Honoring Your Time, Living with Intention

 

I am choosing to live my life with Intention on a daily basis, as I mentioned before in a previous post my word for 2018 is Intention.
It's not easy, I'll be honest.
It would be a lot easier to get back into the habits that felt comfortable but weren't serving my purpose or goals. Similiar to when you create a new goal of being healthier, with food and exercise. It's hard to create that new habit but it's only the creating of the habit that is hard. Once the habit of meal prepping and carving out time in your schedule to exercise is a part of your routine, it no longer feels hard.

What does living with intention look like on a weekly basis? I am taking weekly inventory of how we are spending our time and making room in our busy schedules to spend time with the people we love and care about but have lost sight of because they aren't immediately in front of us. Like a lot of people we get swept up into the daily living; work, kids' activities, dog walks etc. If we don't pencil in the time to see these people that we love and care about but don't happen to be one of the faces we run into as we go about our lives, we hardly see them.

Maybe you feel the same way, you are raising kids and absorbed in practices and games and your time is spent with the other parents you sit next to on the bleachers. Or maybe you feel absorbed in your career and all of your time is spent at work and then getting drinks with other staff members afterward to shrug off the day and decompress. This is life, this is being in that comfortable place of habits. But the question I propose to you is- Is this serving your purpose? If you were a company would your intention of how you spend your time be in line with your mission statement? It wasn't for me and that's why I am making this change in my life.

We are making the time to see those faces that we lost sight of and care about, even if that means driving to a halfway point to have a meal together for a few hours. Twice we have done exactly that this month. For my mother-in-law's birthday, we drove halfway to meet her for lunch and yes, it would have been ideal to spend a weekend together but with the boys' schedules right now of classes and musical rehearsals, it's just not possible. That lunch with her felt really special. I felt present and happy to be with her and my wife on a Wednesday afternoon, breaking up our normal weekly routine. We also met up with my cousins who live outside of Philadelphia, we met halfway in a little sleepy boat town for lunch. We laughed and ate and talked truth. I don't think I've laughed that much in a long time. It was so good for our souls to connect with like-minded people and share our stories.

Intention lives in the choosing, being mindful of where our energies are going. Who and what are occupying the time slots on our calendars. Choosing how you spend your time and with whom is possible for all of us. We deserve to make living with intention a priority in our lives. How will you do it?