Living an Intentional Life: Identifying Purpose and Priorities

It is no surprise to many that I am a very creative, driven, and full of purpose gal. I have lots of big dreams, deep core values, and absolutely work towards ensuring my priorities stay in line. But I have never set to organize all of those things. For some reason I’ve always felt like defining purpose, goal setting, and routines were restrictive. And I didn’t want to restrict myself, so I never did it. 

Having Levi has forced me to re-evaluate a lot of things. Becoming a mom has not only forced me into finding routines, it has also led me to pursue living an intentional life ever more than I was before. It is easy in life to say yes to far too much and end up finding yourself burnt out, stressed out, and continually feeling empty. None of those qualities allow you to pour into the people in your life who matter to you most and in reality, you end up wasting so much emotional, mental, and physical energy on things that in the end don’t really matter much to you at all. And all of this can happen without you even realizing it. 

It is so easy for me to say I never have time for anything, but when I take an honest look at how I spend the hours in my days, it is deeply convicting. How much of my time is wasted on things that aren’t my priorities? How much of my time is wasted on things that aren’t necessarily important to be doing right now? How much of my time is wasted because I am not using my time efficiently? Turns out, quite a bit. 

It started with me finding sanity and freedom in a nightly routine and eventually working on a morning routine. Having a routine has helped me actually find more time and take up less mental capacity in my head having to remember all those things – I just do them without thinking. It has allowed me to be more productive, get things done much quicker, and give me some time at the end of the evening to do something like take a bath or read. 

Next, I sat down and worked on fleshing out vision for my life. I worked on identifying my purpose and writing a mission statement for my life based upon that purpose. From that, I established my priorities for this season of life I am in right now. I explored what I needed to let go of in order to keep those priorities in line. And I set some action items or goals in order to ensure those priorities are being nurtured. 

The more I dive deep into these things, the more I realize they are actually very freeing. They make decision making so much easier because they give me a framework in which to weigh every single decision. Either that thing adds to my life and purpose and serves those things or it doesn’t. It also allows me to “let go” of a lot mentally. I didn’t realize that I was holding onto a lot of mental stress by not writing these things down. Mental stress is extremely draining and often we don’t even realize what a drain it is on our life.

My routines have allowed me to go into autopilot and not have to remember every little thing in order to get out the door in the mornings – it has become something that I just do without thinking. And at nights when I am feeling like there’s a lot on my mind I will do a “brain dump” in a notebook of everything that’s on my mind. Both of these things allow there to be less stuff clogging up my brain in the evenings and because of it, I go to sleep better. I don’t lay awake at night thinking about every little thing or worrying. All my intentions, thoughts, goals, things to remember, etc. are written down and have a place where they will either be fleshed out and turned into actionable, achievable goals or intentions or they’ll just sit there holding space in my brain dump notebook. 

Who knew the simple act of sitting down and fleshing out a vision for my life, identifying my purpose, setting priorities, establishing routines, and writing things down could be literally so life changing? 

I am honestly and truly amazed that something so simple can be so life changing. The very things I used to resist and rebel from have now become the things I crave and the things that have helped me be effortlessly more productive all while taking up less mental energy. 

We all want that life where we can make decisions easier and not have the guilt of saying NO weigh on us. A life where we find more joy and less stress. So – in case you’ve never sat down and done these things either – I wanted to share some of my favorite resources that I’ve been utilizing in order to life a life of intention: one that has vision, a clearly defined purpose, and goals that will actually be met. Sounds amazing, right? 

I guarantee if you start digging around or listening to the resources I’ve listed below you’ll find something that speaks to your season of life right now. Something simple that you can do in order to start on a path to living life with much more intention. 

RESOURCES

PODCASTS

The Purpose Show – Allie Cassazza

Mother Like a Boss – Kendra Hennessy

Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Simply Life on Purpose – Kelsey Vankirk

This is Your Life with Michael Hyatt

BLOGS

Allie Cassazza 

Mother Like a Boss

Kelsey Vankirk

Lara Casey

Cultivate What Matters

Gretchen Rubin

BOOKS

(To be finished)