We’re given an image of what it means to create a successful life, but we weren’t told that the image is consumerism-driven. The nice house, fancy car, and material possessions cost money, and more than likely, you’ll borrow money to acquire them. The borrowing will lead to interest that keeps you in debt and diminishes your opportunities to have more experiences. Social media compounds the problem as there are images of success all around us. We see others posting about the great things they’re experiencing. Those images don’t paint the complete picture, and what we’re exposed to daily can often be a false view of a successful life. You then try to live up to what you see on social media, and it takes you farther away from living an intentional life. Life is short, and time is the one resource we can never replenish no matter how badly we want to. Spending most of your life trying to reach the pinnacle of success through a consumerism-driven life is not intentional living. Chasing false images of success is not being intentional with the limited time you have. Living a life influenced by outside expectations will keep you from living intentionally. Freedom should be the goal. Having the ability to wake up each day and spend your time exactly how you want to spend it is freedom and a key to intentional living. Here’s what you need to understand about intentional living, why it’s important, and how to live an intentional life.
What Does Intentional Living Mean?
If we want to live intentionally, we first have to understand what it really means.
Intentional Living Is Waking Up Each Day With Clarity
You can’t live life intentionally if you’re unclear about what a good life means to you. You’ll never accomplish goals that help you become the best version of yourself if the way you spend your time is based on an unclear and confusing life path. A lot of the way we live is based on our past and what we were taught. You may have grown up being taught certain paths of life that don’t align with what you want for your life. Clarity about what makes sense for you is an essential part of intentional living. There comes a point in life when you need to take a moment to stop and think about the things that you want to accomplish and why those things are important to you. You may want to learn a new language, travel the world, start a business, get a raise at your job, have kids, or a hundred other things—clarity is vital. You’ll never accomplish your goals if you’re not clear about what those goals, desires, and dreams are.
Intentional Living Is a Commitment to Become the Best Version of Yourself
You’re going to have a lot of goals and ambitions in life, but the important one is to become the most optimized version of yourself. Your goal should be to become the strongest version of yourself in your mind, body, and spirit. You can achieve a life of intentional living when you have clarity about which areas of your life you’d like to optimize. You’ll need a lot of energy to accomplish your goals, and being intentional about becoming the best version of yourself will help you get there. Make a commitment to move more frequently, fuel your body with proper nutrition, and feed your mind and soul the content and inspiration that motivates you to push consistently towards your goals. Keep a circle of other growth-focused human beings that inspire you to take action.
Why Intentional Living Matters
Now, we understand intentional living better, but why does it matter?
Give You Power and Control of Your Life
Living a life based on someone else’s expectations is not intentional living. When you are not clear about what you want for your life, you’re giving away the power and control of it. Living intentionally helps you get clarity, spend your time on only the things that feel good to you, and creates the path to becoming your best self. Intentional living helps you create freedom in every sense of the word. It helps you learn to stop caring about what other people think and start caring about what you think. It’s time for you to be the one in control of your decisions and how you spend your time.
Help You Avoid the Regret of Living Someone Else’s Vision for Your Life
There are too many stories of people who come to the end of their lives regretting all the things they didn’t do. They lived a life where they accumulated material possession but did not have many experiences. Human beings can spend forty years of their life working a job that makes them miserable or a business they hate. It’s not uncommon for people to spend most of their life people-pleasing and living up to other people’s expectations. Too many people let other people drain them and don’t make themselves a priority (ever). You’ll never intentionally live life if you let other people run all over you and live a life of other people’s expectations. Don’t come to the end of your life regretting decisions that you could’ve done something about. Live life with a vision and purpose that feels good to you.
How to Live Intentionally
By now, I hope you see why living intentionally is important and what it means to do so. The next thing to consider is how exactly you can live intentionally.
1.Set Plenty of Healthy Boundaries
Setting boundaries is an essential part of living intentionally. It’s important to set boundaries with yourself and the outside world. You’ll have to say no more often. You’ll have to learn to stop giving in to things that don’t make you feel good. You’ll have to realize that how other people feel is their issue, not yours. Setting boundaries is a form of self-love that makes you stronger and leads to intentional living. Respect yourself by making others honor the boundaries you set. It will feel as if you’re being mean when you set boundaries, but you’re actually doing what’s best for everyone. Love yourself by standing up for yourself.
2. Do What You Actually Want to Do
You have bills to pay and, no doubt, responsibilities. The good news is that you can take care of your bills, build wealth, and still spend your time doing what you want to do. This doesn’t have to be an either-or situation—the goal is to figure out how to create a life that brings you intentional freedom. Intentional living happens when you have clarity on the goals, ambitions, and freedom-based lifestyle you’d like to create. You wake up each day with your schedule filled with things you want to be doing. If it doesn’t feel good to you, it shouldn’t be on your schedule. Stop believing the limiting belief that you have to live a life doing things you don’t enjoy just to live a few years in the end happily. Intentional living is when you commit to doing those things you enjoy now and find a path to create the balance between necessary tasks and things that feel in alignment.
3. Put in the Work Every Day and Commit to Consistency
The only way you’ll get to the point of living intentionally is through hard work and consistency. You want to spend your time doing the things you want to do, but all of those things will require daily work. The goal is to become the best version of yourself, and putting in the work is how you get there. Daily consistent actions create habits that compound into goals accomplished. Intentional living allows you to be clear about what that work is, the type of habits you’re going to develop, and how the work will give you the mental fortitude to be consistent. The only way you’ll accomplish your goal is if you move beyond words and into action. Respect yourself and the life you’re creating by consistently doing the work. Create a schedule that prioritizes what you need to accomplish before you start thinking about the outside world. The good news is that work feels less like work when you spend your time on the tasks that help you become a better you. Living intentionally creates a life in which you don’t always feel as if work is a punishment.
Final Thoughts
If you’re not living intentionally, now is a great time to start. The only way you’ll get to where you want to go is if you gain clarity and take action. It’s time to stop letting what everyone else has going on in their life influence yours. Live intentionally by waking up each day spending your time working on living your best life. Stop measuring success based on what material possessions you can accumulate in this life. Live life intentionally by valuing experiences and freedom over stuff. Create your freedom by spending your time doing the things that are important to you and make you feel good. Put yourself first and become the best version of yourself.
More About Intentional Living
9 Ways to Be Intentional Every Day to Change Your Life Surviving and Thriving Amid the Pandemic: Intentional Living
Featured photo credit: Allef Vinicius via unsplash.com
