8 Life-Changing, Yet Subtle Intentional Living Benefits

Every day we get subliminal messaging sent to our unsuspecting minds from various media sources. Marketing geniuses tell us who to be and how to think. What to look like, wear, eat, car to drive, and the ideal place to live.

Product placements by grocery stores, department stores, and radio and television advertisements influence our actions.

For peace of mind, body, and spirit, it has become essential to neutralize these messaging by adapting an intentional living lifestyle.

Intentional living is the way individuals purposefully live and how present and engaged we are with everyday tasks.

It is grounded in personal morals—spiritual compass, family values, or societal rules and guiding principles.

It is more critical in 2021 to say goodbye to living with unplanned impulsive habits that often result in overspending, overeating, and overindulging.

Being more intentional and living with purpose will change your life, improve mood swings, impulsivity, and feel good in the spur-of-the-moment reactions.

It will bring you clarity in thoughts and actions for a simpler, fulfilled, and enriched life.

Be intentional with these eight subtle practices, and you are well on your way to living an intentional lifestyle.

1. Relationships

Giving your all to your relationship(s) is good. When you decide to live an intentional lifestyle, it is essential to understand that everyone will not remain in your intimate circle of relationships forever. Although these relationships are vital for you, they serve a purpose to enhance your life experience at the start of the association; be alerted to signals if things are not working out. Permit yourself to pull back, though it will be hard at first. People who drain your energy, challenge your character and negatively affect your mood are incompatible with who you are, and they no longer serve you.

2. Grocery Shopping

On many occasions after work, I decided to stop at the grocery store in the evening to pick up maybe one or two items for dinner. It never ceases to amaze me that most of the time, I ended up leaving with a cartful of other things and spent more than I had intended.

So why is this?

According to Paco Underhill, author of Why We Buy: The Sciences of Shopping, 2/3 of what we buy we had no intentions of buying. We purchase because marketers layout grocery stores to send messages to our brains.

Many of us will shop without a written list—unplanned.

Be intentional when shopping; take a moment to carefully plan your outings (bringing a list with you). It will undoubtedly help with carefully putting what you intend to buy inside the shopping cart.

3. Eating

Similarly, equipping yourself with a list of what you intend to buy and intentionally sticking to the plan will curb overeating, overspending and ultimately create healthier eating habits.

A familiar saying in our family is, do not cheap out on what goes into your body.

Be intentional about eating nutritious and high nutritional value food.

According to healthline.com, "by filling your plate with fruits, vegetables, quality protein, other whole foods, you will have meals that are colorful, versatile and good for you."

4. Time Management (Busyness)

I recently found myself fixated on watching YouTube.

Losing valuable time. I spent at least 40 minutes watching a Rastafarian man cook Jamaican Rice and Peas with scrambled eggs in his front yard on this particular incident.

Albeit, I have no desire to try that combination of food. However, it was interesting to see. Remarkably, that video had 242k views.

Those 40 minutes, I will never get back.

Valuable time otherwise might have been best spent on many other more important things, like making my own YouTube channel.

5. Finance

In today's marketplace, with the popularity of online shopping due to COVID-19 - and all its inherent characteristics, the landscape of retail shopping is astronomically changed.

As a result, shopping is so much easier, faster, and now globalized - with various choices, making it more attractive for consumers.

Take control of how much you spend—budget and plan for everything you buy.

6. Thoughts

Controlling our thoughts in today's busy world is quite a feat. Because many of us juggle and multitask from kids' recreational activities, our extracurricular activities for work, school, family, and between becoming very challenging. But there is hope.

If anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about them - whatsoever things are lovely, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—think about such things.

It is essential to live in the moment, find stillness in our thoughts and gain the ability to quickly set our thoughts on good things - things that bring peace and calmness to our ideas.

7. Be Present

A mind filled with multiple train-of-thoughts breeds anxiety, fear, doubt, and depression.

You can replace all of this with peace when your mind is cleared and quieted long enough to listen to your thoughts—𝘔𝘢𝘺𝘣𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘎𝘰𝘥 𝘤𝘢𝘯 reach 𝘺𝘰𝘶.

Be fully alive in every moment.

Do not sweat the small things, as the saying goes. Sit long enough to give yourself a break; forget how many dirty dishes are in the sink or how many pairs of shoes are at the front door.

Instead, find tranquility in stillness.

Staying present in the moment, bringing your wandering thoughts back to the moment of washing dishes, sweeping the floor, cooking, or the activity at hand.

8. Be Decisive

A double-minded person is unstable in everything they do.

Applying a deliberate, planned, strategical and operational approach to the decision-making process speaks to clarity of mind and thought.

Decide, implement, and stick to it.

Second-guessing yourself does not lend itself to outstanding leadership. Instead, it projects a lack of self-confidence.

According to Steve Jobs, you do not have to be pushed if you work on something you care about doing. The vision pulls you.

Your life is a work in progress; within an earthen vessel, it demands attention, love, and care for it to serve you well.

I challenge you to be intentional about eating well, sleeping well, practicing mindfulness, and exercising decisiveness with a holistic approach to wellness. Stopping if only to reflect, re-evaluate and choose to adopt an intentional lifestyle—one which pushes you to love and discover yourself every day.

An intentional lifestyle promises to get you well on a journey of living an intentional lifestyle.