Living deliberately puts you in control of yourself, the day, and/or the life you want for yourself. Example: how much of your time is moving on auto-pilot? What happens when you choose one thing about your day to spin, live, or focus on deliberately? How does the automatic living shift?

Intentions are a great way to start when considering deliberate living. Ponder a New Year’s resolution or an item on your to-do list. Those are tasks you plan to accomplish. It is one perspective to set an intention and entirely different to follow through. I think of deliberate living as the follow-through part of an intention. It’s putting your intent into action with deliberate focus.

Drinking enough water is an example. From a health perspective, drinking enough water is an important part of helping your body and your emotions function properly. That’s a great intention! Now, what does it take to put that intent into action? Something deliberate is required to get the fluids down the gullet. Right?

Living deliberately looks like this. You see your intention on your list – drink 64 ounces of water today. Upon your observation, you drink the 8 ounces of water already on your desk and refill the glass so it’s there for you in an hour.

Here’s another example: you’ve emptied the dishwasher the last three times and you feel like it’s someone else’s turn. Aware of your dismay, you speak nicely to yourself. “I enjoy having clean dishes to use when I need them. I will put them away quickly.” This is another form of deliberate living – mindfully acknowledging and shifting the dismay into productivity so you have clean dishes to use again.

We all strive for more goodness in our lives. Sure, it’s nice when good comes to us like a gift. Another side of this coin, though, is to create more goodness (whether for yourself or someone else) by being deliberate in your thoughts and actions. You set the intent, and now you have the power to take deliberate action and live.

What little (or big) thing have you done toward living deliberately?

Image by Elizaveta Maximova from Pixabay