Are You Living Intentionally?

Posted on June 07, 2013 by Suzette R Hinton, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Are you living intentionally? This was the question I asked myself as I watched a rerun of Oprah’s Life Class, Lesson 24: Newton’s Third Law when Cheryl Richardson was a guest. A lady in the audience asked Cheryl the difference between having the intention and having the dream. With poised insight, Cheryl clarified:

“The intention comes from a soulful place. The wish [dream] usually comes from something not working in your life. For instance, I wish I’d meet a partner because I’m lonely and I don’t feel comfortable living alone. I wish I would win the lottery because I’m in debt. My prayer becomes ‘if this is in the highest and best interest for me and those around me then please allow it to happen.’ It’s a humble way of saying that it’s not just about me and what my head thinks, it’s about me and this greater energy, this greater creative force.”

This was the last thing I heard before going to bed and the first thing to greet me when I woke up. Oprah would call an aha moment. Eckhart Tolle would say this was my moment of consciousness. The Good Book [the Bible] would say, “as the light shines, walk therein.”

There’s something about the spaces in life where something greater than you decides you need to hit the pause button. In my case, it was the untimely death of my male cousin. Death unsettles everything. Whatever areas in your life aren’t nailed down, death pulls them apart without forewarning or apology. One of those areas was what I was doing with my life. I had been at the same job for almost 5 years and that was called into question.

I don’t know what was worse, the overwhelming grief over my cousin’s death or the anxiety over returning to my job. After my two-week hiatus, I prepared to return to work. Every fiber of my being screamed, “I can’t go back!!” It was so deafening that it didn’t matter that I was almost at the five-year mark and with it came an additional week of vacation. It was so deafening that it didn’t matter the costliness of health insurance for a woman my age. It was so deafening that the perks of working from home two days out of the week and having a flexible work schedule didn’t matter.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the hiatus, was a gift. I hated what triggered it for I never ever would have wanted my cousin to pass. He was like a brother, the only brother I had ever known. It was and still is very painful to imagine my future without him. The pain of it all propelled me down a corridor yet brought me out to a larger more intentioned space. It started with an awakening. Then I had to examine what wasn’t lining up. Last but not least, I had to make painstaking changes. I had to create a new normal.

“Pain is the opening through which all life emerges into the light of day” is the opening sentence of an introduction written by Will Wass aka “Betterlife,” a contributor to Hubpages.com. I don’t know why that’s true but ask anyone who is living intentionally and they’ll point you back to some painful or traumatic event in their lives. The corridor is dark and haunted. Whether it’s the death of a loved one, like in my case, or something else, something inside of us comes apart in the corridor. Some hold we feel we had on reality just gets snatched away leaving us shaken to our core. And pain doesn’t have to be a result of something negative. It can be winning the lottery or actually getting that promotion. At first there is intense joy. With time, however, you realize that your whole world has shifted. Especially if you’ve come into a large sum of cash, you might find yourself harrangued by all these folks pulling at you. Buy this, invest in that, they all say with some threat of something bad happening if you don’t. Family you didn’t even know existed now want to make themselves known. Even some longheld friendships cannot hold up, not because you’ve changed but because those around you assume you have, are jealous or feel intimidated. Painful! Whether we like it or not, nothing splashes cold water on our slumber like pain.

It’s startling. Things that once made sense don’t anymore. Like a spaceship going higher and higher, some supports have to fall away so you can gain altitude. Faces, places and things are out of focus now. I had to examine relationships, involvements and even had to look inside some baggage I was carrying. Things I had spent so much time holding on to were no longer lining up. Everything was now suspect. Who am I? What am I doing here? Is this really, really what I want? What am I in this relationship? Why am I at this job? My life was requiring answers.

I’m not going to fast forward as most dramas on television or 600-word articles do. Five steps to this or 10 steps to that. It has its place. Not in this case though. There is no SHAZAMM and you are automatically teleported to intentional living. Some peoples’ corridors are longer and darker than others. For some, it might be leaving a job, breaking up with a boyfriend or buying a house. For others, it might be the death of a child, a difficult medical prognosis or having another tour of duty despite the PTSD they are trying to keep on the down-low so they don’t risk losing military status or benefits. Sometimes the most gussied up, shiny people that appear on talk shows as success stories tell you of how their lives spiraled out of control. Whether it’s a month or ten years in the corridor, what’s most important is where you land when you come out.

What happens next?

That’s your call. What happens next is your call. For some people, it’s plugging back into the life they have with a new gratitude. Maybe they took their spouse for granted. Maybe they didn’t pay attention to their children. Sometimes life gives them a do-over. For others, there is no going back. The pieces of their lives have gotten so rearranged they can’t be put back same as before. When that is the case, we have to make painstaking changes. We have to create a new normal. This is the step that many people resist. They acknowledge the aha moment and they examine their lives to see where things don’t line up, but they resist because it seems too hard.

Something I heard and have found to be very true—I think Dr. Phil said it—is if what’s in front of you is not stronger than what you’ve left, you will inadvertently go right back. Can I add something to it? And be doomed to repeat it all again. How many of us have returned to an ex because we got bored, lonely or we needed an ego-stroke after someone rejected us? How many of us have tried to control what we left because we were scared to let go and move into the unknown? Maybe it was because of my proclivities to the familiar that I decided to up the anty. I knew I had to create a new focus. A stronger focus.

Seeing a professional provided me with that stronger focus. I took it seriously. I respected what I put money on. I had done the self help thing, the talk with your girlfriends thing, the making it all about how he messed up thing. This time, I needed something different. I didn’t just need to read one more relationship book or vent my frustrations again or lay my head on the same supportive shoulders as before. I needed change. I wanted to change. I wasn’t going to squander those visits when I was putting my hard-earned cash on it. I was going to read every handout, come to every session, do the work. My Awakened Self knew I had to put distance between me and the familiar. By having something to look forward to, in time, I stopped feeling that pull. I could move on.

It’s not that I’m trying to sell you on seeking professional help. Though to be honest, I feel some folks need to invest in themselves rather than continuing to fund distraction after distraction. I’m just saying what helped me and why. For you, it might be something different. All I know is this, living intentionally takes cooperation with the creative force in your life. All the money, time and energy we throw into dreaming is wasted if we are ignoring its intention. Your soul is waiting for you to pay attention to what it’s trying to tell you. It knows the path to true fulfillment. All you need to do is cooperate.