What is intentional living?

I have first read about intentional living from this blog. And I fell for the idea. I fell so hard that I printed these free printables from this blog and came up with our own home binder:

Yes, that is how soon I usually “apply myself”. My favorite character from the series Breaking Bad,  Walter White, would have been very proud. Haha! Jk.

Seriously, yes, we have this binder sitting at home and we’re currently working on it as we prepare for the new year, new start.

What I love about intentional living:

• You live with a purpose for all life categories (faith, marriage, children, health, finances, home, etc) because you set goals for each of them. Thus, clarifying (and in personal finance, quantifying) what you want. For example, you just do not say, “I want to be richer in 2015”. Instead, you will have to declare not just by saying but also by writing it down, “I want to have an additional P40,000 in our emergency fund”, followed by an action plan “by saving P1,667 every payday.” Thus, your goals are SMART goals.

• You keep priorities and goals in check because just like goal setting activities and performance reviews at work, you go back to your list of goals in each of life categories and check whether you’re on the right track. If not, then you may need to adjust. Using the example above, you may need to lower the target amount from P40,000 to  P30,000 because it may be too high for you to keep up as you may also be paying debts at the same time. Thus, again, remember your goal is to have SMART goals. You must be flexible.

Why I root for intentional living:

• You will have fewer regrets. Thus, there will be less instances of “I should have done this or that”.

• You will be healthier in all aspects (physically, emotionally, and spiritually).

• You will become more focused in getting what we want.

• You will be happier.

And because I love to share new things that I think will be useful to everyone, I delivered a speech in one of our Toastmaster’s meetings about intentional living and shared some slides such as below:

When I asked the audience this question, most of them answered "No."

The "No" answer was pretty understandable because I don't think  we've ever thought about setting goals for these categories and having an action plan to attain them. I heard some gasps when they saw this list. haha!

Then I showed this slide and discussed how to intentionally live (set goals and reviews) and why they must listen to me (and this big idea. hihi.) and do it.

So after presenting my points to persuade them (assuming that I really did persuade them), I'll ask this same question next year and I'll be confident that their answer would be a big "YES" because they intentionally lived. :)

It felt good sharing it. And so I hope that by posting this, I get to reach out to an individual or two, and inspire to read and do intentional living. :)