Being intentional, what is it?
“You can have intentions, and not be intentional”
Joe Price
Being intentional means that you clearly see an outcome you desire to have happen, design and plan a course of action, and then deliberately follow it. So an intentional life is defining, designing, and refining the kind of life you want to have, working that plan, and doing everything ‘with a purpose and on purpose’—including the decisions you make every day in order to live the life you truly desire.
You will learn how to live “by design—not by accident or reaction” by defining, designing, and refining the life you want.
Through Intentional Achievements™ you will learn a system to affect significant, positive behavior change in your life. You will learn the concepts of living “by design—not by accident or reaction” and, through the power of self-discovery, internalize the principles of Intentional Living to incorporate specific, habit-forming processes into your life which produce new, enduring, life-changing results.
Specifically, you will:
1. Discover how to live your life “with and on purpose”
2. Define the unchangeable core that guides your life’s choices
3. Design a clear and well-defined view of your future
4. Determine the exact strategies and actions to achieve your goals
5. Develop techniques to use your time and resources more effectively
6. Decide who you need to help you live your intentional life
7. Deploy life skills to inspire yourself and others to live life intentionally
8. Distill the emotional elements that enable your success
9. Display unwavering strength to overcome any adversity
Read about the full Intentional Success System™ HERE.
Why it’s important…
An intentional life is a more rewarding, fulfilling, and fun one. Everything you do has more significance and joy. Life is worth living. It is challenging and exciting. You attain more because you reach higher with the confidence to know you can achieve anything your mind can conceive. You know why you are here, you are enjoying the journey toward the destination of fulfilling your purpose and you are inspiring others along the way to experience for themselves what an intentional life has to offer. It’s a more challenging and exciting life because you have more confidence to step outside your comfort zone and do things you never thought you could do. It’s a life in which you know that when you make a decision you are making the right decision, at the right time, and for the right reasons. By living an intentional life you reach higher and attain more, and you do it with more balance and control.
“An intentional life is a more rewarding, fulfilling, and fun one. Everything you do has more significance and joy. Life is worth living. It is challenging and exciting. You attain more because you reach higher with the confidence to know you can achieve anything your mind can conceive.”
What does it take?
Anyone can learn the system and principles to live a more intentional life. It’s a systematic process, and since a predictable process produces predictable results, if you start at the beginning and complete it, you intentionally will get where you want to go, get what you want to get, and do what you want to do.
The first step is to:
1) decide what you want to do. A lot of people are walking around today almost robotic—sleepwalking through life, not realizing they can take control. You need to decide what you want and have the confidence to know you can get it. So, the first thing is to make a decision to say, “Yes, I want to change my life, I want to live it more intentionally, and now I want to find out how to do that.” The next step is:
2) gain the knowledge necessary to make the changes you want. You can do this by reading books, listening to tapes and CDs, and going to motivational and educational seminars or a good training program. However, that is not enough. The next steps are:
3) practice the principles and actually
4) apply the knowledge you’re learning. Since we know that “knowledge doesn’t change performance,” it takes a systematic process to break old habits and create new ones. That doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, commitment, dedication, and a willingness to be coached along the way. I don’t know of any winning athlete who doesn’t have a coach helping him or her practice the right things right. And then it takes lots of:
5) repetition. Keep doing it. Keep relearning and reapplying the intentional principles until they become second nature.
What stops us?
There are three major obstacles or challenges you will face on your intentional journey. These obstacles are tied together and affect each other. The first is old habits. The second are reactions caused by triggers. The third is your comfort zone. What would hinder you from living your intentional life is allowing your old habits, reactions, and comfort zone to keep you from following the foundational formula necessary to overcome these obstacles and live the kind of life you truly want.
There are three major obstacles or challenges you will face on your intentional journey. These obstacles are tied together and affect each other. The first is old habits. The second are reactions caused by triggers. The third is your comfort zone.
Does it take lots of discipline?
A lot of people think that going through this system and learning to implement all the tools and processes means they need to be really disciplined to do it. That’s really not the case. However, there’s a hard way of living the intentional life and there’s an easy way. If you’re going to pick the hard way you do need a lot of discipline. Here’s what I mean. If you take the hard way, you do it like this: You think of an area you want to change. You think of what you need to do differently and then you try to force yourself to do it in order to get the change you want—like exercising or dieting.
Now, because you’re forcing yourself to do it, you need a whole lot of discipline.
Discipline actually means “to bring yourself under control of a system or to create a habit of obedience to the things that you want to do.
So if you’re going to do it the hard way, you will need a lot of discipline to force yourself to follow the routine and not revert back to your old ways. This is why most people can’t stick to it.
So, what’s different about the easy way that doesn’t require much discipline? The easy way is
1) to discover and internalize your purpose for the change and
2) to see a very clear and well-defined picture of what that future looks like when you attain it. Then you
3) incorporate a passion,
4) attach a very deep internal meaning for making the change, and
5) use the clarity of that purpose, vision, passion, and meaning to help inspire and pull you to do it.
There’s very little, if any, discipline needed when you have the power of those ingredients working for you.