Charting Your Course: A Guide to Living Intentionally in 2024
Step into 2024 with purpose. This article explores how to Live Intentionally – where every choice, from career and geographic moves to daily habits, is a conscious decision.
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Stepping into a new year presents a blank canvas in which we can shape our future. The word “intent” has been one of my key themes for the past several years. It can be used in a lot of ways, from identifying what success looks like in your business strategy or with your project, or with a team member.
This year, I challenge you to focus on living intentionally.
Living intentionally means purposely pursuing your desired outcomes — adapting your work to your lifestyle so that you don’t look up five years from now and realize you got consumed in the minutiae of the day. This notion is related to my concepts of white space and Leader’s Intent in the business environment, but expands it to your whole life.
One of the outcomes from the pandemic was that many people realized how much time they had given up commuting or working all hours of the night, slowly draining the joy from their day. Living intentionally seeks to find opportunities– both small and profound. As a result, you’ll better control your time and priorities and be empowered to focus on your passions.
How I Began to Consider Living Intentionally
During the pandemic, my wife and I became empty nesters, and the increase in virtual and hybrid work enabled me to increase mobility. We were in that post-children phase of our life, contemplating what do we want to do next? And where do we want to live or travel to? The increased mobility enabled us to test out different lifestyles and scenarios that had always intrigued us.
We intentionally identified a list of locations to visit or live in for short periods of time, as well as different types of housing options. These became pilot tests for us, and we quickly learned what we did and didn’t like, as well as new characteristics or requirements for that lifestyle. For example, we thought living in a studio apartment or RV might be interesting, but I quickly learned that holding virtual calls in the same room where we lived and slept was not ideal.
3 Steps to Identify Opportunities to Live More Intentionally
How can you live more intentionally?
Living intentionally can manifest in various ways, whether through major life choices such as career decisions and where to live, or in daily actions like mindful habits and meaningful interactions. It is all adaptable to your individual circumstances.
First, you must assess your own situation. The job you have, where you are in your life with family, personal obligations, and commitments influence the changes you can make.
Second, start small. Sometimes living intentionally can just mean carving out an hour a week to develop a new skill, take time to reflect, or read about an interesting a topic.
Here are three steps to identify opportunities and take actions to become more intentional in your life.
1. Identify what you would like to change.
I start this process by asking myself, “At the end of this year (or in three years), what I would like my life to be?” I try to visualize what a week in my desired future life would feel like: What would my days look like during the week, and how would I spend my time? What passions or hobbies would I like to be doing that I’m not prioritizing today? By visualizing your actual lifestyle on a weekly basis, it gives you a sense of things that you may prioritize or sacrifice over other things.
2. Review your list and compare that with what you believe are your current constraints.
These limitations to achieve your desired lifestyle could come from work, family, or other non-work obligations. Challenge yourself if those constraints are rigid or immovable. For example, there may be certain expectations with your job that seem to conflict with your desired lifestyle, but are there other ways of addressing those expectations to satisfy your employer while still balancing them with your life desires? This exercise also helps identify if there are things you’re willing to let go of to achieve other objectives–such as reducing a commitment to a current obligation to use that time for something more important.
3. Create and test your desired changes.
A mistake I find many people make is that they try to make a wholesale life change immediately. Instead, review your list of desired changes to your lifestyle and find ways to test them to validate if you want them to become permanent, as well as how they balance with some of your other obligations or constraints. Evaluate each of these “tests” for lessons that you can adapt in your lifestyle.
These three steps help me identify my plan or map for what I want to intentionally change or test in this upcoming year.
We can’t control everything that happens, but without having a basic map, it’s easy for us to become victims of the changing environment, where we look up 12 months later and realize we didn’t accomplish our goals. Think of yourself as a boat, where you can either have a rudder and a direction that you want to proceed despite the changing winds, or you can be rudderless and hope that the current and winds will take you in a direction that you desire.
I wish you a happy 2024 of living intentionally where you realize your dreams.
Explore Personalized Executive Coaching to Help Create Your Intentional Living Path
As you embark on your intentional living journey, remember that strategic choices are keys to success both in business and life. For personalized guidance in aligning your leadership path with intentional living, contact me to learn more about my executive coaching services.
