Isn’t that the truth?!
To live deliberately and suck every bit of the goodness out life. To “Carpe Diem”… to not “let life pass us by.” There must be something to it because there are about a zillion thoughts on the subject that for some reason have become cliche when we say them. Maybe they’ve become cliche because we think we KNOW how to do it. And I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure that trying to keep too many plates spinning, to make sense of the busy, and to not feel like I’ve jumped onto a merry-go-round of life that blurs everything around me takes a whole lot more than just thinking I know.
It takes a whole lot of on purpose.
Intention.
And it’s sad to say, but really, these days…between running a national conference, being a mom, wife, friend, and all the other hats we could toss in there….living with intention doesn’t just happen by accident. It DOES take a whole lot of on purpose.
On purpose I turned the notifications off on my phone. (Well, the Nester did because sadly I couldn’t figure it out.) On purpose… I don’t schedule work calls (as much as I can absolutely help it) after 3 pm when both of my kids are home. On purpose we took TV away from our kids…which if I’m honest, doesn’t give me chunks of uninterrupted time and so instead, I find myself ON PURPOSE reading with my kids for those lengths. It’s on purpose that we love to make a bunch of apple recipes in the fall… when we [on purpose] slow life for a day in the orchards to pick them ourselves. And these days, I often light a fire in the fireplace because it brings us all around it, or for me by myself, it slows me enough to sit and read in the quiet.
Intentional living doesn’t happen by accident.
My dear friend Tsh Oxenrider knows what it is to simplify…to live life on purpose and with intention, and it’s the very topic of her new book, “Notes from a Blue Bike: The Art of Living Intentionally in a Chaotic World.”
I made a fire to read this one ya’ll. And in the artful way that she weaves stories and life lessons together, Tsh left me asking myself a lot of questions on what it’d look like for me to declutter my life. And by “declutter” I don’t mean casting off everything, but rather to think purposefully about the decisions we make, the time we spend, and the imprints that I want to make that actually stick. And you know what… I’m doing a lot of those things this year. Living on purpose and pulling pieces of myself out of the rat race… to make sure that I’m not living this great life that I don’t have time to notice…or that when someone asks me how I’m doing I say “busy.”
I’m learning how to live better on purpose.
The book just released yesterday and I urge you to snag a copy anywhere books are sold! And because Tsh is awesome, she’s gonna let me give away a couple of copies here for you! You can tweet, facebook, share…whatever. But do me a favor and tell me one thing you do to live on purpose too! Contest ends Sunday and winners will be announced Monday!
I just heard Tsh talking about the book on a podcast last night. I can’t wait to get my hands on this book!
I try to intentionally read aloud with my kids. Ages 4-12!
Excellent article. I’m going through many of these issues as well..