Living with intention

It hit me hard.

All these creative ideas floating around in my head needed a home.

Somewhere I could capture them, start to cement them, and turn them from a little grub of an idea into a butterfly I’d release out into the art world.

The idea of living with intention started to plague me ― not in a bad way, but I couldn’t shake it off. I can’t remember now where I first read about it. A LinkedIn post, perhaps, from someone who’s been living with intention for a long time and knew how worthwhile it was to share with their network.

At first, it came across as a seemingly small idea; a powerful nugget of information I could put in my pocket to draw on some time, but it turned into a much bigger purpose as my will to create an exhibition experience grew stronger.

The idea is, if you’ve got a big goal, everything you do in your life should contribute to making it happen. There’s an intention behind your everyday existence ― which might seem weighty, but in reality, it’s just a small adjustment to your mindset.

You might already use mindset tactics you’ve learnt in the business world or elsewhere. In the past, quadrants helped me organise my focus. The one I made at the start of this project was to remind me there are four things you can do with every new idea.

I don’t know about you, but those ideas can sometimes come thick and fast. 
A burst of creativity here…
A spark of inspiration there. 

They’re not all good ideas and they’re not all going to be helpful to your eventual success. So I give them a category:

  1. Do now (moves you towards the next step of your goal)
  2. Do later (helps progress, but isn’t urgent)
  3. Delegate (someone else can do this for you to save time)
  4. Forget about it (no true help now or in the near future)

You soon start questioning your process, rather than just go all out on every fresh idea, even if it’s a strong one. If it doesn’t contribute now ― to your very next step, you can give yourself permission to let go of it, rather than stash every thought, creating more mess in your brain.

Living with intention, to me, feels like a next level tactic to keep yourself on track.

It’s not just a list or a quadrant or a mind hack, it becomes a way of life. 

In so many ways, the thing you so deeply want to achieve becomes the end goal of everything you do, and that’s a pretty good starting point for success.

Image created using Midjourney

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