You know how sometimes your life runs away with you?
It happens to all of us, we get caught up in everyday living. We get sucked into drama and tension, both at home and at work.
The result is usually that we become reactive. Our responses are automatic, and we lose sight of our priorities. We are triggered by unimportant things and our resilience disappears and our creativity stifled.
Every day we make hundreds of little decisions, whether consciously or not.
Some of these decisions, we make on purpose. Most of them
Creating intentional living habits could just be the thing that can change your life when you find yourself in reaction the whole time.
What does intentional living mean
Intentional living to me means that I know what is important to me and I make decisions in my life which align with that.
In other words, to live on purpose and to take deliberate action.
Now, it doesn’t always work out like that BUT, I do try to take deliberate action as much as I can.
What I find is that, the more deliberate action I take, and the more intentional I am, the self-awareness which leads to me being able to be more intentional.
Intentional living habits
I wanted to share with you some habits that you can build, to help you get started with living a more intentional life.
Remember though that the trick with any habit is to start small. Otherwise, you overwhelm yourself and it’s easy to give up.
- Know your values, and let them guide you
- Declutter your life
- Learn to say no
- Say yes to what matters
- Eat nourishing foods
- Have regular digital detoxes
- Create a self-care routine
- Take up a practice like yoga, meditation or journaling
- Unfollow people on social media that don’t align with your values
- Pay attention to how you speak to yourself
- Go with silence for 15 minutes each day, without music, audiobooks, television or social media
- Unsubscribe from newsletters you don’t read
- Write down your goals and plan your first steps
- Forgive and release those who have hurt you
- Focus on living in the present moment
- Set intentions for your day when you wake up in the morning
- Spend more time in nature
- Take responsibility for your choices
- Stop having a victim mindset
- Feed your mind by learning something new
- Take up a daily gratitude practice
- Stop multitasking
- Review your spending habits
- Don’t eat in front of the TV
- Learn to batch your tasks
- Take 20 minutes a day to tidy up
- Make your bed as soon as you get up in the morning
- Create easy morning and evening routines to ease you into and out of the day
- When your mind is busy, create a list to help you focus on what is important right now
- Get enough sleep
- Learn to have compassion for yourself
Focus on what is essential
These are little (and bigger) habits that will help you to really focus on what is essential in your life.
Whether you are looking for inner peace, less stress, or more abundance, I believe that it is possible to create that for yourself with these intentional living habits.