Intentional Living and Mothering

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My son recently sent me a text with a big question about how to live an intentional life. In this episode I’m sharing his question, my response, and how to embrace intentional living and motherhood.

As moms, we’re all trying to figure out how to make the most of this experience. How to balance  all of the different stressors and demands while also enjoying the process. It’s a lifelong practice. Read on (or listen) to learn 4 simple strategies for a more intentional life.

The Big Question

This is the text I received at 2:11 am…

Hey. This is a pretty random text, but I've been really wondering - How do you live every day to its fullest without wishing you had done something? In life, we only get to live every day once, and I can't seem to grasp how to make each day the best it could be, because regardless of what I do, there's always some alternative thing I could think of that I should have done. 

I really just wanna make the most of my college years, because they're flying by. Before I know it, I'm gonna be 21… As someone who's lived through college and has a pretty fulfilling life, it seems to me, I'd love to hear your thoughts about this. ..It also just seems so hard to stay rooted living in the present and feeling gratitude for what you have.

Wow. 

I’ve talked to a few moms about this same thing recently. There are so many things that we feel like we should do, but yet we might be missing out on the richness of the moment and living life to the fullest. 

The key to making the most of each day is intention - understanding what you want, how to get it, and bringing yourself back to the present moment over and over again.

Intentional Living

There are four ways I’ve cultivated more intention in my own life. These are all things you can do right now to start feeling better about the way you spend your days.

Work toward a goal. To me, living intentionally means having really specific goals. When I have a goal, it gives me clarity about what I'm supposed to be doing each day. I like to know what I want and where I'm going. I’ve noticed that if I don't know what I'm working toward in my life, I end up in a restless no man's (or no woman's) land, this mindless haze of nothingness. 

Some of my goals over the years have been to be a really present and loving mother. To have a good marriage. To have a strong body. A beautiful home. A meaningful career. To make money. To travel. To have good friends. To be honest with myself and others. To be helpful to others. To grow as a person - especially in feeling less insecure. To have fun. 

Having a goal, meaning, and purpose helps me to structure my days. 

You don’t need to think of yourself as a super ambitious person (I’m not). Intention doesn’t have to be big. But it requires that you look at what you want, and how you can make it happen. And sometimes you have to ask yourself really hard questions to figure it out.

Chase a feeling. In addition to my goals, I’m also really intentional about how I want to feel in my life. The most common feelings that I chase are joy, fun, and lightness (though I love seriousness, too). For a long time, I had a lot of anxiety, so I was chasing calm. Now, from that calm place, I want to feel joy. 

I also want to feel proud of myself and my work. I want to feel grateful. So I work a lot on my mindset - practicing thoughts that make me feel these things. 

Maybe the feeling you're chasing is peace, purpose, achievement, quiet, power, or knowledge. It can be whatever it is at this time in your life.

Notice when you get off track. If you’re not doing the work that is taking you toward your goal. If you’re not feeling the way that you want to feel, catch yourself. Stop, reflect, and ask yourself, “Why am I sabotaging my own goals?”

As I talk about in the Hierarchy of Healing series, judging yourself or beating yourself up about this will not help you make progress toward your goals. Instead, be loving, gentle, and curious with yourself. Look at your actions, your results, and gently ask yourself what’s going on.

You might notice some patterns here. Here are some of the reasons I’ve found for not doing what I say I’m going to do (and how to overcome them):

• Boredom. Bring in some fun. For example, if you’re avoiding a hard conversation in your marriage and realize you’re bored with the situation, plan a fun night at home or a project you can do together while you talk. 
• Insecurity. Work on your self esteem by finding positive things about yourself that you already know are true. Pump yourself up a little bit!
• Jealousy. If you’re thinking, “Everyone else has what I want, and I can’t get it,” ask yourself if that is even true. Decide that you actually can have the thing you want and get to work figuring out how you can make it happen.
• Resentment or anger. I have learned that when I am angry or resentful toward somebody or something, it’s probably because I have not set a good boundary or figured out what I want from that relationship. Anger is an invitation to figure out what you want, get clear about your boundaries, and put them in place. 

Train your brain to look for the good. The brain is a survival organ. It wants to protect you. So it likes to look for problems. It's always scanning for hazards so it can keep you safe. But this natural negative bias can keep you feeling scared and stuck. 

A great hack for shifting your mind toward the positive is looking at what’s going great in your life. The more you focus on what you already have, the more that good grows. You’ll see things in your life that you love and want to create more of. 

The Art of Living

My son asked me about the balance between being carefree and also taking life seriously. And I think of this as the art of living.

My best advice is to figure out what you want, how you want to feel along the way, the steps to get there, and then relax and trust the process.

If you have the belief, “I am becoming a calm mama,” and you understand what needs to happen, you are going to get to calm. You know that you need to pause if you get overwhelmed. You need to take excellent care of yourself. You need to be curious about how you’re thinking and feeling, curious about how your kids are thinking and feeling, setting limits and boundaries. 

If you can trust that you're making progress every day and that you're moving forward, then you can relax a little bit.

Trust the process that you're learning. Trust yourself. Trust that you're going to get where you want to go.

Sure, sometimes you’ll slip and become a little too carefree or too serious. No problem. Reset your goals. Get back on the path. 

I'd love to invite you to think about what you want out of this motherhood experience. 

What do you want out of this season of your life - for your family and for yourself? 
What do you want the tone of your family to be in the long term? 
What goals and feelings do you want to chase? 

When I look back at the things that I've wanted in the past, I have them. I’ve made mistakes, I’ve had hard conversations, and it hasn’t always been pretty. I’m proud of myself for getting here, and I want you to know that, even with difficult circumstances, you have a lot of power and agency in your own life. And you can design the life that you want. 

You’ll Learn:

• The big question my son asked me (and what I told him)
• Some of the goals and feelings I’ve chased over the years.
• How to figure out what you want (so you can actually get it)
• Why you may not be following through on what you want (and how to overcome those hurdles)
• The time I got jealous and climbed Half Dome

Resources:

• Episode 141- A Parenting Manifesto 
• Episode 19 - Stress-Free Summer Mindset
• Calm Mama Confessions - Getting Sober