INTENTIONAL LIVING...POST ONE

                                                                        2014!
 Wow, I can't believe another year has come and gone! Time for New Year's Resolutions, right?    Well, not for me this year! I'm making 2014 the year of being intentional. Instead of making a list of goals or resolutions to check off when completed, I'm going to attempt to live intentionally  day by day and make sure I do those things that are important to me.

You see, life has a way of flying by and I sometimes find myself living on automatic pilot and not living in the moment. So here is what I'm doing this year:


Living The Intentional Life

I have a new notebook and in it I've described what  is important  in my life. To make sure I hit all the important areas in my life, I made sure I had descriptions in these six areas: Personal ( mind, body, spirit ) ; Relationships; Home; Finances; Giving/Serving; Work/Business.

I wrote a page long description of what I would be doing if I made sure I intentionally lived out those things that are important to me. From this description, I began long lists for these different areas that include things that I can do on a daily basis to intentionally do those things that are important to me.  Then every day I'll pick one thing from each area to include in my daily activities. Here is a simple example:

Today I will choose from my list the  following activities:

Walk for 1/2 hour   (Personal/body)
Take my Mom out for coffee ( Relationships )
Balance my checking account. ( Finances )
Shopping for  things to sell at my occasional sale ( Business )
Light candles in the house for a warm atmosphere (Home )
Call and encourage a friend ( Giving )

Now as I reflect back on my day, I can feel encouraged  that I am, indeed, filling my days with things that are important to me. My day may be filled with many other activities but I know that I did not let this day get away without being intentional about what is important in my life. My lists may include things that are as simple as lighting candles to warm the atmosphere in our home to an activity that takes more time. And every day I can pick what I have time to include. I am not "obligated" to myself to walk a half hour every day but can choose a different activity to help my body. If you were to set a goal of walking  a 1/2 hour a day and didn't do it every day you might feel you have failed. But this way you can pick something else to do for your body and feel that you are at least doing  something.

If this sounds like "cheating" to you, you can always set goals alongside your intentional list. So if you DO want to set a goal of, for example, walking every  day and you happen to miss a day, you can pick something from your "personal/body" list and know that  you did something for your body.

The idea of being intentional is that you have intentionally fit into your daily life, a variety of things that are important to you. I will be sharing more about this in future posts. If you're interested in doing this yourself, I'd love to hear how it's working for you.

Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.   Francis Chan