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I wish I had 6 months to dig into the value of Intentional Living! The depth of this value is huge. I spent the last week researching and digging deep into what this value means to me and what I know for sure is this value is a life time pursuit So I thought I'd focus this post on how to get started with living the value for yourself.
First step: Definition!
I of course consulted Google. After reading thru several different definitions I settled on this one from Wikipedia.
Intentional living is any lifestyle based on an individual or group's conscious attempts to live according to their values and beliefs.
Initially I loved the simplicity of the definition. Then reality kicked in and I realized ummmm you need to define what your values and beliefs are to live them.
OY VEY
Hence why I spent all week on this one.
Ok I know it sounds crazy to say I need to define my values and beliefs but seriously could you rattle them off the top of your head? I venture to guess most of us have a sense of them; a vague notion. But truly defining them and being clear is another step all together.
Luckily this was not my first values rodeo! A few years ago I had taken an online class at courageworks.com called Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. That’s another whole blog post BUT within that class we explored defining our core values and creating our personal manifesto. I’ll be honest I had not been focused on that work in quite some time so it was very beneficial to revisit. Within the class Brene Brown provided us with a list of values to guide us. I took a look at the list prior to looking at my original workbook to see what I choose the first time around. I’m happy to say the core values stayed EXCATLY the same. And even in the same order J.
Hope
Love
Grace
Making a Difference
Peace
You can of course choose as many of the values that you so desire but I have a need to keep things simple so I chose my core 5. I don’t know that I can publish content from that class given it was a paid class but you can search “core values” and get a zillion sites that will give you list. I would encourage you to pick your top 5 as well and truly focus on them. This exercise is incredibly powerful.
The second thing we did in this course was create a personal manifesto to help remind us of who we really are and how we want to make a difference. The idea of having a manifesto is that it would allow you to stay focused and true to your core values and act on them. This fit in perfectly with my desire to define what living intentionally meant to me. Mine original manifesto was simple:
I will honor and love my true self and dare to live with unending hope, love and spirituality.
I was not surprised that it still resonates with me. While I want to flush this out more and will continue to work on it I felt it was a great place to start in outlining my definition of living intentionally.
If you are interested in doing your own manifesto here is a small piece of the exercise we did. It’s not the full training of course but can set you on a path to defining your own manifesto.
Fill in those statements and start writing your manifesto. Use action words and strong declarations. Your manifesto can be as short or as long as it needs to be.
The values that guide me in my effort to show up and be seen are . . .
I stand for . . .
I am most curious about . . .
I must do something about . . .
I am most passionate about . . .
I have the courage to . . .
I love . . .
In my heart of hearts, I . . .
I am on this planet to . . .
I will love myself by . . .
I will dare greatly by . . .
It’s not an easy exercise and does take time and thought to define your values and create a manifesto. But I will tell you it’s an incredibly valuable exercise. I took my values and my manifesto and kept them close to my heart and mind this week and I enjoyed watching how they manifested in my life.
Love to hear from you on your core values and your manifesto. Share in the comments section if you will!
And know there will be more coming as I spent more and more time living out this value “living intentionally!
Namaste!