How to Start Intentional Living

Lately, have you caught yourself always responding with, “I’m very busy” to everything? Including the things you know should be a top priority in your life?

Or are you always making excuses for the things that aren’t working in your life – because you’re not making any attempt at to make them better?

Or do you feel stuck in life, plagued with regrets of knowing that you could do better with your life?

You’re not broken. What you need is to understand how to start intentional living to take charge of your life.

You need to start taking deliberate steps to nurture and be in control of the events in your life.

In this blog, I will show you what it really means to start living intentionally, the benefits of intentional living, and six practical steps you can take at this moment to start living intentionally.

What is Intentional Living?

In simple words, intentional living means taking deliberate steps today to build the future you desire tomorrow.

It means snapping out of impulse-driven autopilot living to deliberately decide to take purposeful steps in your day-to-day life.

Contrary to what is prevalent on the internet, intentional living does not merely end with to-do lists and daily tasks.

Intentional living encompasses the tiniest details in every aspect of your life, from your health to your relationships, finances, and spirituality, and involves taking conscious steps to optimize each of these areas.

What Are the Benefits of Intentional Living?

Do we really need to say the benefits of intentional living?

Well, when you decide to live intentionally every day, here are the benefits you stand to enjoy:

1. You gain clarity on what truly matters in your life.
2. You stop living for others.
3. You stop wasting your time.
4. You’ll rid your life of burnout and regret.
5. You build stronger, more impactful relationships.
6. You build unshakable self-confidence.
7. You increase your chances of being the best at what you do.
8. You make your growth faster and more palpable.
9. You start to fulfill the purpose for your existence.
10. You stop existing and start to live!

So, what steps can you take to start to live intentionally?

Shift Your Mindset

Your mindset is where you lay the foundation for intentional living. Without actively shifting your paradigm for intentional living, you will struggle to get results with any external step you take.

If you genuinely want to start intentional living, then you must move your life from a state of unconscious reaction to the things happening to you to a place of consciously choosing what happens in your life.

The goal here is to build self-awareness. Make a habit of questioning every step you take, every word you speak, and every relationship you invest in.

Instead of waiting until things happen, condition your mind to choose what happens in your life and how you respond to them.

Always ask yourself questions like:

• What are my predominant beliefs about life and success in general?
• How do I measure progress in the different areas of my life?
• Does this thing align with my purpose, values, and who I want to become?

Adjusting your mindset to start living intentionally also includes ditching some of the vocabularies you’re used to. Instead of always saying, ‘I’m very busy,’ say, ‘this is not a priority.’ Doing this kills the feeling of helplessness, and puts you in control of your choices and actions.

Journaling is also an ideal way to adjust your mindset towards intentional living. It helps you understand and organize the things you do so that you apply intentionality where necessary.

Start Your Day with Purpose

We’ve all been taught to start the day with a to-do list or a rigid morning routine that sticks to us like our skin. But is a to-do list truly the answer to intentional living?

Not really.

You could have and tick every item on that list and still not be living intentionally.

Instead, what truly matters is purpose. Ensuring that you live every day with purpose is key to intentional living.

The first step here is to understand your life’s essence, purpose, and goals.

Then, you want to break down this broad purpose into actionable steps and further bring those steps down to your daily activities.

Living intentionally also has to do with aligning your days to your essence. If that essence is God, then you’d want to ensure that you anchor your life on His will for you.

Your aim is to ensure that each day you live through draws you closer to the person you’ve been created to become.

Be Intentional with Your Time

Your time is literally your life in motion. To start living intentionally, you must treat your time as the valuable asset it is.

Three critical steps you can take to start being intentional with your time are:

• Understand what matters to you. Based on your life’s purpose and value we looked at in the last section, what activities are supposed to be a priority in your life?
• Now, take an audit of how you currently spend your time. Monitor your daily schedule for about a week. Don’t try to change anything. Just observe where your hours go every day. At the end of the week, use this Time Management Quiz to gauge how well your use of time is aligned with your life’s purpose.
• The next step is to start prioritizing the essential things in your life every day. If building your relationship with God is important to you, then you want to put that on the top of your to-do list every day. Do the same for the other tasks that are most important to your purpose and life’s values. Other tasks can follow afterward.
• Use calendars, alarms, trackers, and accountability systems to ensure that you always work on your important tasks every day.

Make Conscious Lifestyle Choices

If intentional living encompasses every area of your life, then you must make conscious lifestyle choices and corresponding efforts to live your life according to design, not default.

• Start by taking this Wheel of Life Assessment to know where you are in the different areas of your life.
• Then, determine the areas with the most urgent need for change. Preferably areas that bleed into other parts of your life like your spirituality, health, and finances.
• Choose a deliberate action you will be taking each day to get better in those areas.
• Better still, decide that you MUST take action whenever an opportunity for growth or improvement in these areas presents itself – planned or not.
• Now, this is where you can align your routines. Instead of following a routine because an influencer made a TikTok video of it, why not start one based on what your life needs?

This is how you start intentional living.

Be Intentional In Your Relationships

If you are someone who pays very little attention to your relationships, then you might need an overhaul to stay consistent with intentional living.

You know why?

Your relationships are a vital part of your life. They shape your mindset, determine your perpetual energy levels, and speak volumes of how much growth you’ll experience in the other areas of your life.

To be intentional with your relationships,

• Carry out an audit of your relationships. Distinguish the ones that add value to your life from those that drain you or diminish your worth.
• Set boundaries for relationships that drain you.
• Think about ways you can invest more of your time and resources into the relationships that add value to you. Be deliberate about showing up for the important people in your life. Think about supporting them in any way you possibly can.
• Regularly reach out to them to genuinely know how they are doing, not just when you need something from them.
• Ensure they know how much they mean to you. Send them a text to let them know or remember special events in their lives and show up for them.

Align Your Environment with Who You Want to Be

By the time you’ve taken all the above steps to start intentional living, you will need to stay consistent.

Aligning your environment with your dream life or who you want to be is the most significant accountability to keep you consistent in intentional living.

To align your environment for intentional living, you need to:

• Declutter your environment to eliminate the things that make intentional living difficult. Cancel that Netflix subscription. Do not restock those sugary, ultra-processed foods. Keep your bedroom dimly lit at night. Use app blockers to stop the doomscroll.
• Afterwards, fill your physical space with things that empower you to live intentionally. Place reminders of your purpose, dreams, and goals everywhere. Place a book on your nightstand. Set reminders to call your friends and family.

Your physical environment can either support or stifle your growth. It’s up to you to choose what it does for you.

Conclusion

To wrap this up, I want you to understand that intentional living is possible – irrespective of how long you’ve lived your life on impulse.

All you need to do is start with one deliberate step. Keep at it, and soon enough, you’ll be reaping the outcomes of an intentional life.

Tell me in the comments, what will you start to do differently to live intentionally?