Intentional living is becoming an increasingly popular way of life for many, as it can give us purpose and lead us to a fulfilled and happy life. It can help you achieve the dream of living a full, meaningful and productive life because it allows you to focus on your goals. However, with so many new terms when it comes to daily living, it can be very confusing what living intentionally means and how to implement it.
Don’t worry, as this guide to intentional living for a happy and healthy life can answer any question you have about this way of living. Discover the best ways to live intentionally and start your journey to a fulfilled and purposeful life!
What is intentional living?
Intentional living stands for making the right choices consciously that align with your core values and goals. It is all about living with purpose and carrying out actions that match your personal beliefs and goals, allowing you to have a meaningful and satisfying life. It can include conscious buying of products where you can purposefully choose the products that meet your values. For example, if you want to help the environment, you will purposefully find products that are ethical to reflect your value to sustainability.
It can also include being more mindful of your relationships to ensure you nurture positive ones, making the best career choices for you to be fulfilled and passionate and looking after your health and wellness to encourage better overall health.
Benefits of living intentionally
There are multiple benefits of living intentionally that boost your overall health and many other aspects of your life! Being intentional can really satisfy you and allow you to feel happier about every choice you make.
- Better decision-making: If you live more intentionally, making decisions can become easier, more specific and more focused. This is because every decision you make in life will be made with an understanding of how they match your values and long-term goals.
- Improves health & wellbeing: Living intentionally can boost your health in many ways. It can aid your mental wellbeing as it gives you a sense of purpose. This feeling busts stress and makes you happier.
- Build stronger, lasting relationships: If you are more intentional with your relationships, you can build healthy, strong and long-lasting connections. Every relationship you have can be more meaningful as it helps you weed out any toxic connections you have.
How to implement intentional living in your life
There are numerous ways you can implement intentional living in your life, but to start you need to focus on the basics. This will help you gradually build a more intentional life with everything you do and every choice you make.
Plan your day
To be able to be more intentional in your life, it can help to plan your day out in the morning. This will help you to navigate this new way of living and make it easier to remind yourself to be intentional throughout the day. Take a few moments to outline your goals and plan what small actions you can do to work towards your goals. Doing this every day can help you avoid getting distracted from intentional living and keep you on track.
Learn to say no
Intentional living incorporates having strong boundaries with everybody in your life. Due to this, it’s essential to learn to say no. This can be a hard practice for many people, but it’s needed to help you live the life you want without constantly worrying about what others think and say. No is also a complete sentence with nothing else needed. Make sure you don’t say if, and or but. Being firm with saying no and setting boundaries can help you decide how you spend your energy and time, encouraging you to focus on what truly matters in your life.
Regularly communicate with loved ones
Try to communicate with your loved ones regularly to be able to build strong and lasting relationships that intentionally align with you. Check-in with the people in your life who you care deeply for and let them know what is happening with you. Doing this prevents miscommunication and misunderstandings while making that person feel a part of your life and valued.
Practice mindfulness daily
Try to include practicing mindfulness daily to help you be in the moment and be present in everything you do. This could be doing a full mindfulness session, or it can be as simple as breathing exercises, yoga or mindful walking. Incorporating mindfulness in some way daily can really help you to live intentionally because it allows you to feel aware of your choices. It makes it easier to make intentional and focused decisions throughout your day.
Minimise distractions
Intentional living also relates to a simple lifestyle. With this in mind, it’s best to minimise any distractions that surround you daily by reducing clutter – physical and digital! Doing this not only makes you feel satisfied and refreshed, but it also lets you focus on the most important things. You may need to declutter your living space or limit the amount of time you spend scrolling through social media. It can also correlate to your career as you can organise and streamline your job role and tasks.
Think about what makes you happy
It’s vital to carefully think about what makes you happy in your life and work toward this happiness and fulfillment every single day. Try and pinpoint what gets you up and out of bed every morning and what you really look forward to in the day. Consider the small things in life that bring a smile to your face. Note all of this down and think about how you can tailor your day to give you this happiness, intentionally making choices that will lift your spirits up.
Understand your core values
Your values show who you are as a person and can help you achieve your goals. Understanding your core values can aid with living intentionally to achieve long-term and short-term life goals. You could value religion and need to factor in intentionally living for religious obligations. For example, Muslims must calculate Zakat to give their wealth to those less fortunate, so this is a core value and a goal to achieve where they can intentionally make small steps to work toward this end goal.
As well as this, you need to consider any small goal in your life and what purpose you want to have. Ask yourself what your goals in life are, what legacy you want to leave behind when you leave this world and what makes you happy. Write down your mission in life, what is important to you, the contribution you want to make in your life and things that make you feel unhappy or stressed. Doing this allows you to get to grips with your core values so that you can intentionally make choices that work toward fulfilling them, giving you a deeper sense of purpose.
Living with intention means you need to be more present, mindful and focused to feel fulfilled, happy and satisfied. It’s all about giving yourself a purpose by slowly working toward your life goals, whether that includes your career, how you live daily or anything you feel strongly about. Implementing intentional living can let you make purposeful and better decisions with everything you do, finally putting yourself in charge!
