Five helpful steps on how to live intentionally
Have you ever felt deep in your soul that your daily grind and where you have arrived in life is not what you envisaged when you were young and full of promise?
Somehow you are in a position or place in life, and you can’t quite place a finger on how you got here.
To live intentionally means living with awareness. Making conscious choices about how you want to live your life. Intentional living means living in the present moment, making small daily decisions to move you closer to the priorities and goals you have set for yourself.
This article will help you to start intentional living, get you back on track and help you create a life more aligned with your values.
5 ways to move you towards living an intentional life:
5 ways to live an intentional life
The following may sound a little harsh, but are you stuck in a moment in life? Maybe stuck in a proverbial place or position. Perhaps you are unsure how you got to where you are, how you arrived. Unfortunately, there is no one else to blame, but yourself.
A few years ago, I found myself coming home from work every night and spending hours in front of the TV. Eating impressive amounts of food while I let series after series take away the pain of my unachieved ambitions. I would drag myself to bed far too late and wake up tired and irritable the next day.
I put on weight, my business suffered, and I even noticed a difference in my marriage. We had suffered a tragedy in the family, and I think I used TV and eating as a crutch.
I wasn’t sure how I ended up in this place. This was not how I wanted to live. It was almost as if I was living on autopilot.
Learning to live with intention
Five helpful steps on how to live intentionally
Among many influences, change slowly came to me. One of these influences was from a YouTube food channel where a guy called Mark Wiens travels the world, eating food from different cultures. I liked his positive, fun attitude and wondered how he managed to get a channel going where he genuinely seemed to love his life and work.
They did a behind-the-scenes section one week, and this was the exact question they asked him. His answer revolved around the fact that he practiced intentional living. Each day was planned and structured. That answer jumped out at me. It played in my mind over the next few months.
I needed to start to live more intentionally.
Step 1: Do you know the life you want?
how to live intentionally
This almost seems too simple to ask, but do you know what type of life you want? It’s a simple question, but the answer is not that easy. Most of us battle with the answer.
Step one in living with intention every day is to know our values and priorities. To have clarity and focus to understand what we want out of life. What are we trying to achieve? Knowing what you want to achieve is the first key to living an intentional life.
We must get clear on what is important to us and what will bring us joy, peace, and fulfillment in life.
Learning to live with intention
I have written an article on setting goals that may help you here. We have to be crystal clear about what type of life we want.
What will bring more value to your life? Also, it’s helpful to know what we can’t live without. Maybe that is time with loved ones or your health.
Spend time writing down what you want out of life and what you don’t want.
Most of us don’t end up with the life we want because we haven’t even written down what that life looks like.
A ship’s captain doesn’t leave the harbor without a destination. The pilot of a plane doesn’t take off until they know how much fuel to carry to reach their destination.
We need to plan what we want from the next few years of our lives.
Let’s get clear on what we want. The more clear you are on what you want, the more likely you will be to live intentionally.
Once you know what you want, you can become intentional with your time. Then you can begin this process to help you create a life that excites you, a purposeful life,
Step 2: What daily actions are you taking to be intentional in life?
how to live intentionally in 2024
When you feel you need to get back on track, the task seems daunting. We almost don’t want to start because there seems to be so much to overcome and conquer.
Where do we even start? Writing down what you want out of life is a good start. At least then we have a desired location or even a path we can follow.
We are much more able to overcome obstacles when we have a vision of our lives that we can see clearly. The intentional living journey starts with knowing where we want to go. The next step after knowing what we want from life is figuring out how to get there.
Part of living is sacrificing, or living a life where we give up certain things now, for things in the future. Things that truly matter are worth sacrificing for. A good student works really hard and makes many sacrifices for three or four years, to get a degree. They know that both the achievement of getting the degree and the rewards a degree may offer them for the rest of their lives are worth the hard work.
how to live intentionally in 2024
Living intentionally starts with the small daily disciplines you add to your day.
The time you spend both looking for ways to be more useful and then taking action will eventually lead to the life you want.
Living with intention means living on purpose. What action or small discipline can you take today to move your life to where you want it to be?
It doesn’t even need to be big.
If practiced daily, small daily disciplines become weekly disciplines, which become monthly disciplines, and eventually add up to a massive change in a year.
Get each day in alignment with where you are headed. Deciding on small daily changes in your routine is one of the ways to be intentional.
Once we define our priorities and take small daily steps to get there, we start living lives of intention.
Step 3: Change your environment to be intentional every day
Five helpful steps on how to live intentionally
What does changing your environment even mean? In my example above, I used TV as a solace. A type of metaphorical balm every evening to soothe my mind. This habit was not helpful, even though it seemed to help with stress. Deep in my mind, I may have thought this habit and lack of action would somehow give me a happier life. This is the problem sometimes; we are stuck in patterns that don’t serve us, even though they feel good.
Intentional living means making small daily decisions and steps to move us closer to the priorities and goals we have set for ourselves. Is sitting in front of a TV for hours going to get us closer to the life we would like?
Five steps on how to live intentionally
So change your environment. For me, it started with the TV; I had to find ways to cut down on TV and be very careful with what media I consumed. We would all rather spend our time adding value to our life.
Say you had written down that you wanted more energy to give to your work and your family each day. What environment do you need to create for this to be realized?
Maybe this means setting up a morning routine, with time to exercise and time to make a healthy meal for the day. This may mean getting to bed a little earlier.
Creating an environment where we consciously think about the activity we undertake each day is so important. Is this activity moving us closer or further away from the life we want?
On your way to work, what media do you consume? Are you listening to the news or talk shows that can sap your mental energy? Instead, put on podcasts of people who have achieved what you are striving for. Create an environment that will support your growth. Be very intentional with what you are feeding your mind.
Five helpful steps on how to live intentionally
How are you talking to yourself? What language do you use with yourself? Is your home clean with no clutter? Are you saving some money each month? Do you have a little margin built into your life?
Create a simple game plan where you think about what you need to do today to move you closer to the life you want. Make the environment as conducive as possible, for you to make some small daily changes.
Take each day at a time. Concentrate on what you need to do today. Don’t worry about the results for now.
Step 4: Analyze your decisions to live intentionally
How to live intentionally
To start living with intention, we need to analyze our choices. If you want to lose some weight and you somehow find yourself driving to the fried chicken fast food outlet more than you’d like, well, you need to start asking yourself some difficult questions.
For most actions, develop a habit of asking questions. Why are you buying this? How will this add value to your life? Who are you doing this for? What do you hope to achieve?
Is what I’m doing now in alignment with my priorities? It’s easy to be pulled in different directions without questioning your decisions if you have not gone through the steps above. Notice the things that pull you off course.
We can’t be only going through the motions anymore; we need to stop living on autopilot.
How to live intentionally in 2024
Living with purpose takes planning and discipline. We all know the saying nothing worthwhile comes easily. Don’t you want to look at your life with pride as things slowly change for the better? Setting daily intentions and living purposefully with a clear destination will change everything.
Don’t forget to question your actions if you want to learn the fastest way to live an intentional life.
Step 5: Live your life by getting up again
Five helpful steps on how to live intentionally
One of the most important ways to be intentional daily is to learn the art of getting up again.
This trick is one of the simple ways in life to help you be more intentional. Living a life where you keep beating yourself up is very hard. If you want to learn to have a little more joy and success, learn this valuable lesson. It added immense value to my life.
It might be time to give yourself a little break. You are NOT going to pull off every daily discipline every day. Sometimes you will mess up.
The worst thing you can ever let yourself do is to allow yourself to get down and disheartened. Do not let your mind trick you into a defeatist attitude. Tell yourself you messed up, and tomorrow you will get back to being the best you. Successful people are absolute masters at this technique. Learn not to let failure keep you down.
Five helpful steps on how to live intentionally
Do not give up on all you want to change, especially when you feel unworthy because you messed up. Don’t let your negative talk win; it’s easy to get downcast and give up. Tell yourself it is okay to mess up, you’re feeling down, and that’s okay. Tomorrow you will be back on the fast lane. Try all you can not to give in two days in a row.
You only have one life; use these tips to live your best life.
We want to get through the day with pride. A few days of being proud of yourself will change your life.
It’s not always clear how things can change so quickly, but you will be amazed at what your life can become because you intentionally changed out a few simple practices each day.
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