Beloveds,

I haven’t written a blog post in a hot minute. I relocated this summer to my home state of Kentucky (from New Mexico), and it has been a wild change! That liminal doorway of transition was wide, but I finally feel my feet softly beginning to land upon this earth.

This summer - amidst the relocation - I found myself organizing clients’ homes again! I used to be a professional organizer years ago and forgot just how much I love the joy of working with clients in-person and the power of helping people align into more balance through releasing their attachment to their belongings.

Through coaching and organizing, I help people live with intentionalism, a combination of minimalism, mindfulness, and intentionality. When you are forced to pick up every item you own one by one and determine how it resonates with you and make a decision to keep or part with each item - this kind of focused intentionality can’t help but spill over into every area of your life!

Seeing this marriage of all of MY passions got me fired up to write my first blog post in months. I hope it helps you live your life more intentionally - you are so worthy!

Here are my 6 ways to start living more intentionally, right now:

1. Define your intention or your purpose.

It might sound like a tall order - what is my life’s purpose?! - but truly this can be as simple as remembering your values and what’s most important to you. If you aren’t type A with a mission statement written out for your life, that’s okay!

How about a vision board filled with images and quotes that inspire you?
What are the top 5 ways you’d like to start spending your time?
What lights you up and makes you want to take action in the world more than anything?
What brings you the most joy?

Somewhere in the middle of the Venn diagram of all of this lies your purpose or life’s intention. Stay open to its evolution and ever-unfolding nature, and stay curious to where it will lead you!

Beyond your overarching intention or guiding principles, perhaps you want to pick a word each year as many people do to manifest for the year ahead. This is your annual intention. Or maybe you set 3 intentions each moon cycle, or 1 every bleed, a new one each week or even each day when you awaken.

If it helps, pay a visit to your Future Self. (Check out this guided meditation!) Check-in with questions focused around what you did to begin living more intentionally. Your Future Self is a part of you - a higher, more conscious part - always ready to help you reverse-engineer how you got to become them. They want you to help bring this version of yourself to life!

2. Explore minimalism and mindful consumption.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I’m not saying to throw out 99% of your belongings. But there is something to accumulating less. We live in a consumer-focused, capitalist culture that sells us product after product every waking minute of our lives. What if we opted out of this incessant game?

Perhaps you start by purging any belongings that don’t spark joy - feel into the space and light and air you’ve let into your life. Recognize the trust you’ve just emboldened - that you have everything you need.

Let the newfound environment inspire an anti-consumerist lifestyle! Unsubscribe from retail marketing lists and skip or mute all commercials altogether. Finally, don’t set foot inside a store until absolutely necessary, and when you do - set your intention beforehand. What specifically are you looking for? What qualities will the item have to have in order for you to consider it?

Bargain hunting for bargain hunting’s sake is a surefire way to buy more crap you don’t need for that temporary high. Instead, save your money and buy longer lasting well-made items that spark a deeper joy or meet a deeper need in your life. And always, always, always make a list before you go grocery shopping!

3. Come back to your body often.

Tapping into your body’s natural wisdom is one of the best ways to connect to your intuition and discern when something is in or out of alignment for you. Many of us were cut off from this source at an early age, but it’s never too late to mend it. Yoga, bodywork, and intuitive movement are all beautiful ways to build regular embodiment into your schedule.

Intuitive eating and mindful movement (i.e. not just hammering out a mindless repetitive exercise where you might as well be numb from the neck down) are also great practices to incorporate. Treat your body like the sacred temple it is - give it gratitude, respect, and love. Over time, you can start asking it questions such as, “Am I safe? Am I really in danger? What is it about this conversation that’s causing my pulse to rise? Is my body consenting to this sexual experience? Is this what I really want? Am I sure?” Becoming an ally with your body, and not a controller, can make all the difference when it comes to your body trusting you enough to open and guide you.

4. Cut out all the noise.

Make a list of all the types of content you consume daily. Note the different ways unwanted content is hurtled at your eyes and ears.

Write down the last 10 things you purchased - did you really need them? Did they truly spark joy?
Make a list of your relationships - are you sure all these people deserve your regular upkeep and emotional labor?

It might sound harsh, but cleaning house at least once a year is a great way to make sure every aspect of our lives is there by choice, and not out of unexamined obligation. If you’re reading books just because they were recommended to you, dating your partner just because you don’t want to be alone, or going to the same job for years just because it’s comfortable, it’s worth a double-take! Get in touch with what you truly want and what aligns with your intentions.

5. Practice mindfulness every day.

When I say mindfulness, I really mean present awareness with whatever is. Buddhism teaches that anything besides living in the moment and accepting reality leads to suffering.

Can you stop striving to make things what they aren’t?
Can you hold the beautiful tension between accepting present moment circumstances and trusting a beautiful future?

Get familiar with the nature of your thoughts - are you even aware of your thoughts throughout the day, specifically your thoughts about yourself?

Many of us (myself included) suffer greatly from imposter syndrome and the inner critic. We can go lifetimes without realizing our thoughts can be real but not true and we are not our thoughts! Sometimes the most potent mindfulness practice is simply witnessing the thoughts (saying them aloud, writing them down, watching them pass in meditation) without judging or attaching to them. Don’t grasp or resist, simply accept that this is what your mind does naturally and trust that all experience rises and falls and eventually passes away.

6. Focus on what matters most.

If you’re like me and tend to get overwhelmed by lots of lofty goals, let me share with you one simple trick that changed my life. The Big 3 - choose just 3 goals for your day that are specific and possible. That’s all you get! Once those are done, you can of course move on to other things, but this will bring immense focus to that unruly to-do list.

This was a game-changer for me. I used to sit down at my laptop each day, ready to run my business, and immediately get pulled into open tabs, dinging notifications, and everything that felt urgent but not important. Keep a well-tended to-do list, block time on your calendar for what you can’t do right away, and you will begin to let your intention inform your attention.

Do you like the term intentionalism? Let’s spread it like wildfire! As far as we know, we only get this one wild and precious life. How you spend it is up to you. I believe all the ancestors are rooting for us to carpe the shit out of this diem, find fulfillment, make peace, and help this world heal.

Now I’d love to hear from you! What 3 specific actions are you going to take to make your life more intentional? It could even be today’s big 3! Let us know in the comments below!

6 ways to start living intentionally