How to Live With Intent – Process and Exercises

It would be easy to think that Life Done Differently is all about making unusual life choices like travelling in a campervan for five years instead of chasing career progression, being happily single instead of getting married and having kids, or living in a caravan instead of a house.

It is about all of that. But at the core, it is, and always has been, about something bigger. At its core, Life Done Differently is about living with intent. It’s about being awake and making conscious decisions about how I want to live instead of being on autopilot and mindlessly following the masses.

If you asked me what my biggest goal in life is, I would say, “I want to live with intent!”

Most of the time, I do a pretty good job at that. However, it might surprise many how much effort that takes. Living with intent doesn’t just happen. I need to make it happen. I need to remind myself all the time. I need to check in. I need to call myself out when I get off track and correct course.

In this world where we’re constantly bombarded with messages about who we should be, how we should want to live, what we should achieve and how we should look, it can be incredibly hard to live with intent.

Sometimes, it’s almost impossible to hear my own voice among all the noise.

After all these years, I know that! So I create space in my day to ensure I check in with myself. Journaling every morning is a big part of that and something I’ve done for many years. My daily yoga practice is a more recent addition to my day that connects me to my inner voice. But sometimes, those little daily moments aren’t enough.

I turned 40 this month, and what better motivation than a big birthday to reflect and look ahead. I wanted to use this occasion to look ahead and set the direction for another decade of living with intent.

Doing so required a bit more than the little check-ins I do every day. Over the last couple of weeks, I worked through a process to set that direction and create a vision for the decade ahead.

I thought I’d share my process with you in case anyone else feels like a big check-in to ensure you’re living with intent.

1.     Brainstorming

I started just asking myself what I want the next decade of my life to look like. Where do I want to be when I’m 50? What do I want my life to look and feel like?

The TED talk There’s More to Life than Being Happy by Emily Esfahani Smith proved super valuable during this phase. She talks about the importance of meaning and the four pillars of a good life: Belonging, Purpose, Transcendence and Storytelling. Her talk gave me the framework I needed to figure out what is already going well in my life and what I need to work on.

I printed a big A3 sheet with areas for these four pillars (you can download it here) and just started to write down thoughts and ideas for each as they came to me over a few days. I quickly realised that I’m already doing well as far as Storytelling and Transcendence go, but Belonging and Purpose need some work. So I started to write down some ideas for how I could improve those aspects. I also wrote down why I feel like I’m doing well with Transcendence and Storytelling to ensure I would keep those things in my life.

After a couple of days of populating this sheet, a pretty clear vision of what I wanted to focus on for the next decade emerged. Essentially, that vision is what I want to focus on to have a happy and fulfilling life. This includes some things I want to keep doing, some I want to stop, and some I want to start doing.  

2.     Getting specific

Once I had some ideas, I was ready to get more specific. A friend shared the framework below with me, which I found really valuable.

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Don’t worry if you find it confusing at first; I did, too. It essentially says that for change to happen, we need five things: Vision, Skills, Motivation, Resources and an Action Plan. The right column shows what happens if the one greyed out in that row is missing.

I transferred my vision and areas of focus that resulted from the brainstorming phase into the left column and then thought about the skills, motivation and resources I have or need to get to achieve the vision. Then, I created an action plan for each. I kept the action plan really simple and relatively short-term. While the vision is for the next decade, I didn’t want to commit to specific actions for more than a year.

There is no right or wrong way to do this, so just trust your heart. But here is one tip that’s worked well for me. When it comes to my vision, I focus more on how I want to feel instead of specific achievements. For example, one of my visions is “Being a confident and capable hiker”. I could have chosen something like “complete x hike in under x hours”, which is more specific. But I think visions are more powerful when they connect to feelings rather than particular goals (action plans are the place for specifics, in my opinion).

I turned this framework into another A3 sheet (download it here) and filled it in.

At this point, I had my vision for the next decade and an action plan for the next year. I could have stopped here. But I decided to add two more steps.

3.     Writing a vision statement

I wrote myself a personal vision statement. In marketing, we often write vision statements for brands and businesses – a process I enjoy. I liked the idea of writing one for me personally, based on the two exercises above.

Basically, my vision statement describes how I would like to live and feel when I turn 50 in a few short sentences. This is totally optional, but I’m a writer, so I really enjoyed this step.

4.     Visualising my vision

I’m a big believer in visualising goals in ways that serve as inspiring reminders (inspiring being the key word here). I’ve been known to design and print out goal trackers to put up on the wall, change my phone and laptop backgrounds and for more than a decade, I wore a necklace with “Saltwater cures everything” engraved, which reminded me that the ocean, sweat and tears and fix almost all problems.

I wanted to do something to visualise my new vision, so I’m reminded of it often. A few weeks ago, I lost my “Saltwater cures everything” necklace – ironically, in the ocean while kitesurfing. At first, I planned to replace it with an identical one, but then I thought maybe the timing and the fact I lost it in the ocean were signs that it’s time for something different.

So I got myself a new necklace for my birthday, engraved with the letters B P T S (Belonging, Purpose, Transcendence, Storytelling) to remind me of the four pillars of a good life.

I also turned my vision statement into a piece of art (Canva is great for this if you want to give it a go) and ordered a framed print, which I plan to put up in the caravan to serve as a daily reminder. And, of course, I will also create a goal tracker, just cause I love ticking things off :)

There you go. This is how I make sure I continue to live with intent as I move into the fifth decade of my life. I hope this helps anyone else who feels like it might be time for a check-in and reset.

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