Living with Intention: Part 1

One of my absolute favorite quotes that I have repeated to myself a million times
over since I discovered it when I was a teenager!

I’m here!  Happy very belated Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year – ouch has it really been that long since I’ve posted?!  If you follow me on Twitter, Pinterest or Google+ then you’ll know that I’m still alive and sharing content on those streams but admittedly, time and compulsion to write just have not meshed in a long time.  Part of that is due to a promotion at work that has left me very fulfilled with a much lower stress level but also lacking the ability to complete a sentence by the end of most days… 

But I often think of you and want to share things – and I do through those other mediums so please consider following me on one or all of those sites!  I read an article yesterday that I shared on Google+ on the struggle to not melt down like a toddler (while yelling at our children to stop acting the same way) when things aren’t going perfectly and it reminded me of a post I started to write to you all about living with intention. 

In this particular article, this mother talked about choosing to react differently.  One of the saying I use with my very independent children often is “You choose.  You can make a good choice or a bad choice and that will determine how everything else goes.  And you can choose to act differently even after you make a bad choice.”

So often when I say this to my kids I feel hypocritical.  While I try to live by this, I am far from perfect.  And in those moments when I lose it and let the little things get to me, I hear myself saying this to my kids and look at their faces and know they hear it too…

Learning to live with intention is hard work.  Being intentional in your personal life is even harder.  But there are huge payoffs.  Being intentional in your marriage, in your parenting, in your finances – there are benefits everywhere.

When I listen to people who talk about how they are unlucky or trouble seems to follow them or life is so unfair, when I look at the choices they make in life I often see that they do not live with intention.  Sometimes life just happens – but more often, we don’t live with intention and the things that happen are the result of our choices.

Those people around us who seem to be the luckiest people alive, who are really content with their lives – when you really examine how they live, you can most often see that they live with intention in almost everything they do.

My next post will be more on living with intention…  I intend to get it up next week, haha!

Do you feel like you live with intention?  

Are there areas you struggle more with than others?

I'd love to hear your thoughts!