The other day I found myself running around doing nothing. I mean I was running errands so I suppose I was technically doing something but each one seemed to take longer than I had anticipated and I felt like I was doing nothing. Do you ever have one of those days?
When I stopped to sit down and take a break from the frenetic energy I had created, I realized I had not been intentional and I had wasted a bunch of time. After a few moments of compassionate self-talk (as opposed to self bashing). I turned my mind back to my intention to live a joy filled and peaceful life. Then I set an intention to have a positive conversation with every single person on the second half of my errand running journey. Guess what happened? It was great, I got all of my errands done and I had some great interactions with the people along the way.
We live in a world where we believe falsely that life happens to us. We use phrases like “life is hard”, “my life is crazy busy” “I don’t have time for that” or “life happens” and we settle for life just running right by us but the truth is we have one life to live and we get to choose how to live it.
Are you living a life worthy of your time? Are your daily activities worthy of your life? You are trading your life for the things you do everyday, are they worthy of your life? Time is the great human equalizer because we all have the same 24 hours each day but how you spend that is up to you. I will often stop and gently remind myself that I am living the life I have created. If it is full of crazy it is because I have created the crazy. If it is full of peace and joy it is because I have created that instead.
Intentional living is the abundant life. We all have ups and downs in life…that’s a given but what we do with those is up to us. One of the most important things about intentional living is knowing yourself well enough to live out the intentions you set.
One of the intentions I set for my life is to live out of my strengths, happy people live out of their strengths. I let who I am define what I do instead of letting what I do define who I am. I have a big white board in my office and when I feel like life is in control of me instead of the other way around I will take a few moments and write “Who am I?” at the top and then write down things I know to be true about me. Then I will ask myself does my life right now reflect this list? If it doesn’t then I will ask myself what I need to change so that it does reflect who I am. Often times it is a simple attitude shift that makes all the difference in the world. My circumstances may stay the same but my mind thinks differently about them so then my circumstances change.
What about you? Do you intentionally live your life from who you are or does what you do define you? I’d love to hear from you about how you are learning to live abundantly.
