intention

(This blog post was taken from The Living Deliberately podcast which you can tune into here.)

Living Deliberately means living on purpose. It means creating your future ahead of time by using your mind. It means creating possibilities of what the future may hold even if your past doesn’t prove that possibly. It’s about creating new thoughts and showing up in ways that you may have never dreamed possible.

In other words, Living Deliberately is about creating. It’s about not being passive, but rather taking an active role in life to create whatever it is you want. It’s about being a creator – and if you don’t like that term because you believe in a “Creator,” then it’s about being a mini-creator or a co-creator. However you want to look at it, it’s recognizing the power you have to create, because you do have that power whether you access it or not is another thing entirely. With Living Deliberately, you access that power on a regular basis.

Now, all of that may sound abstract or even philosophical to you, but actually what Living Deliberately is the complete opposite of abstract or philosophical. The work of Living Deliberately is actually very real, it’s actually quite simple, it’s very concrete, and it’s very, very doable. It takes work, but if you are committed to doing this work, it’s all possible.

The very first thing you do when living deliberately is notice your starting place. Before going anywhere or before making any decisions, know where you are. And that starting place is noticing what’s going on in your life now that you want to change or improve or create something that doesn’t exist. You must know where you are beginning. When you turn on your Waze or Google maps in order to guide you to your destination, it knows where you are starting. It has to. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be able to take you anywhere, right? It’s the same thing with your life. You may know where you want to get to, but you first MUST know where you are starting.

Now, there may be a lot of places in your life you’d like to make improvements on. Maybe where you’re starting is that you are overweight or you are not sleeping well, or your work/life balance is out of balance, or you don’t feel happy, or you’re in a relationship that you’re less than satisfied with, or you’re not taking care of yourself, physically/emotionally that way you want to. See if you can notice where you are starting – what it is that you are not so pleased or satisfied with in your life. Awareness is really half the battle when it comes to living a deliberate life.

See if you can pinpoint the one area that you are the least satisfied with. Like, if you could snap your fingers and change this thing right now, what would it be? What would you want to create?

Now….that question I just asked you may seem like a very innocent and easy question, “what do you want to create?”, but it’s actually not as simple and intuitive as it may seem.

The question I asked was not, what do you want to have. The question we are beginning with is what do you want to create?

The way we use language is so important and so affects the way we look at our lives and how we act. If I were to ask you, look at your life – what do you want? By asking you a question in that way, I would be removing the power that you have within yourself and placing the power in someone or something else.

For example, if your answer to that question was: I want my husband to be kinder, or I want more people to like me, or I want better neighbors. By stating what you want to have, you unconsciously putting yourself in a victim state – and when you’re in a victim state you basically relinquish your power to things outside of you that you have zero control over. You can’t change the people or circumstances outside of you and by saying, “I would be happy if I could just have “x”, you’re creating an impossible possibility. You’ll never be able to get happy, for example, if you’re constantly trying to change something that’s out of your power.

The way other people show up in the world is not your business. It’s theirs. And if you try to keep showing up and changing the way they are, you are  only going to drill a big, deep hole for yourself to get stuck in. If you want to live deliberately, you cannot start your life with what you want to have, you must start with asking yourself, “What do you want to create?”

This question is an entirely different question. This question puts you back in the driver’s seat as the one in control and the one deciding ahead of time what you want your life to look like. Right? So, for instance, instead of wanting people to like you, what you may want to create is friendships. Right? Now, it may seem like semantics: one the one hand I want people to like me, on the other hand I’m saying I want to create friendships. But, isn’t that the same thing? And it’s not. Wanting to people to like me is putting the control in someone else’s hands. Creating friendships is in your hands.

It’s the same thing regarding wanting a kinder husband or creating an improved marriage. Or wanting better neighbors or creating a relationship you do want to have with your neighbors.

So, take a moment now and identify what in your life do you want to create?

Now, the examples I offered so far had to do with other people. You certainly can also work on creating things that involve only yourself. Maybe you want to create a more physically fit body or maybe you want to create weight loss or maybe you want to create more self-confidence. There are endless avenues to what you can create in your life.

What do you want to create in your life?

Now, I have lots of things I want to create in my life, some of them are big things – like improving relationships and other times they are short-term things – like creating a delicious and nutritious dinner. It doesn’t matter what you are working on, the starting point is always the same. It always starts out with what do you want to create? And remember the answer to your question cannot be changing something or someone outside of you.

I start each and every day like this. What do I want to create today? I look at my day ahead, see what’s on the calendar, what my work looks like, and decide ahead of time what I want to create for myself. I’m constantly creating throughout my day, as I interact with people and sometimes come into situations that were unexpected, I ask myself, what do I want to create in this situation?

That being said, I also have one main overall thing that I am currently working on long-term. And the reason I say long-term is because when you are looking to create a big change in your life, whether that’s breaking a habit or creating a new version of yourself, it takes time. And if you know anything about creating change, it doesn’t come over night, but rather comes with time and a lot of patience and a lot of consistent showing up and taking action. And it takes a willingness to show up, and a willingness to fail, and a willingness to keep taking action despite anything that’s happening around you.

What is the one most important thing you want to create in your life today?

Maybe you want to break a habit, maybe you want to create a better relationship with yourself or with someone else, maybe you want to create a successful business. What is the one thing, the most pressing or the most important thing in your life that you want to create or change?

To learn more about The Living Deliberately Blueprint, click here.