32. WTH is intentional living?

www.heididawson.com @theheididawson on Instagram What the heck is intentional living?? A good place to start in my opinion is the actual definition of Intentional living. The definition of Intentional is Done by design. Synonyms are conscious, deliberate, purposeful and willful. So it’s living a life by design! In my design world. When I’m working on a project, I have a process that works for getting a project from My clients desires into a space that is everything they dreamed it would be. This process is the exact same process that works for intentional living. Picture what you want your life to look like Visualize it with vision boards (digital or using magazines and glue) Put a plan together for it Schedule it by putting it on your calendar Follow the plan (even if there are little hiccups here and there and there will be. Now listen. I also know that sometimes we are living in survival mode. Survival mode means you are in a crisis or there is a current crisis relevant to you, like whats been going on with Corona virus. But realize that survival mode needs to be temporary. We need to move from survival mode as soon as we can. You can’t live in survival mode and thrive. Staying in survival mode too long can make you feel like a victim. Victimhood gives your power to someone other than yourself. Living intentionally means taking responsibility for every aspect of our life. It can be easy to follow the daily grind and think its going to get you somewhere awesome, maybe you’ll luck out or you get one big hit, maybe you’ll win the lottery to get where you want to be. Guys hoping to get lucky isn’t a plan. Our brains are conditioned and wired to help us survive. It isn’t conditioned or wired to help us to thrive. The reason our brain is wired simply for survival is because our ancestors lived in constant survival mode….having to find food, find shelter and run from saber tooth tigers. We don’t have to do that anymore,. For most of us, Food is abundant, shelter is not an issue and I don’t even think saber tooth tigers are around anymore. Someone will factcheck me on that Im sure.  But we can train our brain to help us thrive! How do we do that How do we train our brain to help us thrive? One of the best and easiest things you can do: Prioritize and schedule your day. Every morning rewire your brain for positivity by grateful journaling Give your brain a chance to be still by meditating for at least 5 minutes a day. Pick up a practice of listening to a positive podcast Like mine….I do a new episode 3 times a week and they are usually under 10 minutes so you can listen while you’re making coffee, exercising, or driving to work! finally, Download the “my three words” pdf on my website and come up with your very own 3 anchor words to guide your day! I put my website in the show notes but its heididawson.com, its new and its beautiful so go check it out! Stop waiting for things to happen and go out and make them happen! Be intentional with everything you do!