Deliberate, Intentional

I was looking back over my posts since starting this blog and how often I used the words or implied the concept of being deliberate and intentional stood out to me. In this week’s post I would like to share a few thoughts, some of which are in my other posts, about being deliberate and intentional in your life.

What Do I Mean

I don’t believe any one of us can control every aspect of our lives. I have spent most of my adult life trying to do so and failing at it repeatedly. You would think I would learn after so many failed attempts but I keep trying to do it. Maybe some day…

Being deliberate and intentional in your life is really about having an idea of who or what you want to be and anytime you have the opportunity, making decisions that keep your life on the path to that destination. I’m not talking about phrases like knowing what you want to be when you grow up. To me, it’s much more than that and it is multi-dimensional.

Below I’ll share four ideas to get you thinking about your own life journey. As you read these, I hope you will realize that none of these are a destination in and of themselves. It’s more of a focus on the journey to a far distant destination. I also hope you will come up with your own areas where you want to be more deliberate and intentional so that you can stay on your own path.

It’s also important to just recognize the fact that your path or journey will most likely not be a straight one. There will be many course corrections along the way. You may even need or want to change paths (do so deliberately). So please do not assume that once you make decisions that you won’t have to be flexible and change.

Core Values

I’m not going to go into too much detail on this one as the topic is so broad and different for each person. So let me just talk about my own life. My core values definitely are an off-shoot from my childhood. When I look back at key lessons I learned in my youth, I can see how they still impact me today. Whatever core values you identify as key to your life and journey will continue to influence you and generations to come.

It is important that you take a look at your core values or beliefs on a regular basis and see if you are in alignment with them. It is my experience that if you get too far off your desired path, you are also probably out of alignment with these values and you should find ways to get realigned.

I also believe that you need to be deliberate in how your core values are formed, how orby whole them are influence and how those values influence your life. Don’t leave your core values to chance. Don’t let others dictate to you your own core values. Find them for yourself. Once you do, let those core values be the foundation for all you do.

Who Do You Want to Be

Notice that this doesn’t say what do you want to be. This is about the type of person that you want to see yourself as and to a much lesser degree, what type of person do you want others to see you as. This definitely builds off of your core values.

In an earlier post I wrote about my Grandpa Tony and how he was always there for me and was a great example of someone willing to serve others. In no way do I think I even come close to being the kind of selfless servant he was to anyone in need but I try. I have always sought to be there for my family and friends and to do anything I can to help them.

I also want to be the kind of person that makes a meaningful difference. That doesn’t require a specific career or profession. It could mean being a good neighbor, strengthening a friend, serving in your church or community. There are a thousand ways to make a difference so I look for those opportunities.

Practical Aspects

This is where a lot of what the world calls dreams and goals comes in. This is also where I believe the most changes and flexibility exist. Let me give an example from my life.

After we first got married, we lived in a decent sized metro area. I had a great job and we were doing pretty well. My wife was able to stay home with the kids and we had a good balance between family, work, church and other priorities in our life. Things were very good but we decided we wanted to be more adventurous and explore what other places in the world had to offer. So I jumped at an opportunity to move to one of the largest metro areas across the country. We thought we would have more of the things we loved doing: theater, sports, other activities and that it would give us an opportunity to learn and grow as a family.

We loved the ten years we spent in that area. We made great friends and found a pretty good balance between all of our priorities. But it was definitely not what we thought it would be. What I didn’t take into account were all of the things that came along with living in such a large area. Long commutes, traffic in general, being far away from extended family and the pressure that came with that, cost of all the fun things we thought we wanted to do - these are just a few of the unexpected things that came up.

Now we have gone in almost the complete opposite direction. We are back closer to our extended family, in a very small town. All of those things we struggled with are gone. But we have also given up some of those things that we thought were important but we now realize really weren’t. Life is much simpler now and we are very happy with the current state of life.

I share this example to show how important it is to make deliberate decisions and know what outcome you want to get from them. In both of these moves, they were deliberate decisions on our part.

I also share it to show how you shouldn’t and don’t have to make a decision and then never be able to course correct from it. I would not trade the time we spent in the large metro area. If I could go back I would do it again because we grew tremendously as a family and as individuals during that time. It also help us reset some of our previous priorities and that is so important for the stage of life that we are in now.

This isn’t just about where you live. It’s also about deciding what kind of lifestyle you want to have. Big house or small house? City or rural? Big yard or no yard? Do you want to spend money on traveling or do you like to have things in your life? These are all decisions that can help you stay on or deviate from your path or journey.

Career, Profession, Life Focus

After you have some good idea of where you stand with these three areas, take a step back and decide how/if a job, career or profession even fit into journey. Maybe you need to make a minor change or maybe you are way off course out of convenience. Or maybe what you are doing today is just a stepping stone. Some of the jobs I have had in my life were simply a matter of convenience and many times they were just a means to an end. Working in fast food, as a security guard at a warehouse or even for the campus recreation department in college were those types of jobs.

Once we started our family, I had to make decisions about my ability to support my family and that drove a lot of the career decisions I made. It tied back into wanting to be there for may family, not just from a financial perspective but also as a husband and father. That meant I couldn’t really take the kind of job or opportunity that would require me to travel most of the time, even though back then I thought that would be great.

More recently, we decided to relocate our family. That meant having a conversation with my employer and seeing tif that would be compatible with my positions and opportunities. Luckily for me, it was in alignment at the time.

These are some of the decisions I had to make over the last couple of decades. Your path may be different and it should be. But if you take the time to evaluate opportunities against your core values and who you are striving to become, it helps bring clarity.

Summary

These are just four of the areas that can help you to stay on your desired path during your journey. It all starts with core values. Core values lead to a focus on who you are trying to become. Add to those the type of temporal life you want to have (I”m not just talking about being rich or poor, famous or unknown) and then that can help you determine what type of career, profession or even other focus you will have in your life.

Whatever your path is, make it a deliberate one. Don’t leave it to chance. Leaving it to chance means you are placing your happiness and life in the hands of others. Being deliberate, gives you a big say in how your journey goes.