Being intentional is all about thinking about our actions. It’s bringing consciousness to everyday action and tweaking those actions to get more inline with our desires. Therefore, anything we have chosen with thought and care to do routinely is going to support that choice to live with intention. Even when things get busy, routines give us a solid foundation to fall back on. Hence, the need for routines that support an intentional way of living.
Routines are awesome
Reducing routine decision making is an important aspect of maintaining and living an intentional life. The mental load of motherhood (and life) is huge. That massive running to-do list, maintaining all the things and remembering to do them all. It’s a lot! So by reducing the amount of decisions you make in a day, you can lighten your cognitive load. Because there actually is a limit to our ability to make decisions. Each decision uses up resources, so you want to save those resources for the important ones. Not what brand of mustard to buy or where your keys are.
Enter routines. Whatever you can make more automatic, something that just happens as part of your days, the less in your head.
So things like putting your key in the same place all the time, buying the same kind of mustard or even one step better – automating recurring purchases – frees up space mentally.
And let’s face it, multitasking is addictive. It feels good to cross things of the mental list. So every email you reply to, every minor task you complete, gives you that little rush of dopamine. But it waters down our focus.
Supporting the life you’re building
So leveraging the power of routine can really help you to focus on what matters most to you. As well as bringing a lot more intention to how your days are shaped.
Some routines I am more consistent with than others, meaning some I’ve practiced for longer. But I’ve found what has helped me most is the ‘intention’ behind the action. And just returning to them time and time again even if I forget or stop or make a mistake. So it’s not about perfection but choice and persistence. You are choosing these routines for intentional living purposefully and with the goal of integrating them over time.
Don’t expect to just decide to adopt nine new routines and change your life over night. It doesn’t work like that unfortunately. It takes time to build them into your life, reflect and adjust as necessary. You may decide that something you started doesn’t actually work for you or plug it into a different time of day.
Remember, building an intentional life, takes thought and attention. So don’t get discouraged, just look for the lesson. Be curious, what are you noticing? That mindset will take you far when crafting your routines.
So here are my 9 routines for living intentionally.
1. Take time to reflect⠀⠀⠀
Even a few minutes of thought about a choice you’re about to make, how something feels or how you can shift things next time makes a big difference in being intentional. And building reflection as a way of thinking into your daily life will help you again, be more curious + notice, so you can be more intentional about the decisions you make.
2. Set boundaries with technology
This is something I’m continually working on. Because technology is such a part of our day to day, and very helpful, it’s even more important to be intentional about its use. This could be by putting away devices at certain time, working to be really present with people and having a time of day where technology use ends. Especially if you find it affects your sleep and ability to wind down.
3. Wait 24 hours before you buy
This is built in impulse control. It gives you time to think about the purchase, be sure you want to make it and check if you’re being driven by another emotion. I also suggest buying only from places with a great return policy. That way if you do make a mistake, which we all do, it’s easy to reverse. Emotions are strong and really influence our choices. But thankfully they are guaranteed to change.
4. Learn to say ‘no’
This is hard for the people pleaser in us. But the better we can get at working through the discomfort of it, the happier we’ll be. Recognizing our limits and protecting our time and energy are necessary for an intentional life.
5. Schedule time for what matters
This can be challenging some weeks with our busy lives. We can lose our footing but remember, we aren’t aiming for perfection. Going with the ebb and flow of life, being flexible, will allow us to adhere to our routines more consistently than when we set the bar too high. So even if it ends up being a walk in the morning instead of a 30 minute workout, remember, that doesn’t define your life. It’s just a day or a week. Other weeks can be filled with more but getting in the routine of scheduling makes the space for it.⠀
6. Regularly declutter
Keeping clutter at bay creates time and space and feels good. Plus little consistent action maintains all your initial work if you did a big declutter. If you’re working to lessen the amount of stuff in your home, a little action still adds up. Plus we need to get in the routine in intentional living of thinking about our stuff and making decisions about it.
7. Put your blinders on
It is so hard not to compare your life to someone else’s. But we are all making choices that make sense for OUR lives. So keep your blinders on, avoid distraction and stick with the choices you’ve made. And if this is feeling particularly hard, take a break from social media. Having access to people all over the world, living completely different lives, makes it difficult to not to compare. So take away the source of comparison and give yourself a chance to focus on your own life. Also dipping into a gratitude practice counteracts these feelings quickly!
8. Meditation or mindfulness practice
A regular meditation practice helps to tune into being really present and make choices from an intentional place. It allows space for that curiosity and noticing. We can observe and not just react and slow down our decision making. Plus it allows us to be really in our lives, enjoying it, feeling it, which lets us live in an intentional way.
9. Self care matters
You can’t pour from an empty cup so take time to take care of you, so you can show up for your life. Feeling good and being rooted in a healthy mindset are pieces of an intentional life. Because if part of the goal isn’t feeling good, than what is?
The more we can embed in our daily lives that support us living in an intentional way, the easier it becomes to do that. And the more we practice thinking from an intentional place, the more all of our decisions will be rooted in intention. So we will just continue to create a purposeful life that feels really good to us and is full of what matters.
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