Life Design is a creative, iterative, human-centered problem-solving methodology that can be applied to navigate change and transition throughout life, according to The Phyllis Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking at Tulane University.
As such, Intentional Life Design embodies this methodology, the only difference is, it is done intentionally and mindfully.
In this manner, why is intentional life design such a beneficial methodology for artists, writers, creators, and makers?
For creative minds at the threshold of genius, if we are not living an intentional life, then we are living in default and we are spending our days going through the motions while our emotions are flip-flopping all over the place.
Living in default is a common experience for many people including creatives, artists, writers, and makers. Like many others, we have been conditioned to go through life without considering the power of our intentions.
We go through the motions, without truly understanding that we have the power to shape our lives in ways that are richer, fuller, and more vibrant.
When we do learn about the power of our intentions, it can be difficult to know how to implement it in our lives.
The first step in this process is to develop an understanding of what our intentions are. Do we really know what we want?
We can start by considering what our core values and goals are, and how they impact our daily life. This can help to bring clarity not only about what our intentions are but also about what we value.
Once we have a clear idea of our intentions and values, we must find practical ways to manifest them. This can include:
- setting achievable goals,
- creating a plan of action,
- making conscious choices and decisions in our daily lives,
- and reflecting on our decision and actions so that we can make adjustments and changes when needed.
It’s also important to remember that living an intentional life involves much more than goal-setting and action-taking. We must also be mindful of how and with whom we spend our time. We must consider what and to whom we give our energy on a daily basis.
Living an intentional life requires that we take responsibility for our lives, rather than remaining in a state of default. It requires that we become more mindful and present in our lives.
By living an intentional life, we can create meaningful and fulfilling experiences that bring joy, promotes well-being, and boosts life satisfaction.
When We Discover We’re Not Living An Intentional Life…
August 31, 2021, at Global Cafe around 1:00 p.m.
“My days are running together. I can’t tell Tuesday from Wednesday,” my friend said releasing a long sigh as she swirled her spoon around her soup. “It’s not just the pandemic. I think I was more inspired at the height of it. Still, I don’t think I’m getting anywhere.”
“I know the feeling,” I said. “I remember around mid-2019 feeling as if I’d lived the same year three years in a row. It was after my father passed. I’d attended so many funerals and lost so many loved ones the years just ran together.”
“I don’t think we are supposed to live like this.” She shook her head as she finally tasted a spoonful of her soup.
“We’re not,” I said. “That’s why I had to make some changes and redirect my life and I’m rerouting from time to time. Just trying to navigate things to the best of my ability.”
She nodded. “Like a navigation system. Lawd help me, Suri!” She shouted.
We both laughed and then silently ate our lunch.
Reclaiming Your Passion For Life
Redirecting, rerouting, navigating. I’m still doing it because it’s all a part of intentional living.
Living a passionate, intentional life allows you to make the most out of your creativity as you explore the fullness of life. It is a way of living that encourages us to take risks, dream big, and live on purpose.
I know what it feels like to live the mundane. I know what it’s like to wake up, go through the motions, and do stuff just because I think this is what I’m supposed to do. Additionally, I know what it’s like to walk around in default and allow trauma, fear, and complacency to rule my day.
I know what it’s like to feel comfortable and uncomfortable simultaneously. I’ve had those days when the comfort zone felt safe but it wasn’t satisfying.
Therefore, if I wanted to tap into that unlimited place in me, awaken the sleeping genius, and tap into the field of infinite possibilities, I had to learn to live intentionally.
I proclaimed my year of redirecting my life (#ayearofredirecting) after moving to a new city with my Sis, Roslyn–a city where we knew no one. We desired to find and design a creative living space (preferably a loft) and begin our work as Creators.
That mission was accomplished when we moved into an Urban Vertical Village. But redirecting our lives continued.
Consequently, through application and practice, I’ve learned that not only must we design the space we live in, but we must also design how we live in those spaces. Yes, intentional living mandates intentional life design.
To this effect, I’d like to share detailed benefits of intentional living and intentional life design.
Intentional Life Design Begins With Your Wildest Dreams
Furthermore, living intentionally requires you to align your words and actions with your dreams deliberately. Hence, you can develop a vision for your life and align your goals and actions with that vision.
As you embark on this journey of self-awareness and well-being, you will discover intentional living starts with acknowledging your wildest dreams long before you create a vision for yourself and take action to make it a reality.
Tapping into the field of infinite possibilities
If you are to ever tap into the field of infinite possibilities you must honor those dreams you’ve denied for so long. You may feel silly or childish acknowledging that you want to be a make-up artist or a soccer player. Goodness, you’re over 35 years old. Those dreams are impossible now, right?
Wrong. Sooooo wrong!
Who says you can’t take classes on Make-up artistry or start a local adult soccer league? You don’t have to leave your dreams behind because of age, economics, gender, or race. When you choose intentional living and focus on your dreams you discover clever and creative ways to live your dreams.
From your wildest dreams, you realize your vision of purpose in life
Yes, from your wildest dreams, you can create a vision for your life on purpose. Long before you begin setting both short-term and long-term goals and breaking them down into achievable steps, allow yourself time to let your imagination go wild.
Color your world and visualize the dream and all its intricate parts. Write it down. Don’t limit yourself. The vision will develop from the images you play with like a movie on the screen of your mind.
Creative minds flourish when living an Intentional life
Ask yourself if the decision you’re making will bring you closer to your goals or further away. With this intention, you focus to make the best decisions for your overall well-being and success.
Creative minds don’t do well in the hustle and grind, or fear and complacency. Creative minds are curious and filled with hope. That hope is actualized and that curiosity is satisfied when you know your intentions and begin to live according to your true heart’s desires.
By living with intention, you can make the most of your life, and unlock your true potential. Intentional living is the key to creating a life full of joy, passion, and fulfillment.
When You Live With Intention You Can Focus on Your Goals
Intentional Life Design helps creative minds focus on their goals and create a life they love. Taking the time to plan and design a life with intention, allows us to be more mindful in our decision-making and prioritize what’s important.
Mindful decision-making
Intentional Life Design encourages intentional and mindful decision-making. It’s important to take the time to reflect and consider the consequences of each choice you make.
This can help you prioritize what’s important and make decisions that will help you reach your goals.
A plan of action that gets results
Intentional Life Design requires a plan. Creating an action plan can help you stay focused on the steps you need to take to reach your goals. Break down each step of your plan into smaller, achievable tasks, and set realistic deadlines for yourself.
Emotional intelligence develops with intentional living
When implementing an Intentional Life Design plan you are mindful of your thoughts and feelings. It’s important to pay attention to your emotions and to acknowledge and accept them, rather than trying to ignore or suppress them.
Accordingly, you develop emotional intelligence which is critical in decision-making.
Research conducted by The University of Texas at Austin’s Counseling and Mental Health Center asserts that mindfulness can help you make better decisions and reach your goals. Their research contends that the more mindful people are, the more likely they are to make decisions that will benefit them in the long term. So, intentional life design and mindfulness can go hand-in-hand in helping you reach your goals.
Stay motivated and inspired
Somedays you aren’t inspired to stay on track with your goals or remain motivated in executing your plans. Intentional Life Design helps us stay motivated and inspired for actualization.
When you are aware and conscious of your intentions and you know “why” you are doing what you are doing, you can align your decisions and decision-making process with your vision for your life and take actionable steps to make it a reality.
Intentional Life Design Encourages Open-Mindedness
Intentional Life Design encourages creative minds to be more open-minded and explore new opportunities.
The life of artists, creators, and makers is oftentimes, hinged on unconventional thinking, and being free to explore new opportunities that ignite the soul. This is precisely what Intentional Life Design endeavors to cultivate.
Pause, reflect, and choose joy
Thus, open-mindedness requires us to take a moment to pause, step back, and reflect on what truly brings us joy. In this manner, we prioritize our well-being as we align our actions with our desires and aspirations.
Intentional Life Design is a strategy to prosper on our self-awareness journey. And we will learn on our path of life that self-discovery and open-mindedness go hand-in-hand. It implores us to dig deep within our hearts and minds, to uncover our authentic selves and authentic way of being.
Open-mindedness takes courage
And with time, dedication, and an open mind we peel back the layers, to examine our passions and interests, and to confront the fears and doubts that often hold us back.
Through this process, we gain insights and knowledge, discovering numerous opportunities that we may have never previously considered.
Venturing forward with courage, we can experience the transformation that open-mindedness brings. It is as if a veil is lifted from our eyes and we can see a new more benevolent reality in all its vibrant colors.
Open-mindedness fuels our creativity, stimulates our imagination, and propels us beyond the boundaries of what is known and accepted. And this is where open-mindedness becomes a most essential aspect of intentional living.
Without an open mind, it is difficult to visualize and feel the life we want to live.
Intentional Life Design Helps Us Become More Creatively Productive and Productively Creative
And the ability to visualize the life we want to live is crucial because creative minds are frequently faced with resistance. Resistance is a part of the creative process. Therefore, as you build your confidence to respond to resistance, it is beneficial to implore healthy methods of productivity.
Intentional Life Design provides creative minds with the opportunity to be more productive. By planning out your days, you can be more effective at executing without submitting to toxic productivity practices that disturb your peace and well-being.
Intentional Life Design Prioritizes Joy, Well-Being, Fulfillment, and Success
Your priorities say a lot about where your mind and soul are focused. Moreover, your priorities let you know what you value the most.
If you’re not experiencing joy and well-being, it’s because it hasn’t been a priority. Perhaps, your priorities have been keeping up with the neighbors and your colleagues, trying to “look” successful instead of manifesting your dreams or fulfilling your parent’s dreams for your life rather than discovering your own.
With intentional life design, you can change your priorities to fit your goals and dreams. Subsequently, you can execute daily actions consciously and mindfully.
Intentional Life Design Improves Life Management Skills
Life is messy. The creative mind is a beautiful mess. Life will never be perfect because we aren’t perfect. However, we shouldn’t allow the messy unknown to take the life out of our living.
Intentional Life Design encourages creative minds to be more organized and efficient. Creative minds can design and implement systems that work and use these systems to help us manage our lives more efficiently. And better life management skills promote well-being.
Intentional Life Design is Essential To Developing and Committing to Self-Care, Mental Health, and A Holistic Healthy Lifestyle
Now more than ever, you must make mental health and self-care a part of your lifestyle practices. Intentional Life Design enables creative minds to prioritize self-care and maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Your mental health suffers when you put your well-being last on the list. Therefore, you have to become radical about your self-care, slow down and refill your cup.
Stress is a killer and so is exhaustion. Yes, we all want to be productive, but if you are not intentional about where you put your time and energy, productivity becomes toxic productivity.
Intentional Life Design Helps Create Meaningful Relationships that Enrich Your Life
Are you taking time to build meaningful relationships? Are you nurturing and cultivating your existing relationships?
Meaningful Connections
Intentional Life Design helps creative minds to build and grow meaningful connections and relationships. You can design your life in such a meaningful way that your relationships with your friends, family, and colleagues and connections grow stronger and more profound.
These strong and supportive relationships can become an empowering community to help each maximize their potential.
Are You Living Your Life On Your Terms
And finally, if you want to live a passionate, rich, and fulfilled life, you have to ask, “Am I living my life on my terms, or am I doing, being, and having what will make others comfortable with me?”
It’s not until you get sick and tired of being sick and tired that you become bold enough to ask yourself this question. Moreover, if you must ask this question, you already know the answer.
It’s time to put the life back in your living and create the life you want to live. You don’t need permission to be great.
Along This Journey Here At Blue Lotus Living
Friends, we’re establishing early on here at Blue Lotus Living that we are a publication (sharing articles, ideas, and stories), framework (demonstrating how you can take specific lifestyle components, productivity tools, and life management strategies to design the life you want), and community of artists, creators, writers, and makers who want to promote our well-being while enhancing our creativity.
Hence, by establishing these factors, we want to share our journey with you. Our journey back to health, our journey of increasing our wealth consciousness while living in abundance, and our journey as artists, writers, creators, and makers.
We don’t want to simply tell you about Blue Lotus Living. We want to show that living an intentional life is more than possible.