Newsletter
Live Intentionally2024-01-08
“The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else.”
—E.E. Cummings
Do things in a conscious way, intentionally. In the word we live in, with the constant flow of distractions and people competing for our resources, it is hard. We first need to understand, then to apply.
Consciousness is based on cognition, but not all cognition is conscious (most is not, especially in routine areas where the person has developed expertise). Consciousness is slow thinking, particularly for new, massive or important things, where it can lead to new decisions. Sometimes it is thinking from first principles. It integrates feelings and thoughts regarding if things at that particular moment in time are favorable or not to your real life goals and if you are making progress towards them, leading to choices and decisions about where to focus time, energy, attention, and money, which direct actions and behaviors to achieve your life goals.
Decisions consume energy. Once a decision is made, the rest is just about execution, staying on target. A person is guided towards goals along a gradient of aversion and reward. Automating decisions by having behavioral standards, habits, and reflexes economizes resources and/or ensures things get done regardless of levels of resources.
Journaling with pen and paper, regularly measuring your life success and life satisfaction with an app like the one we developed, help keep you on track. Thinking, planning, deciding early in the day (and in the week, month, year, even ideally in your life), and then sticking with it can make all the difference between a life well lived and one side-tracked by trivialities.