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In last weeks’s post, we started to create a renewed 2020 vision by focusing on gratitude, the first of our vision focus areas: gratitude, intentionality, optimism, and faith/serenity. Together these can help us align our vision and goals to achieve greater joy, fulfillment, and purpose during one heck of a year and beyond.

I’m not sure if it’s the quarantine fatigue, or the fact that I’ve read it countless times over the last few weeks to my daughter, but Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go has been on my mind a lot lately. In addition to being an ode to resilience, optimism, and exploration, the book reminds us that we have some control over where life takes us. While it’s overwhelming to think about all the things we can’t control right now -- this virus, the economy, or our jobs -- it’s encouraging to redirect our focus and energy to the things we can control.

There is a difference between going to a store and going to a store with the intention of purchasing a specific item. In the context of 2020 vision, intentionality, our second key area, is the essence of focus. Intentionality is defined as “being deliberate or purposeful with your thoughts and actions.” Derived from the Latin word intentio, which means “directed at”, intentionality is all about consciously directing your mind and energy towards a target or goal that you want to manifest. If we determine who and where we want to be, and make decisions and cultivate habits with the deliberate goal of achieving those targets, we can literally will our aspirations and vision into reality. In short, intentionality is about doing stuff on purpose.

Below are three simple ways to sharpen your 2020 vision by mastering the art of intentionality, allowing you to use this unprecedented time to define, design, and attain a renewed sense of happiness and purpose.

Know/Learn Thyself

At its core, intentionality is all about living proactively rather than reactively; it allows life to happen for us rather than to us. However, before you can consciously create a plan and vision for your life, you need to figure out where you’re going. What do you want? What drives, defines and matters most to you?

• Discover Your Compass: Whether we realize it or not, we all have core values that determine what we believe is important, fulfilling, and meaningful. However, even though core values give our lives meaning, we rarely take the time to consciously identify which values matter. Consider your most meaningful life experience. What were you doing? How did you feel? Which core values were on display? While your personal values may not necessarily point you to an exact destination, they are a trusty compass that can help determine the right direction to go. 

• Set Up Some Milestones: While our values give our lives directional guidance, goals are practical milestones that confirm our progress in the right direction.

  • Based on your values, what are some goals that can be your milestones?

  • For every goal that comes to mind, ask, “To what extent does this align with my core values and vision,” and prioritize, as needed.

  • Goals should start off small and actionable, but should continue to stretch you over time.

    • Your goals can be as simple as starting to journal with a goal of writing down a sentence or two recap each day, or starting to exercise by walking around the block once a day for a week.

    • The best goals keep us moving forward while still being attainable.  Once you complete a goal, level up and identify the next milestone to start working toward. Maybe your journaling goes from a couple sentences to a page or two over time, or your exercise goes from walking around the block to walking or running a mile.

Act Accordingly

Now that we’ve defined what motivates us, and identified practical ways to more intently focus on the things that matter, it’s time to start acting. Acting in accordance, or better yet, in advancement of your values is how you take small steps toward living your literal best life.

• Build Conscious Habits: Habits are nothing more than daily routines and rituals triggered by a cue, prompting us to take a certain action in hopes of receiving some reward. Habits aren’t just what we do, they’re who we are. Habits are our code, how we’re programmed to behave. James Clear’s Atomic Habits shares the most effective way to build intentional habits: focus not on what you want to achieve, but instead who you wish to be. If we use Clear’s Four Laws of Behavior Change to build identity-based habits, congruent with our values, we’ll be well on our way to creating a Post-COVID life that’s personally fulfilling and successful. 

• Make Deliberate Decisions: While habits are routine, and often subconscious, decisions typically require more effort and thought, and should be approached with just as much, if not more, intentionality. Reflect on your core values, goals, and ‘who you wish to be’ when making decisions, particularly big ones. Dig deeper and for each decision ask yourself, What’s my motivation? What am I hoping to achieve or gain? And what will happen if I say no? Fully understanding and appreciating your rationale, incentives, and alternatives is the best way to make decisions that may not always be perfect, but are well-informed, deliberate, and defensible. 

Be Consistent, Be Accountable, But Give Yourself Grace

While our core values tell us which doors to seek, and our actions are the keys to those doors, consistency is what keeps those doors open long enough for us to create the outcomes we want. Consistency requires building small, empowering habits, but it also requires holding ourselves accountable and just saying no to excuses.

Even as I attempt to hold myself accountable for consistently writing, I’m quickly learning that excuses are very effective lies we tell ourselves so that whatever we aren’t doing isn’t our fault. We don’t have time, we’re too busy, or we’re just trying not to go crazy while being confined to our homes. While all of these points are valid, if our goals and habits are truly rooted in things that matter to us, we should work to find a way before trying to find an excuse.

Living with intentionality is a journey. Your values will evolve, your goals will change, and you’ll inevitably make decisions and engage in habits that aren’t necessarily aligned with either. And that’s okay. It’s okay if there are moments when we fall short and aren’t operating with precise intention. This is a continuous process. Forgive yourself, give yourself grace, but keep your eyes on the prize. Being consistently mindful of your values and intentions can prevent you from acting in ways that undermine the vision and life you want to manifest.  

By this point, COVID-19 has pushed us all outside of our comfort zones, living in a wild west of uncertainty, disruption and change, but imagine who we could be, what our lives could become, and where we could ultimately go if we made decisions and spent our time and energy mindfully rather than mindlessly. Armed with intentionality, we can use this time of forced introspection, (which feels oddly similar to Seuss’s Waiting Place) to determine the places we want to go, who we want to be and forge a path to get there! Designing and manifesting a life of intentionality may seem like a tall ask, but if we “step with care and great tact” there is no doubt we can and will succeed, “98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.” So, use this time while you’re trapped at home to define what intentionality means to you, your family, and your future, and oh, the places you’ll go.

If you enjoyed this post and would like more information on being intentional with your life, check out my posts on value and goal-based living, intentional self-care, childcare and development, and relationships.