5 Intentional Living Steps To Multiply Your Natural Potential
We all understand that we can benefit from intentional living steps but do we really know why? Intentional living will ensure that we do not…
We all understand that we can benefit from intentional living steps but do we really know why? Intentional living will ensure that we do not go to our graves with much of our potential still left inside of us.
Leaving this existence with most of our potential inside of us would be a waste, selfish, and a loss for society. Really it would.
We are all born with gifts to give the world and we all are important to the world. How you would discover your special gifts is a discussion for another day but, we all have them.
Discovering one’s special gifts may come easy and natural for some and difficult and not at all for others. To uncover your special gifts and all other success in life daily intentional living steps will be key.
I have lived my life as an introvert and avoided a lot of human contacts most of the time. While this has made me comfortable I recently realized that I may leave this earth with most of my potential still left inside me.
I have now vowed to get as much potential out of me as I have been riding these future days really hard and will continue until the wheels come off.
To accomplish this simple but powerful goal daily intentional living steps will be my vehicle of choice and at the end of the race, that vehicle will be left as a smoking wheel-less heap of used-up potential. LOL.
Intentional living can be a very powerful life building process. Living intentionally every minute because minutes turn into hours and hours turn into days. You see where I am going here. Days turn into months, months turn into years and years turn into your life.
Years of small daily actions will have a massive impact on your life, overall success, and happiness. Live intentionally and have the impact be a positive one that you may live a life of IMPACT and fulfillment.
1. Define Your Life’s Purpose and Goals
Defining your life’s purpose and goals can be loosely defined but you need to have a clear vision. You don’t need to have your life planned out from cradle to grave but you need to have a plan to match your natural talents to your likes.
You can have a natural talent for something you would not enjoy doing for the rest of your life. Avoid matching your plan to something like that. Match your plan to things you enjoy doing and would not mind doing for a large portion of your life.
Also please don’t make earning potential the deciding factor. Believe it or not, the money will not make you happy after your basic needs are met. In fact, it can do the opposite and can be a trap. Now vision what a day designed to provide small wins for you to achieve that vision would look like.
2. Build A Template For Daily Success and Intentional Living Steps
Now that you have your goals, likes and small daily wins in mind let’s begin to build a working template to achieve them.
Nothing etched in stone but more like a set of guidelines. They would need to be flexible as life is fluid and unpredictable. For example, if health and medicine are something you would like to pursue your daily template should reflect that.
Your education schedule should reflect courses that will lead to that success in that field. Free time, hobbies and interests should reflect an interest in that field. Your activities should produce small consistent wins that will lead to you working in the medical field or even becoming a top-notch doctor if choose to.
The same process should be used if you wanted to spend your life as a musician, athlete, teacher, carpenter, writer and so on. The daily template should include small activities to move you closer to achieving your goals.
It should almost become subconscious and increasingly intentional. This process is significant in the intentional living process.
3. Be Thankful For Your Wins and Losses
Most of us know to be thankful for our wins but may be confused at my suggestions to be thankful for the losses. To achieve your goals and to be happy you will have losses and they should be celebrated.
You must have a deep understanding that EVERYTHING in this existence in temporary, wins, and losses included. You should be thankful and celebrate the wins for the simple fact they are wins and are temporary.
Should also be thankful for the losses because they are valuable teaching and learning moments and are in fact also temporary. Believe it or not years later you will fondly remember some wins and even some of the losses.
Things that hurt, instruct. Add this to your intentional living steps tool bag to help you achieve your goal when you experience a temporary loss.
Document your wins and losses, post, write, and text them. Discuss them with friends and family. This will create lasting memories and make you feel happier in the process.
Much later in life when you are receiving your lifetime achievement award you will have this intentional living step to thank as your friends and family relive vivid memories of your wins and losses as they lovingly remind you of every step of your successful journey.
4. Create a Daily Morning Ritual
It may sound stupid but your daily template should start as soon as you wake up in the morning. Remember it should be almost subconscious and intentional.
In Hal Elrod’s book The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8 AM), he discusses the ‘best practices’—developed over centuries of human consciousness development—and condensed the ‘best of the best; into a daily morning ritual.
Look, your morning ritual can be as simple as having a cup of tea with a bowl of oatmeal or something as time-tested as the Miracle Morning. You just need something to help subconsciously trigger the daily temple you just worked so hard to devise.
This will help you practice intentional living steps seamlessly for years to come.
5. Pause, Breathe, Think and Act
This is the almost instantaneous process you should develop to make decisions during the day. Pause, breath, think and act is what you would cross-reference with your intentional living steps daily template to guide a lot of your decisions.
Learning this process will help prevent you from making an impulse decisions that may not be in line with your goals.
This is important because a series of impulse decisions over time may begin to feel normal and over more time may make your goals unattainable. Remember to pause, breathe, think and act to lessen the likelihood of you ever having to say “I wish I had a chance to do that over again” or ” What was I thinking?”.
In most cases, it is not that one incident that tends to take a person off course or set them on the path to ruin. It is the multiple series of choices that fill many with enormous regret.
This is called drift. The slow steady stream of wrong decision that causes regret. Or to aimlessly float through life. To combat drift remember your daily template, pause, breath, think, and act.
Conclusion
We all know you are great and good things will happen for you with no effort on your part at all. Just in case this is not the case intentional living can help you achieve your lifelong goals and achieve happiness.
Cultivate an intentional living temple that works for you. Follow my guidelines or create your own. Let us know of your success and some of the principles that work for you.
Please don’t drift through life. Don’t waste your natural gifts and take all of your great potential to the grave. Live intentional to benefit yourself, community, good friends, and family.
Don’t be selfish and allow the intentional living to be the vehicle to live a life IMPACT no matter how great or subtle it may be.
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Hi Tony,
This is absolutely great advice! Instead of just going with the flow set out to accomplish what you mean to achieve! I really enjoyed this post looking forward to reading more!
Best wishes
Eloah
Thanks for your comment Eloah. Living intentional is the way to go and has many benefits.
Tony,
Wise counsel, my friend!
You inspire me to try to develop my own potential to do what will create the greatest benefit to my fellow journeyers through this adventure we call life.
Your article reminds me of the quote by George Bernard Shaw: “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live.” Being “all used up” is my new goal!
I really appreciated your advice not to choose based on natural talent or income potential alone. As a young man (many, many, MANY years ago!), my aptitude in science and mathematics during the “heat” of the cold war meant people encouraged me to pursue science or math. Only problem was, though I was very good at it, I didn’t enjoy it. So, shocker! I didn’t do well as a chemistry major.
Luckily I was brave and switched to comparative religion as a major, which also allowed me to take many English and writing courses. It was the smartest decision I ever made! And perhaps was an example of a “loss” (performing poorly in chemistry) and a “win”?
Thanks for the help in understanding how to live my live intentionally.
Roger
Thanks for your comment Roger. I love the George Bernard Shaw quote. It defines most of this post in 2 sentences. It will be my new words to live by. I am jealous that you were brave enough to follow the path of doing something you enjoy rather than do what you were drafted to do because you were gifted in science and mathematics. I wish I had such incite when I was so young.
You are correct that your brave decision is an example of what I was talking about “wins” and “Losses”. I hope you enjoyed your time finding out science and mathematics (having to study advanced chemistry) was not something that you would enjoy doing for the rest of your life, the loss. Then changing course to comparative religion, the win. I am sure the change put you on the path to live the life of IMPACT and fulfillment.
This is most definitely a great list! I like the book Getting Things Done as well. Putting myself on a schedule would be a great improvement for getting more done, including sleep!
Thanks for the comment Javie. I have to check that book out. Yeah sleep is often overlooked but very important to daily performance and health.
Thanks for the comment Javie. I have to check that book out. Yeah sleep is often overlooked but very important to daily performance and health.
Hi, Tony. I definitely need to put myself on a schedule. Even though I am always busy doing something for my business, I still find myself losing myself in a task, losing track of time, and feeling boggled down. I hope a schedule helps….I need to schedule sleep too. Lol. Nice post.
Thanks for the comment Audra. Intentional living puts you on a schedule by default. It is more of a long term dynamic schedule that keeps your on track to attain your life long goals and overall happiness.
Thanks for the comment Audra. Intentional living puts you on a schedule by default. It is more of a long term dynamic schedule that keeps your on track to attain your life long goals and overall happiness.
I loved your post and appreciate Hal Elrod’s books. I will do my best to leave an IMPACT in my life. I also liked the pop-up…next time I will get my free copy! Ciao!
Thanks for your comment Laura. We all would love to leave a positive IMPACT on the world only a small few do so without planning. Intentional living could be the beginning of that plan. I sure do not aim to leave this world with any of my potential left inside of me 😉
Thanks for your comment Laura. We all would love to leave a positive IMPACT on the world only a small few do so without planning. Intentional living could be the beginning of that plan. I sure do not aim to leave this world with any of my potential left inside of me 😉