Being intentional means doing the things you said you were going to do even when life is throwing you curve balls.

That’s it.  Nothing else.  No excuses, just your intentions.

Being intentional doesn’t mean you will do the things you said you were going to do when life settles down or when you feel more rested or when you don’t have a million unexpected things going on.  That is NEVER going to happen.

We started off the year of 365Being with “Being Intentional”, because you must have a foundation on which to build upon the rest of this year.

So far, we have talked about being prepared and courageous, deciding what to keep and what to walk away from, figuring out who we want to be and being ready to step into that.

As we head into our final week of January we want to remind you that we are not here to sugarcoat it or make you feel good about setting some goals this year.  We are here to walk alongside you and make this our best year yet.

Now let’s get practical about what being intentional means in our everyday lives.

It means what I said in the beginning; doing the things we set out to do NO MATTER WHAT.  Life rarely goes as planned, but even when it does we still have illness, large expenses, BIG LIFE EVENTS, vacations and holidays to contend with.

What is your plan when these things come around?  The first rule is that you must have a plan and that plan CAN coexist with whatever else is going on in your life.

At the end of last year, my mom had some surgery.  I volunteered to take the overnight shift with her.  My main goal was to be with my mom, but I also wanted to stay hydrated and move my body.  I brought a large bottle of water with me and then G showed up with multiple bottles to ensure our hydration.  Later in the day, while mom had visitors, I decided to get my 30 minutes in by exploring the hospital.  In years past, while stuck in a hospital, I guarantee you I would have sat on my butt eating my weight in chips and candy while drinking multiple diet sodas.  This time around I fought the urge and continued as planned. Sure, we didn’t really sleep and we were tired when left the next morning, but I felt so much better than I would have if I’d given in to old habits.

On our last vacation, we made a conscious choice that we wanted to feel good everyday.  How many of us have gone on vacation, overindulged and felt terrible? We decided the best way to do this was to continue eating well and working out.  We got up early and walked almost every single morning to move our bodies and get some exercise before anything else happened.  We decided this BEFORE we arrived.  Had we not done this, we might have found ourselves at day 7 feeling sluggish, tired and short fused in the mornings rather than ready to take on the day.  Continuing our routine of exercising each morning made us all feel better.  We were intentional about how we wanted to feel and how best to achieve that.  Again, we had a great time without giving up on our goals.  We didn’t have to return to the dreaded “starting over after vacation workout.”

In 2018, I had committed to really changing my habits and my exercise routine.  Very shortly after that, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  I have a photo of me the day I found out and one the day after.  I remember looking at both of those photos and thinking, “who do I want to be through this?”  Of course, I wanted to go back and be the girl in the first photo who had no idea what was coming, but that was impossible.  I decided right then that my goals had not changed.  While my instinct was to curl up in a ball, eat comfort food and watch Netflix, that wasn’t going to help.  Why would I quit working out when I had just been given a cancer diagnosis?  It makes no sense if you think about it.  So, I decided that I would continue to eat well, hydrate and workout until I couldn’t.  To be honest, while I couldn’t do some things like running and lifting weights after surgery I still walked almost everyday.   I don’t think I missed a day during my treatment.  Don’t get me wrong, I was tired and I didn’t always want to do it, but I knew that if my intention was to stay healthy and beat this thing, I needed to do the things to be healthy. I couldn’t wait until I was through everything to start thinking about my health.

The point of all of these examples is that they all involved choices.  EVERYDAY you have to wake up and decide that you are going to do what you said you were going to do.  None of these examples are about me being awesome.  On the contrary, they are about the everyday struggle to decide who I wanted to be in that moment.  My old habits are right there waiting to takeover, but that isn’t who I decided to be back in 2018 when I committed to changing.

Take the rest of this week to think about your foundation.  Your year depends on it.