like to know what kinds of changes I see in my own life – and perhaps what changes might happen in yours if you do the same.
Do you have any ideas about living intentionally? Are you making progress towards an intentional life? If so, let me know in the comments!