Creating an intentional life serves as the foundation for living a life filled with meaning and purpose. You can begin to lay the groundwork to create an intentional life with mindful writing practice. When your body is relaxed, your heart open, and your mind steady from practicing mindful writing, you make space for your most creative ideas, meaning, and purpose to emerge.
Live intentionally. Choose how your life unfolds.
You can use writing meditation in a directed way by focusing your thoughts on a particular topic, such as your intentions. Every year in January, I assess my progress with intentions from the previous year and then set clear intentions for the coming year. I reassess again in July. Writing about my intentions helps me to stay on track and make certain that I’m intentional about how I move through my life and work. Research has shown that setting clear goals can help us to stay motivated and take action toward doing what we love.
You can take the first step toward living an intentional life with mindful writing by setting aside some time to focus on your intentions. Start simple, with the question, “What matters most to me?” Try to focus on how you want to feel in your everyday. Once you have a sense of your intention regarding how you want to feel everyday, then write in response to the prompt, “What would support me to feel that way every day?”
You might also consider writing about where your time and energy go. Check in with yourself to notice whether you’re putting your time and energy toward what matters most to you or simply saying yes to whatever comes your way. Does how you’re spending your time and energy reflect what matters most to you? Write about how you feel and how it feels in your body to recognize whether or not your intentions and your actions are matching up.
Now write a list of your intentions for the coming month. Start small. If you noticed that you say yes to every opportunity that comes along but then end up feeling scattered and overwhelmed, try saying maybe, let me think about it and get back to you to every opportunity that arises during the next month and notice what happens.
Now that you’ve gotten a small taste of what it’s like to live more intentionally, you can start to imagine what it would look like if you lived intentionally every day. Write about how you imagine your life would be. Write about how you imagine you would feel if you were living an intentional life.
Here’s to living more intentionally!
Jen’s next Mindful Writing for Transformation workshop is scheduled for June 17, 2021 from 12:00pm – 2:00pm Eastern Time. For details and registration click here.