Setting Intentions, Experiencing Joy

Reclaiming Your Days and Creating Space

How often do you set intentions? Or are you running from appointment to appointment, meeting to meeting, kid’s activity to kid’s activity – barely squeezing in moments to breathe, eat, or rest? It becomes a habit, a way of living existing. Next thing you know, you’re wondering where your day, week, or year went. Have you ever found yourself here? It’s exhausting and depleting. And it leaves little room for us to experience joy.

I spent many years existing like this. It was never an intentional choice, but rather something I fell into over time. Our culture is one that values busyness. It is one that teaches us busyness equals productivity, and productivity equals success. Yet, if that is true, why do so many of us feel empty, lost, and utterly spent at the end of each day?

In the midst of the chaos and busyness, I realized the lack of joy in my days. I realized the motions I went through repeatedly, often without question, usually without intention. Certainly there are things we need to do in a day that may feel like busyness; things like picking up dry cleaning, grabbing some groceries, sending a package. Those are just the tedious errands, with purpose, often required to sustain us. And for the most part, we can’t just cut them all out. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t take a closer look at how we spend our time, our days.

With one life to live, I wanted to live it joyfully and with intention. I wanted to really live it. And love it. And to do so, I knew I needed to make some changes. But what did that mean? What did that look like? What exactly was an intention? Was it a goal? A check list of sorts?

Nope.

Goals and checklists, if not created with intention, become steps to busyness. I realized that setting intentions was really more of an attitude or state of mind. It was a way of being. An approach to the way I wanted to do life. It wasn’t a list of accomplishments I wanted to achieve. It wasn’t items to cross off a list.

To find joy, I needed to create it. Recognize it. Make space for it. And I couldn’t possibly do that, if I kept running from one thing to another, without intentional thought, or room for breath and stillness. I knew I’d continue to feel simultaneously empty and exhausted, if I didn’t intentionally and with purpose, make changes to my life. And those changes to my life, started with changes to my days.

It started with me spending time in stillness and reflection. With ten minute meditations and journal writing. With culling my schedule like I cull my closet, purging the things that no longer bring me joy (hat tip: Marie Kondo). Of course I couldn’t clear my schedule of all things which inhibit joy (back to that grocery shopping mentioned earlier), but I could be more intentional with how I spent my time, who I spent it with, and ensure I carved out space for stillness, reflection, meditation, and REST. I’ve also learned the importance of making space for anxiety, and all that comes with that. The point is I keep having to re-learn, is the importance of making space for your needs. Whether those needs are for more joy, or to feel all the hard and painful feels. It’s how we heal, and grow, and it’s how we human.

If you’re finding yourself running from thing to thing, collapsing in exhaustion at the end of the day, with little joy to speak of – I’d challenge you to explore how much intention you’re putting into each day. If in doing so, you realize you’ve had no intention in your days – give yourself grace. It’s how most of us have been existing, and now it’s time to start living. Create space for yourself. Cull your day. Reflect on what you need to do each day vs. what you’ve been doing out of habit. Make a list, look at your calendar of days past and days to come. What did you say yes to that is a choice, but one you didn’t make based off intention and joy? Make changes, make space.

You are worthy of stillness, rest, and breath. You don’t have to earn it at the end of each day, after the to-do list is done. But you do need to make space for it.

Set your intentions, experience your joy. You are worthy of it, as you are. Now. In this moment.