Living intentionally sounds like one of those phenomena that just naturally occurs for us; something as simple and automatic as breathing or blinking. We see, we act, we do, we respond, we decide... We impose our free will onto our lives every moment we are awake. It's the nature of living! However, if we are imposing that will into our daily circumstances and decisions without specific intention (or forward-moving insight), we are not tapping into the innate, natural gift of creation we all possess. Living more intentionally allows us the option to choose our circumstances with more ease and opportunity, reminding us of the natural and innate tools to create and live the life we want to live.
Living your life through intention means a combination of things. It may require you to slow down. It may require you to look at yourself and your scope of influence. It requires you to observe and to plan and to consider all of the who's, what's, where's, when's, and why's of all that you are engaged with. Good news: It's free. It's not a gimmick, it's not a healing that someone else does for you, and it's not a therapy session. It's a state of mind. Living your life intentionally is choosing how you want things to go and making the adjustments needed so that they can go that way. Check out some of the following facets of living more intentionally and see if any of them can be applied to your current circumstances for your own benefit and good.
If the mindset changes, the physical manifestation will not be far behind.
Slowing Down
Slowing down sounds like a farse. Who has time for that!? No one! However, slowing down doesn't mean you have to change your schedule. All you have to do is change the way you think about it. Your time is precious, and slowing your mind down and the way you look at your to-do list will allow you to see how you are using your time, how you can use it to your greatest advantage, and give you permission to let go of the things that are taking your time up but not serving you.
Each morning, give yourself a full minute to five minutes to sit in silence. Do it before you do anything else, and then repeat the practice if you start to get amped up or sped up during your day. Taking a 60-second silence break will give you a reset so that you can remind yourself that:
It doesn't all have to be done now.
If it's not an emergency and it's maintaining the status quo, I can let it go for now.
I plan accordingly to the timelines that I need to keep.
I can only do within the scope of what I have.
Other actions we can take to slow down include forcing ourselves to walk slower, eating with no distractions, sitting outside without our phone, choosing a book over a movie, and staying grounded. All of these practices cause the brain and nervous system to slow, bringing our vibration closer to that of the Planet's and grounding us. When we give ourselves permission to slow our minds and bodies down, it gives us a chance to choose our thoughts, words, and actions more deliberately, keeping us from making things worse by reacting in the heat of the moment.
Keeping an Eye on the Prize
Keeping your eye on the big picture, the grand scale of things will remind you of what you are working for and help you notice when you need to make adjustments as you make decisions, respond to life, and react to situations. When you revisit your long-term goals and the long-term goals of your family, your community, the project you have at work, or even the planet as a whole, you remind yourself of all of the things that go into making dreams come true. Use this as an opportunity for perspective. Dreams don't manifest overnight without miracles, and things only get done when the steps to bring them to completion are accomplished one at a time. When we remember the big picture, we can better task analyze the actions that are needed in order to make that picture whole. This mindset then helps us to slow our minds and our lives down.
Keeping your eye on the prize and planning ahead with intention means choosing how you want things to go and making the decisions and adjustments needed so that they can go that way. It is a process, but one we need to take so that we can stay focused.
This mindset and the practice of planning gives us the opportunity to...
see how certain goals need a specific set of actions,
see which steps need to be broken down into smaller ones and how to accomplish that in a logical manner,
and how much energy the creation process will take out of us. This is important to know because we want to be putting energy where it belongs rather than wasting it on something that will bear us no fruit.
Get a Handle on Your Cycles
Becoming familiar with your cycles of mood, energy, and hormones. Come to an understanding of how they resonate with and impact your cycles of creation, motivation, emotion, and silence. This practice is a game changer when seeking to live a more peaceful and intentional life. Learning about your own cycles and how to align them with each other and to the cycles of the planet can be done through study, holistic counseling, regular meditation, or energetic healing. Keeping a calendar to track your hormonal and mood cycles is essential to this practice. I have found that after only two months of tracking my cycles, I have the information I need to make more informed decisions. This has helped me to plan my weeks more smoothly and see with a cleaner perspective what is actually doable, keeping me from piling too much on my plate. Knowing how your cycles impact your ability to make decisions and accomplish your goals can help you plan with more intention, hold to those plans with more consistency, and carry them out with more productivity.
Analyzing Outcomes
Spend time thinking about the outcomes of habits and decisions that you regularly make. A good place to begin this practice is to look at a situation in your life that you don't like. What are the decisions you personally make that either perpetuate or maintain the occurrence of that situation? By doing this, we are able to see better what we need to change within ourselves and how we need to change our reactions to things that happen outside of us. This reflection can then help us use our free will in a more impactful and purposeful way, thus housing us with the tools to shape our lives and our outcomes.
Work for What the Whole You Needs
We don't always get to choose our jobs. Sometimes we need the income from a current job and can't throw it all away and just do what we want. But we can find balance. If the needs of your whole self are not met, all of you will suffer, not just some of you. That suffering will penetrate its way through all aspects of your life until you are just a well-rounded unhappy mess. So what is it that your whole self needs? What can you do to incorporate that into your life? Working for what we need holistically rather than just for money opens our mindset up to the reality that when we slow down and piece things together one at a time, we can make the impossible work in our favor.
Understanding Your Scope of Influence
Knowing who you impact and what you impact is a self-awareness that can serve as a decision-making compass. By looking at the details of how your words, actions, tones, volumes, body language, and facial language affect those around you, you will better be able to see what adjustments you can make to bring more peace into your communication and living situations. For instance, if you know that you are grumpy for the first hour after coming home from work, relay this information to those around you and plan some downtime for yourself so that you don't lose your patience when others need you. Knowing your scope of influence can inform you of your importance, your worth, and the role you play in the groups you operate in. This awareness can then inform your intentional decision-making, actions, and planning.
Creative Self Expression
Living intentionally also means having the time, the right, the resources, and the confidence to display your creative side to the world. When we fail to let our creative sides show, even in the safety and privacy of our own homes, we block our expression. That expression is energy, and if it's not metabolized through our energy centers, it stays stuck. The incapacity of our human selves to express our love, our interests, and our purpose is the number one reason why our energy bodies get clogged, blocked, and fatigued. Don't forget to engage your creative side, even if you do so in the most subtle ways.
What is it that you create? How can you use it to help others? Is it something you can help incorporate at your job, such as a positive habit challenge? What do you need in order to create it? How will you get those things? What needs to be moved around, gained, or given away in order to get those things?
Holding your life in perspective can be an overwhelming place to get to when there are a million and one things to keep up with. Living more intentionally makes this possible on a daily basis, easing stress and making life more productive and joyful. You can explore how to live a more intentional life through the course Living Your Life Through Intention offered through my site classes. In this course, we dive into what each of the steps above entails, along with grounding techniques and an introduction to the medicine wheel.
Thanks for reading!
If you'd like to know more about how to live your life with and through intention, consider taking the course Living Your Life Through Intention, here at Bare Roots Energy! The Course is online and can be taken alone or in an online, live, group setting.
As always,
Happy Healing from Jamelle at Bare Roots Energy
2/3/2023