11 Powerful Ways To How To Be More Intentional In Life

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We are busy, often overwhelmed with all the things we have to do. But there’s another way to live a life, one that makes you feel fulfilled every single day. Even if people realise that, they don’t know how to be more intentional in life or where to get started. The whole idea of living intentionally seems to be just for those who have a lot of free time and little to no responsibilities. And that’s not true.

I created this list of simple things you can do to live a more fulfilling and intentional life, to show you that no matter what you do and how busy you are, there are some way to become more intentional with your life. So, let’s dive in!

What Is Intentional Living?

Living intentionally is all about being purposeful in your time, relationships, and values. It’s being in control of your life and knowing what you want to achieve and why. Once you’re clear on your vision and have your goals and values defined, you have more power to live simpler and more fulfilling life while being in tune with yourself. Being more intentional is also about doing fewer things you don’t want to do, and making time for activities that enhance your life instead.

What Does Deliberate Life Mean?

Living deliberately can have a range of meanings depending on the context and the person saying it. It’s very similar to living intentionally with a few subtle differences:

• Deliberate life emphasizes careful consideration: Deliberate living definition focuses on thoughtful analysis and weighing options before making choices. It’s all about taking time to reflect and plan before acting on it.
• Intentional life emphasizes purpose and direction. Living intentionally is more about getting clear on your vision and aligning your actions with it. It’s about knowing what you want to achieve and striving towards it consistently.
• Emphasis on mindfulness: While both involve awareness, intentional living emphasize being present in the moment and appreciating the journey. Living deliberately might focus more on the planning and decision-making aspects.

How To Be Intentional?

Being intentional isn’t a difficult thing once you get started. But, I get it, it’s way easier said than done. I’ve been there. It took me way too long to get a cohesive view of what living intentionally really means, and it took me ever longer to get started. The whole thing was scary to me – I don’t like changes that much. The idea of living more intentionally stayed too long on my mind to just forget about it. So, how to be intentional in your life?

How To Start With Being Intentional In Your Life?

When you make huge changes in your life, it’s likely that you won’t last long before reverting into your old habits. That’s why it’s crucial to make tiny steps every day and move slowly. The change is happening even when you can’t see it! I created this list of 11 ways to be more intentional every day to help you get started making those changes. Just pick one thing you’d like to implement into your life and stick with it for a week or two. Once you feel comfortable, add another little thing one by one. This way, you won’t overwhelm yourself and you’ll be slowly changing your life for the better.

11 Ways To Be More Intentional Every Day

Plan Your Day In Advance

I don’t think there’s anything more helpful to live a more intentional life than planning your day in advance. It can be a real game changer to achieving your goals, being more productive, and having time to rest. Forget about creating a miles-long to-do list and put a limit of 8-10 tasks per day. I like to choose 3 moving needle tasks of the day and add up to 5 small ones that aren’t vital in reaching my goals.

I used to think that I should tick off much more than just three tasks a day to be successful. The truth is that there are days when completing one task is more than enough for me.

It’s helpful to check-in with yourself in the morning to see how you feel about the tasks you set for the day. This way, you’ll be able to reschedule them before you get to work and you won’t feel stressed out about falling behind the schedule.

Don’t Waste Your Time

Pay attention to any activities that drain you from energy or take a toll on your mental health. Be intentional with your time and don’t waste it on things that aren’t important to you or make you feel bad. When you look back, make sure that distractions didn’t stop you from achieving your goals.

Get Organised

Implementing all kinds of resets will help you with planning your day in advance. Once you summarise the previous year and create a plan for a new one, keep it handy. Come back to it every month and plan weeks and days based on it to make sure that you’re on track to reaching goals you set for yourself at the beginning of the year.

Until recently, I used to plan my days by choosing over ten tasks for the day. I wasn’t able to close all of them, so in the evening I was stressing about the amount of things I didn’t get to do. On the next day, I had another heck long to-do list AND to-dos from the previous day! Knowing how much I need to do in a short time frame was making me very nervous, which resulted in being way less productive than usual and being unable to rest, let alone sleep peacefully at night. It was a vicious cycle of creating more and more open loops every day without following on them later on.

After taking a long break from creating any lists or plans, I slowly started planning my months and days according to my yearly goals. After a couple of weeks, I can safely say that it helps me get closer to accomplishing my goals and is crucial to stop my to-do list from overwhelming me.

Also, it turned out that it’s not as restrictive as I always believed! Getting organised and planning each day helps me stay on track and feel accomplished.

Create habits and systems that support you is extremely important. You’re a person, not a machine, so don’t expect from yourself to have the same high amount of energy every day and don’t force yourself into hustling all day long just to complete all the to-dos. Don’t forget about prioritising them too.

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Shop Consciously

How many times you bought something that you didn’t really need? You might’ve used it just once or twice and forgotten about it. Or, you might’ve put it somewhere on the shelf without even opening the box.

When you buy items unconsciously, you not only waste your money but also time and energy. You had to spend a certain amount of time to get enough money to buy them in the first place.

So, if you want to live more intentionally, start by paying attention to what you buy and refrain from unnecessary purchases. Wait 24 hours before buying something you liked, list all the pros and cons of such purchase, or put it on your wish list and get it at a later date when you’ll be sure you really need it.

Declutter Your Home

When I first started decluttering my home, I didn’t think about intentional living. I didn’t even know what it entails to start with.

There’s one thing that comes with decluttering though – being aware of how often we waste our money on stuff that we don’t need, how much time we spend on cleaning and organising all of that, and how much stress clutter brings to our life.

And living intentionally is all about making conscious decisions to live the life we want the most, not to settle for mediocre results and wasting our time and energy on meaningless things.

Develop Healthy Habits

Cambridge Dictionary says that habit is something that you do often and regularly, sometimes without knowing that you are doing it. It can be anything, from playing computer games every evening, making tea first thing in the morning, or buying the same toiletries over and over again.

Even though we can divide habits for healthy and unhealthy ones, there’s a fine line between them and it’s personal matter to which category we can assign them. If you want to get fit, going to the gym regularly can be a healthy a habit. If you feel unwell, though, the same habit can become unhealthy because of your personal reasons.

Bad habits don’t improve your life, so be mindful of them and make necessary changes if needed. Habits and routines are supposed to support you, not the other way round. Make sure that at least most of your habits can be viewed as healthy ones.

Scroll Less Through Social Media

People spend a lot of time online nowadays – an average person spends 147 minutes on social media every day. That gives us just over 17 hours a week, over 3 days a month, and 37 days a year! I feel overwhelmed by those numbers, mostly because I know that even though if I spend less time than that on social media, it’s still too much.

It’s difficult to break social media addiction, as they’re basically created to suck us in and never let go,. I did a 7 day social media detox two years ago, and it was the best thing ever. Putting limits on social media, or getting rid of it altogether, can bring many positive benefits like having more free time, being less anxious, and feeling like you have more control over your life.

When you spend hours on social media, you can’t say that you spent all that time productively. Scrolling through the feed can make you feel worse about yourself, jealous, or just turn your brain into a mush.

I know for sure that it kills my creativity.

Have you noticed that you never feel refreshed or relaxed after watching all those reels or tiktoks?

Go through the list of people you follow, and see how their content makes you feel. Do you feel inspired or envy? Motivated or like they’re better than you? Follow only those people that brings something meaningful to your life. Be mindful of your time spent on your phone or social media and put time limits on them if you feel like it’s out of control.

Practice Gratitude Regularly

Practicing gratitude regularly brings plenty of benefits into your life. From better sleep, increased happiness, and having more satisfaction from life, it’s obvious that it boosts your mental health greatly.

It might feel unnatural and silly, especially when you’re just starting out, but it gets better after a few days. It can be also difficult at the beginning, where you’re not used to focusing on good parts of your day or life.

If that’s the case, write down all things you’re grateful for as they happen.

Just pay attention to all good moments throughout the day and try to find positive things in any situation. It will help you cultivate a positive mindset.

Get Clear On Your Vision

According to Wikipedia, intentional living is any lifestyle based on an individual or group’s conscious attempts to live according to their values and beliefs. It means that you can’t live intentionally when you don’t know what your values and beliefs are. That’s why getting clear on your vision is very helpful in starting making intentional decisions for yourself.

Take some time to journal and think about your life. What is important to you? What can’t you imagine your life without? What do you strive towards? Define your priorities and goals. It’ll make a huge difference when trying to live intentionally.

Make Time For Self-Care

You’re busy, I get that. It means that you should make self-care a priority, pronto. I like to think about it as of things that fill your cup and make you more rested and productive. When you do any tasks, help others, do chores, you drain yourself. Without spending time for self-care, you’ll feel exhausted physically and mentally regularly and that’s not a way to live!

Self-care is more than just girls’ night out every week or expensive SPA treatments. It’s taking care of yourself and prioritising your own physical and mental wellbeing. Anything from having good work-life balance, getting eight hours of sleep every night, to journaling and eating balanced meals is an act of self-care. It’s not as difficult as it looks like, trust me.

Don’t Compare Yourself To Others

Comparison kills the joy. It makes you feel inadequate and often jealous. That’s not the way to live, is it? Instead of comparing yourself to others, focus on your life and how you want to live it. I know that’s easier said than done as I used to compare myself to others notoriously. Someone got married, bought a house, went on a luxury trip abroad, is a successful business owner…

All that while I was moving for the sixth or seventh time to a rented house, were nowhere near having a successful business, or haven’t gone for any holidays in ages.

Comparison made me feel defeated and bad about myself. Instead of moving forward, I started victimising myself. Seeing that it influences me in such a negative way, I took some time to think through all the reasons I kept comparing myself to others and why it made me feel so bad.

Then, I made a list of things what really matter to me and what I want to achieve. Doing that helped me to focus on my life and take meaningful action instead of wallowing and chasing someone else’s dreams.

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Final Words For 11 Powerful Ways To How to Be More Intentional in Life

That doesn’t come as a surprise that we’re all busy. We’re often overwhelmed, lost, but keep going the way we’ve always had because we don’t know any other way of life. Living on autopilot isn’t an answer.

You won’t be able to live fully and create fresh memories without being present in your day-to-day life. That’s why it’s important to pause sometimes, and think whether you’re chasing the right dream or live in accordance with your values.

The idea of changing your life and being more intentional on a daily basis can be scary. I hope this article, with 11 ways to be more intentional in your life, helped you get an idea of what intentional life entails and how to take the first step towards it.

Continue taking small steps every day and soon you’ll see a vast difference in how you feel and interact with others.

I hope your journey to living an intentional, fulfilling life will be a successful one 💕

Until next time,
M.