To live life with intention we need to look at how we consume, curate, and create. These three actions have a powerful impact on our existence, often without our consideration. There’s no better time than right now to align them, with intention, towards life and our creative legacy.
What we consume we curate and from our curation we create.
To create the life we aspire to, the life we dream of, we must acknowledge this process in two key areas:
health and craft.
Let’s dive in.
Consume
We are constantly consuming and rarely with intention. We make what I call junk food choices.
We grab the quick, easy, unhealthy food that meets our short term goals of tasty food now.
We know this isn’t the best choice we could make.
We know there are many better options out there.
But we do it anyway, emotionally, habitually, and in the moment.
(It really doesn’t help that many large businesses have spent millions of dollars figuring out how to effectively target our tendencies and profit off of these negative short term habits.)
We can also apply the idea of junk food choices to the use of our most valuable resource: our life force; our energy and time.
We check emails and social media constantly.
We surf channels and scroll news feeds.
Does the following sound familiar to you?
You go to Facebook for one thing, scroll the feed for a few minutes, click on a video and shift to youtube, want to know a bit more so pop over to wikipedia for a bit of brief research, and somehow end up reading about Quolls via their marsupial Wikipedia page.
I just discovered the existence of quolls. How about you?
The internet is powerful and huge. Whatever we want to learn about, we can find and learn about today.
Junk food or health food we choose what we consume.
Curate
We are what we eat. We curate what we consume. We are where we are right now because we are the sum of our consumptive choices. This is easily applied to our physical body, but what happens when we consider it in regards to the finite use of our lifeforce? Our time spent living and learning?
How many hours have we spent in these dopamine-releasing, “time wasting”, comfy activities?
How many hours of our lives have we deferred to junk food choices?
Thinking about this can be a bit of a downer but we’ll turn it around later in the post
Create
Our ability to create depends on the state of our curated life. Junk food choices actively limit our life in health, craft, and legacy. When we live our lives without intention and without focus we let it be filled with junk food.
The good news is that the moment we choose to live our life with intention we change what we consume, which changes what we curate, which changes what we create: a life with intention.
We are in an age of ideas, an age of communication, an age of creation. It is an age where each of us can hone our message, voice, craft, and share it with the world.
What is it that you dream of doing?
What knowledge and skills have you been slowly developing, curating, over the years?
Is it time to commit to those dreams and start planning the steps necessary to accomplish your vision?
If not now then when?
When we see this as a learning process we can repurpose all of those past junk food choices as part of the path that leads to right now. We have been curating the power to change. We know the consequence of our junk food choices: the cost of lifeforce and legacy, the cost to ourselves, and to those we love. It now becomes the fuel for our intention.
Change
Time for a practical exercise!
Take a piece of paper and draw out this chart.
To live a life with intention we need to assess and acknowledge where we are and where we want to go.
Our health dictates how long we get to work on our legacy and with how much vitality.
Our craft will be the ultimate result of our lessons learned and life lived.
Take the time to check-in, connect with self, and look ahead. These times are some of the greatest investments we will ever make.
What are you consuming, what are you curating, and what are you creating with your health? With your craft?
In the ‘Today’ sections set your baselines.
For health perhaps it’s fitness level? How fast you run or hike a certain route, or how far you walk in a day.
You can track your weight or how much water you’re drinking. (Both of those are on my intentional list)
For craft you can record how much time you’re spending on your passion, or on the other things that take up your time.
In the ‘Tomorrow’ sections voice your aspirations, your dreams, your desires… in a quantifiable manner.
‘Being healthier’ doesn’t count. Picking a reasonable and reachable goal does.
Eating three pieces of fruit a day. Drinking 8 glasses of water a day. Etc.
Do the same for the ‘Tomorrow’ section of craft. What areas do you need to be stronger in? Set a goal to research or practice a component of your vision. Draw for 15 minutes a day. Sign-up for an online course about X and do a lesson a day, or 3 lessons a week. Join or start a small group to meet regularly about Y. Get a mentor for guidance and accountability.
The options are endless but you have to pick the ones that resonate with you.
This isn’t comfortable, but it is good.
And we’re all cheering for you.
Do it now before you read on. It’s ok, we’ll still be here.
………
The Intentional Life
Done? Well done! This is hard work. Now take it (you can tidy it up and make a final version if you’re a little extra detail oriented like me) and put it somewhere you’ll see it.
Put a copy on the fridge door, your bathroom mirror, your desk, your computer’s desktop, in your wallet or purse.
No matter what try to remember that this is a process.
Yes we make mistakes, we slip up, and we recommit.
This is a journey towards better along a path walked with intention.
So what sort of things are you going to curate?
What are you going to create?
Share your goals below and let me know what you think about this framework.
I think everyone in the world could benefit from bringing more intention to what they consume, curate, and create.
Want to follow up with me personally about creating a legacy with intention?
I have a limited number of mentoring spaces currently open (alongside my digital strategy services).
Contact me here to bring intention to your creative legacy.
Let’s connect to create change!
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