An Intentional Life Read online

  An Intentional Life: Five Foundations of Authenticity and Purpose lays out the five building blocks that will enable you to shape a life of purpose. Placing awareness, reflecting, choosing, acting, and allowing experience are at the heart of shaping a life of purpose. These foundations are not mutually exclusive and each require skill-building. Unfortunately, we often engage in them automatically and in ways that do not serve our best interests. By developing practices in each of these areas, you will gain clarity on the direction you want your life to move, be able to steer your life in that direction, and enjoy its unfolding.

  You will likely never get out of your own way entirely; that’s part of being human. Instead, as you learn to modify unhelpful thoughts and behaviors, new ways of engaging in life naturally come to the fore. You then practice noticing and utilizing these new ways of behaving and build upon them. Until, ultimately, you begin to desire placing more attention and effort toward those things that make you feel alive and in concert with yourself, and spend less time putting energy into things that may be compelling but do not contribute to your life’s purpose. You now have developed valuable skills at moving toward your dreams that are aligned with what makes you most authentic.

  As you live more intentionally, something else also occurs. The external world starts providing opportunities that you never imagined. This is because at every stage of development you can only imagine possibilities within your current knowledge base and world view. Experiencing yourself as authentic, you more readily recognize new opportunities, welcome them, and utilize them. You’ll find that, with your new ways of perceiving the world, you already have what you need to shape a life of purpose.

  Our personal communities desperately need people to live intentionally. Only when this happens can we, as communities, as nations, and as a planet, shift from an ongoing cycle of reactivity in response to enormous challenges that require evolved engagement to resolve. A small group of thoughtful, intentional human beings can change the world. No amount of scientific knowledge, no temporarily thriving economy, no technological breakthrough can meet our challenges. Yet if more people commit to an intentional life, no challenge is insurmountable.

  The Five Building Blocks

  The building blocks of an Intentional Life are Awareness, Reflecting, Choosing, Acting and Allowing. You already employ them every day. But you might not make them the object of conscious inquiry or engage them in a way that effectively serves your most authentic self. If you develop specific practices around these core areas, which this book will help you do, your skill at consciously employing them strengthens and deepens, and they become powerful tools for living. The building blocks are not intended to be mutually exclusive categories; they don’t occur in isolation. It helps, though, to take each one of them as a separate object of inquiry and practice.

  Awareness is intentionally bringing consciousness to something. With increased awareness, you are an alert observer of your thoughts and feelings as they are happening. You are also aware of how you receive the outside world as it comes to you through all of your senses. In contrast, without awareness, these same things, the substance of all that influences you, passes through the gates of your attention willy-nilly and unnoticed. Unnoticed, you are not in a position to do anything about it.

  Awareness cannot be separated from the other four foundations and is the mother lode of experiencing yourself as authentic. Bringing increased awareness to everything you do is at the very core of being the central actor in your life. In this section, you will have the opportunity to examine your core values and the importance of aligning them with your choices and actions. You will also explore the difference between what you desire and what makes you happy to help you escape an endless cycle of searching for more. The essential skill of pausing is introduced, an anchoring practice of stillness, which brings you back to what is happening in the present moment. You will be encouraged to observe the subtle fundamental elements of your experience, those of constriction and openness, which enable you to cultivate the conditions that foster a greater sense of vitality and aliveness.

  Reflecting, the second building block of intentional living, requires practice in more directly noticing your experience, which allows it to more meaningfully impact you. Practicing the invaluable skill of asking yourself the most relevant, helpful questions, and then sincerely listening to your responses, enables you to cultivate a deeper understanding of how to effectively shape your life. This section focuses on how thought and language both clarify and obfuscate a deeper understanding of your experience and your world, as well as how they both connect and separate you from yourself. Intentional practices on reflection will make your thinking more creative, and help you make better choices and implement effective action. This section explores how to bring skillful reflection to all experience, expanding it rather than limiting it.

  Choosing is the third foundation of an intentional life. The rapid-fire assessment of conditions that exert influence over your decisions usually happens outside of awareness. This section aims to help you bring greater conscious awareness to your choices. You are offered tools to help you become a better decision-maker, including how to make room for greater possibility and how to envision concrete steps toward big dreams. The greatest impediment to choosing wisely is fear, and this section helps you work with fear so that it doesn’t interfere with making important decisions. Choosing with intention frees you to take meaningful risks without the pain of future regret.

  Acting wisely is the fourth foundation of an intentional life and this section explores how to know how and when to act to in order to build the kind of life and world you want to see. Wise effort includes acting as well as restraint from action, non-striving action, and being proactive rather than reactive. To be an effective actor, value effort over outcome, which helps you commit resources while remaining flexible in how you move toward your goals. Intentional practices in acting help you know when to persist and when to move on, and move more easily through natural and inevitable periods of stuck-ness.

  Allowing, the fifth foundation of living intentionally, is challenging for many of us because it is counterintuitive to Western habits of mind. The more you allow (by letting go of all the unnecessary overlay that interrupts experience), the more possibility that exists. Because you are hard-wired to do, think, and act, allowing can initially feel passive, but it is actually very active. The skill of allowing, in combination with a ground of intentional practices in the other four foundational areas, leads to the state of abundance. Abundance is the remarkable byproduct of an intentional life, infusing all experience with purpose and deeper meaning.

  p

  Each of the book’s sections explain central concepts in the foundational areas of awareness, reflecting, choosing, acting and allowing. There are exercises within the chapters for you to try out different intentional practices. At the end of the book, there is a list of intentional practices by chapter that can be used for future reference. Even though each chapter highlights one core area, the practices associated with each chapter at the end of the book will reflect all core areas in order to heighten the learning experience.

  Intentional practices are generative: the examples provided in this book are by no means exhaustive. With continued effort, you will create your own flexible repertoire of intentional practices that become woven into the fabric of your life.

  I am a psychologist by profession. Throughout the book, along with personal examples, I present client vignettes as a way to bring the ideas in the book to life. In order to protect anonymity, names and details have been changed and clients are presented as a composite.

  You can approach the book in different ways. Simply reading the book with focused attention is an intentional practice. To deepen the experience, commit to a month, a week, or even a few days to focus on testing out the concepts and practices in each section. It helps to set aside time, as little as ten minutes, to practice each day. If you carve out t
ime first thing in the morning, it can help you implement intentional practices throughout your day. Try out the practices in different environments—at home, at work, during uncommitted or play time. Notice where and when they are easier, and more challenging, to implement.

  Practices are only helpful in the doing of them. It is important that testing out the ideas in the book not be primarily an intellectual exercise. For example, after trying one out, you might ask yourself, “Is this helpful?” If so, “In what ways is this helpful?” And, “What might be a next step for me?” The exercises offered are intended to support your efforts as you develop ways to personalize your path toward greater authenticity and purpose. As in all forms of learning, the more varied the modalities in which you practice, the more diverse your understanding and the more integrated and deep-seated the knowledge you obtain is.

  If you find yourself reading while not feeling engaged, try to reengage or consciously put the book down and pick it up later. Take a break and do something that engages you. For example, listen with absorption to music or a podcast, or go to that museum exhibit you are curious about. Read another book, have a conversation with a dear friend about things that really matter, or take a walk somewhere where there are trees. Work at the pace that best suits you, but stay at it. The more personal your approach to intentional practices—made personal by concretely testing out the ideas for yourself—the more you will get out of it. Eventually you will develop your own repertoire of practices that you will have at the ready for anything that arises.

  It is my hope that this book will be a helpful companion in clarifying and moving toward your deepest aspirations and shaping your life accordingly. Take from it what is helpful and integrate it with other ways of learning. While becoming increasingly authentic is a deeply personal process, you can’t do it by yourself. Of course, practicing intention in the stillness of solitude is invaluable. At the same time, you will more likely continue to practice intention by sharing your efforts with others as a means of support. Finding friends and a community that support this lifestyle is so important. Integrating intentional practices into your daily experience takes time. Stay at it! You will likely see some benefits early. But the lasting benefits often sneak up on you, when you discover you have crossed a threshold into a qualitatively different place. In this new place intentional practices are now central and you are more attune to yourself and the world around you.

  Part I

  Awareness

  Chapter 1

  What Matters Most and

  Core Values

  The most important thing is finding out what is the most important thing.

  Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

  What do you care deeply about? What moves you from within and enlivens you? What does the world most need from you? Your answers to these questions speak to what most matters to you. What are the first things that come to mind when you ask yourself what matters most—your relationships, long-term goals and aspirations, your values? To live with intention, be clear about what matters most and make time for it. This might sound obvious, but daily pressures and responsibilities make it difficult to hold what matters in the front of your awareness. Too often we are in a state of waiting until there is more time and resources to commit to priorities. Don’t wait. Meaning doesn’t find you. You create it by prioritizing what matters.

  If you made a pie chart, how much time would be allotted to what you hold most dear? And of the time you spend, what percentage of that is engaged, quality time?

  Exercise: A Way to Explore What Matters Most

  This three-part exercise is intended to help you connect with what matters to you. It is best done in two or three separate sittings with a short period of time in between. Write your responses as if no one else will be reading them.

  1) Take three pieces of paper and fold each in half. In the left column, write one thing that matters most to you. Do this relatively quickly. Don’t edit yourself—continue without stopping. Write a paragraph or so for each thing that matters most. Include what it is that makes what you have chosen so important to you. When you can no longer write without pausing, put down the paper and revisit it later.

  2) At least an hour (and up to a day) later, return to the first part of the exercise and unfold each of the three pages. Take a couple of minutes to reflect on what you wrote on each page, one at a time. In the right column, next to what matters most, write down ways in which you make time for what is in the left column. Do you give it priority? If so, how? Be as specific as possible. Think of as many ways as possible.

  3) For the final part of this exercise, turn each of the three pages over. For each item that you hold most dear, write down one thing that you will do in the coming three weeks to affirm its importance. Each week, follow through with one. It does not have to be a grand gesture, but it needs to be sincere and heartfelt. Carry it out in a way that honors what matters most to you. After you follow through each week, notice what thoughts and feelings arise from having done so.

  To prioritize what matters most to you, it helps to think about how these things personally impact you. What is it about your important relationships that you value? How do these relationships impact you and add to your life? For example, you might value your best friend because you can always be yourself around her. Or your child evokes feelings of tenderness and an intimacy you never before experienced. Your career may be what matters most because it challenges you and you feel valued for your talents. You love running because it is the only time you can get away from a constant stream of thoughts and relax. Maybe meditation matters most because it enables you to be more present to your life every day. Or climate change matters most because without a planet everything else that matters is moot.

  Disappointment Creates Opportunity

  Sometimes it seems that no matter how hard we try, we just can’t manifest what we most value. Maybe we can’t break into a chosen field or get the job we’ve trained for and worked so hard to get. Or we are tired of dating and being single. When we are disappointed that things are not what we thought they’d be, or ought to be, there is the opportunity to open up to things as they really are.

  There is great freedom in this path. This is a true starting point for growth and transformation. It is an opportunity to evaluate if what we believe matters most is really true. If it is, for goodness sake, continue in our efforts to manifest it. At the same time, it is also an opportunity to evaluate how we are approaching what we most want.

  p

  Stefan wanted to be an actor. He studied hard and graduated from a respected acting school. He had been going on auditions for months, with close calls, but nothing had come through to fruition. Stefan was angry and resentful. He believed he had done everything he could and that life was unfair.

  Stefan came to work with me when he was feeling depressed and was re-evaluating his life’s course. I asked him if being an actor still mattered most to him and he said yes. The next step was to explore what it meant to Stefan to be an actor. It turned out that he loved the work, and when he had the opportunity to act, he just knew that this work could give his life purpose. He believed his inability to stick the landing at auditions was an unfair reflection of his worthiness as an actor and as a person. We all want external validation, but Stefan was giving too much power to it. He was making his self-worth contingent upon it and this was thwarting him.

  I encouraged Stefan to take concrete steps to practice his craft in other ways. Could he reconnect with colleagues from acting school, participate in local theatre on the outskirts of New York City, see more theatre, or get cast as an extra? Taking steps when you feel stuck or thwarted creates internal space, which helps you persist and create new opportunities. Stefan was initially resistant to these ideas because they were not how he imagined his career ought to be progressing. Yet he was having difficulty coming up with his own next steps for himself. So he was willing to take a step despi
te his resistance.

  The first thing he did was reconnect with two friends from his acting program. It was emotionally difficult to reach out because he felt like a failure. But as soon as he did, he experienced camaraderie and support. They had stories similar to his own in that they hadn’t had success at finding paid work. But they did have ideas and were involved in acting in different venues. Stefan felt less like a failure and was motivated to find acting opportunities that he had not before considered. He felt humbled when he reflected on how he thought of himself as special and different from his fellow actors. Stefan previously thought this belief helped him persist, but now understood that it did not. By spending time with his acting school friends, and being introduced to other actors, he saw how many talented people were also trying to break in as actors. And they were willing to make the most of opportunities to practice their craft and make connections while doing so. Stefan believed in his talent, but he no longer needed to compare himself or feel superior to others.

  As Stefan pursued and created opportunities to act, he felt more connected to the reason why he took up acting in the first place. This affirmed, in a very personal way, how acting mattered to him. He was able to value the process of acting as central to his well-being over the result of a particular audition. Stefan now understood how his earlier belief that things ought to be different than they were got in the way of staying open and creating opportunity. The initial disappointment that brought him through the doors for therapy became a chance to dig deeper and understand his motives, and to pursue his dream of acting without the emotional albatross of resentment and feeling that life was unfair.