Using Intentional
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Mental health disclaimer: Intentional is purposed for personal and professional self-development only, not professional therapy, counseling, or professional coaching. Should you choose to use Intentional as an adjunct to therapy or coaching, do so in cooperation with your therapist or coach. You get to take full responsibility for your own well-being and use of this material.
Intentional is designed for you to focus on and practice one new choice a week for one year. Each choice includes a passage of principles and a set of questions to help you integrate the choice into your daily experience.
Intentional is not meant to be read; it is meant to be lived. It is not meant for accumulating more conceptual knowledge; it is designed for creating living experiences. The power to bring forth something new in your life through this material lies in your direct experience with each new choice, not in the idea of the new choice alone.
Aren’t you tired of going through book after book
or course after course
and not seeing one bit of difference in your life?
Don’t. Do. That. Here.
You must get with each choice—move, wrestle, dance, and play with it—in order to get anything worthwhile from the knowledge contained herein.
Experiment.
Discover.
Practice.
Grow.
Give yourself the time and space to go beyond merely reading and thinking about the new choice. Make an appointment on your calendar to practice each choice and keep it. Action is where miracles happen. Be in action like your life depends on it because the life you desire actually does.
I highly recommend you use a journal to process and record your experience with each choice. Spend at least five minutes a day writing out—in words, pictures, or both—your experience of putting each choice into practice in your life. What ideas, inspirations, fears, and objections come up in you?
What worked?
What didn’t work?
What did you notice?
What did you learn?
Approach each choice as if you have never considered it before. Set aside the opinions, thoughts, conclusions, and judgments you may have previously formed about it—what you like or don’t like, what’s possible or not possible, what works or doesn’t work.
Bring a sense of wonder to discover new dimensions about any choice you deem as having already figured out. Come newly, with fresh curiosity, to explore what each choice could mean for you right now.
The visual layout of Intentional is…intentional. It is designed to increase your conscious attention by slowing down the rate at which you consume this work. It operates like a speed bump. There are things for you to notice and think deeply about that are only available to you at a slower pace. You may experience it as irritation, but it will cause your brain to process the information differently from how it normally does day to day. That’s the point.
Slow down. Be present.
Move your eyes in a different pattern.
Reread. Absorb.
You may never come to enjoy the speed bumps, but you may grow to appreciate the gains you make as a result.
Moving through Intentional offers options. The most straightforward approach is as a fifty-two-week journey, focusing on one choice per week. Meditate on the passage and questions for each choice daily as you create ways to practice it throughout the week. Notice what shifts and changes in your experience of the passage and questions each time you return to them after having practiced the choice in your life. Do this for five to six days with each choice, then give yourself one or two days off before advancing to the next choice. Your capacity to retain and utilize this work requires that you give your brain time to integrate what you’ve experienced, and that integration takes place during periods of rest, recovery, and play. So focus and practice for five or six days, then rest and play for one or two days. And repeat.
Regarding the questions, you may use them exactly as written or as a springboard that inspires other questions. You are free to take the questions in a different order from the one in which they are listed. Use the questions you find helpful and leave the ones you don’t.
You might decide to pick the choice statement that calls to you each week rather than follow the choices in their listed order.
You could gather a group of friends and journey through Intentional together.
You may decide to use Intentional as an intensive personal retreat, initially working through the whole book over two or three days, then practicing your action, reflection, and integration over the weeks and months that follow.
Create your own unique approach to utilizing this work and move to the rhythm that suits you.
But wait, there’s more! For bonus material and companion resources to Intentional, visit:
Join the larger conversation—The Plenteous Life—from which Intentional was created. What is The Plenteous Life? I’ve included a brief introduction of The Plenteous Life at the end of this book in the Coming Work chapter to tell you more.
May you prosper in every way!
Becky & TPL Team
52 Maxims of Conscious Choosing To Create the Deeply Satisfying Life You Desire.