I’ve written in the past about spending intentionally, but today I want to go a bit broader. Today I want to talk about living intentionally. Do you live intentionally? Or maybe you’re wondering, what does it mean to live intentionally?
If you Google “intentional living”, you will come across a whole bunch of websites and book recommendations on the topic. Goodreads, a website and app I like to use to track the books I read, even has a list of intentional living quotes, with some good ones such as
Intentional living is the art of making our own choices before others’ choices make us.
Richie Norton
How I think of intentional living is simple: living in alignment with my goals and values.
But the trick with that definition is that you have to actually know what your goals and values are to be able to live intentionally.
If you’re a regular reader of the blog, you know that for the past few years, I have gotten really into goal setting. I was sick of setting “New Year’s Resolutions” that didn’t stick or that I forgot about immediately. For some reason, resolutions just never spoke to me, and so I tried goal setting instead.
As I began to work less, slow down, and enjoy life more, my goals started to evolve. Different things started to become important to me. I was no longer worried about working my way up the career ladder, striving for the next big thing. Instead, I was taking daily walks in nature and blown away by how good it made me feel. I was doing volunteer work that made me feel inspired. I was realizing that there was so much more to life than the hamster wheel.
I realized I had so many things I wanted to do and achieve that weren’t related to work.
When I first started setting goals, I was just beginning to realize my desire for increasing my income and finding a job that I enjoyed so that I could possibly one day downshift to part-time work. At the same time, my financial independence goals were becoming even more important now that I knew what I wanted my life to look like. So most of my goals in the beginning of my goal-setting days revolved around work and finances.
Fast forward to the start of this year, 2022. I had increased my income and found a job that was a really good fit, or at least is for the time being. My finances were pretty much on autopilot. All I had to do was sit back, enjoy the ride, and watch my money grow (ha, not so much this year). So, when I went to set my goals for the year, I realized I was in pretty good shape as far as work and finances go. At the same time, I found myself with the mental space and energy, because I was in a job that wasn’t stressing me out to the max, to expand on my goals a bit. To dream. To give space to some of the creativity whispers that hadn’t seen the light of day in awhile (side note: that’s how this blog came to be!).
A new goal category
My goals are based on my values, and I try to live every day with my values in mind. And this year, I realized that my friends and family, my relationships, are something I value immensely. Since I like for my goals to have categories, I decided to create a new one this year around relationships. So for 2022, I added a “Friends and Family” goal category.
I have always prided myself on my friendships and relationships with others, but maintenance of those relationships had gotten challenging with COVID and focusing on finding the right job, among other things. Also, I know that I’m typically the friend or family member that instigates connection, that brings everyone together, and that can sometimes be overwhelming.
I constantly struggle with guilt, especially when it comes to the relationships that are really important to me. With divorced parents, it often feels like I never see them as much as they want to see me. With friends, I constantly felt like I wasn’t putting in as much effort as I should. I would get overwhelmed easily if I tried to make plans, wanting to please everyone and putting too much pressure on having it be perfect.
So, when I went to set my goals for this year, I decided to be intentional about my relationships. I decided that this year, there were a few important things I wanted to do for friends and family, and I could plan ahead for them. I could hold myself accountable by putting them down on paper as goals. I also knew that when I plan for things, I’m much more organized and less stressed, and I thought this could help with that. These things I wanted to do weren’t necessarily small and easy, but by keeping the number of goals small and manageable, and by being intentional about what I would take on, I felt really good about what I was striving to achieve. And here was the kicker for me: as long as I followed through with those few goals under the friends and family category, I wouldn’t let myself feel badly or guilty about other aspects of my friend and family relationships.
There were only 3 goals in this friends and family category for 2022, but they felt big, especially as activity levels had been pretty low for the past few years because of the pandemic:
- Throw my good friend a baby shower
- Plan a birthday/retirement/new kitchen party for my mom (we had missed celebrating a lot of milestones for her because of the pandemic)
- Plan and go on a bucket-list yoga retreat trip with my best friend/accountability partner
Well, we’re in October now, the start of the last quarter of the year, and I can officially say I have achieved all of these goals, and I feel fabulous about it. The baby shower and party for my mom were huge hits, and you can read all about the bucket-list trip in this post.
The ripple effect
However, something strange happened throughout the year. Sure, I found that because I had put these 3 goals on my list, and I am an overachiever at heart, I of course spent a lot of time planning these activities, and they were successful. The intentional addition of the category resulted in me putting family and friendships in the forefront of my mind. And yes, I made leaps and strides about not feeling too guilty in other areas of my friend and family relationships.
But something more happened, something surprising. There was a ripple effect that came with this intentionality. I realized that it was never really about the actual items I put on the list. It was about the fact that I even added this friends and family goal category in the first place. This act of intentionality started a chain reaction.
And let me tell you, what has happened after the fact, these ripples, can only be described as magic (aren’t ripples pretty magical anyway?).
Take the baby shower. The baby shower was for a friend that I used to be much closer with than I am now, although I would still consider us good friends. The group of friends that we share are from my days playing volleyball, which I haven’t done since 2016. Our friend group is quite spread out around the state now, but we still see each other from time to time. But because of the pandemic, it had been awhile.
Because the shower happened when Omicron was still running rampant (and because my friend is a doctor and so got to make all the calls regarding the safety surrounding her shower), we held it virtually. I kept it real simple, which is what she wanted, and we had a great time.
But it was after all the shower-type activities were over that the magic started. Toward the end of the call, one of the friends who hadn’t spoken much at all during the shower said that before we signed off, he wanted to share a few words. He went on to say how much this friend group means to him, and that even though we don’t see each other often, he loves each one of us very much and is so grateful for our friendship. I was shocked (I don’t think I’d ever heard him use the word love, let alone get vulnerable with us).
After the call ended, someone started a group text (this group has never had a text chain before) saying how good it was to see everyone and how we have to do this more often. We then used that same text chain to send congrats when our friend had her baby (on Saint Patrick’s Day, nonetheless!)
The magic didn’t stop there. Three weeks after her shower, the friend texted to thank me, and then she started telling me how grateful she is for me and reminding me of all these really special memories we had – things I hadn’t thought about in ages. Now, our friendship is even stronger than it was before the shower, and Mr. Dink and I have become an even bigger part of her (and now her child’s) life!
And still there’s more…a week after the shower, another friend from the group texted me in the same way (sharing memories, reconnecting, etc.).
My mind was blown. Something I had done that was so simple, but INTENTIONAL, had created a wild and beautiful ripple effect.
Has this ever happened to you?
The magic has spread in other ways too. Because this family and friends goal has been at the forefront of our minds (yes, I say “our” because Mr. Dink loved my goal so much that he asked if he could be “a part of it” too, and he’s witnessed the ripple effect as well), it’s been really easy to make decisions and say yes to things that are aligned with our values. When another set of friends we hadn’t seen in awhile called us out of the blue to invite us camping this summer, we eagerly said yes.
When my cousins, whom I’ve never really spent time with outside big family gatherings since we were kids, came up to stay in my brother’s Airbnb, we thought of our goal category and made a point to spend the day with them. From there, my cousin’s fiancé said that she had such a great time, she offered to and planned a ladies’ cousins weekend, which happened in April, and we have another one planned for December.
When a childhood friend invited Mr. Dink and I to go to Lake Willoughby, Vermont with her and her family this summer, we said yes without question.
Setting goals and living in alignment with my values has helped me not only spend intentionally, but live intentionally.
And I have been blown away by how the universe steps up to greet you when you live intentionally.
How do you live intentionally? What ripple effects have you seen in your daily life? Let me know in the comments!