Changing Directions: Why I’m Shifting Focus to Intentional Living

Since starting the 52 week challenge almost two years ago I’ve made several adjustments along the way. I’ve had some successes and some failures. But ultimately I think I was a little too ambitious (and not nearly focused enough) in my approach.

The idea at the beginning was to add habits to my life on a consistent basis in an attempt to live a better life. I started with adding a habit every other week, and over time switched to one every three weeks and took breaks in between. Although, frankly, I haven’t done much in the way of this “habits” approach in quite a while.

This doesn’t mean that I’m giving up or calling it quits. Tony Robins says, “There is no such thing as failure, only learning.” Or another way I’ve heard it said, “you don’t fail when you fall, you fail when you don’t get back up.” In other words, I’m not quitting. I’ve reflected on what I’ve learned so far and I’m starting again.

I think the idea of intentionally developing better habits is still valid. But starting with the habits you’d like to develop is starting in the wrong place. I’ve been developing habits that, although good, have been haphazard and unfocused. I was working on developing new, better habits. But those habits weren’t working together toward any cohesive goal or vision.

I became overwhelmed with the competing demands I had created for myself. I often had to choose between (for example) writing or working out. I only had so much time between waking and work, and I forced myself to choose between two good things each morning. And always feeling like I’d failed at the thing I didn’t choose. The end result was that I wasn’t developing a system of new cooperative habits, but I was picking and choosing from day to day which of my new competing practices (I couldn’t really even call them habits) I would perform.

So, I’m shifting the focus of the blog. Rather than simply picking a wide variety of new practices out of the air I’ll be focusing on a long-term vision, priorities, and goal-setting. I’ve learned though my experience so far that this challenge isn’t so much about a number of habits added, changed, or dropped, but about living intentionally. It’s not about doing more, but about living better.

As I make this transition I’m going to be focusing the posts on my blog down to five key areas: Faith, Family, Finances, Fitness (Alliteration is fun isn’t it!) and Intentional Living (overall).

A huge part of this change is that I’ve published The Intentional Living Manifesto. This is a short ebook that talks about the idea of intentional living. I hope it will inspire people to live their lives with greater intention. If you haven’t already, please download the Manifesto and if you like it please share it with others.