How Your Life Can Change When You Choose to Be Intentional and Choose Peace for a Year

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In 2020, my husband and I decided to give the “word of the year” concept a shot. After our season of crazy exhaustion-heart-heaviness, we needed a reboot.

Have you ever felt like this, too? Perhaps it’s worth being more intentional about a focus for your year.

When we went all in on our “phrases of the year” (we modified, y’all), it really did make a huge difference in our lives.

Curious to learn more? In this post, I’ll share with you what areas of life we chose to focus on, what we changed and what were the outcomes.

You can live intentionally with passion and purpose as God’s beloved.

Please note that these changes happened over a year and started with small, steady changes. Don’t psych yourself out if this post seems crazy long. (It is but not to overwhelm you!)

By the way, I thought this would be a brief reflective post. Instead, I got so excited about this that I whipped up 7 posts tied to this topics (links interspersed in the post). Otherwise, you might still be scrolling in 2022...you’re welcome.

Here we go!

Word of the Year – What the heck is this?

Not sure what the “word of the year” is?

Basically, you choose a word for the year to guide your growth, decision-making and actions.

Choosing a word of the year is a simpler (yet more complex!) approach than setting New Year’s resolutions.

Ideally, throughout the coming months, you continually revisit that word to check that you’re living in alignment with that focus.

Many resources go into depth about this. Here’s a couple to get you started:

• Jon Gordon’s FREE 7-Day One Word Challenge
• Create. Cultivate. How to Choose Your Word for the Year

Our Phrases of the Year: “Be Intentional” and “Pursue Peace”

To be honest, rather than focusing on one word, we landed on two key phrases for the year:

Be intentional

Pursue peace

2020 “word of the year”

My hubby had his own reasons for choosing these phrases, but that’s his story to tell. As the resident writer, you’re stuck with my perspective. 🙂

In addition to our exceptionally hard season, I tend to over-commit and over-estimate my capacity.

(Raise your hand if you can relate!)

I longed to be more intentional with my time, energy, talents and resources. I also yearned for more peace and white space in my schedule, relationships and home.

So, since I like to over-commit, I went with two focus phrases:

Be intentional. Pursue peace.

What Changed As a Result of our Words of the Year?

Oh my gosh, this is where the magic happened.

In no particular order, here’s how choosing to be intentional and pursue peace revolutionized 2020.

Determining Coffee Chats and Yoga Mats’ Focus

I could literally thinking and talk about “being intentional” endlessly. (Sorry, hubs!)

In my view, being intentional includes:

• Our time and energy, such as how we choose to spend our days, what we focus on, how we think, and more
• Our personality and talents, such as understanding and valuing our gifts, leaning into those strengths, learning to be okay with our weaknesses, and more
• Our relationships, such as how we connect with different perspectives (i.e. everyone who’s not you!), set boundaries, encourage each other, thrive together, and more
• Our resources (this also includes each idea above!), such as our “stuff,” finances, and more

I’m 99.9% confident I’m not the only one who wants to grow in these areas.

Why not dialogue about it on a blog?

During the coming year, you can continue to expect content geared toward helping you (and I) be intentional with their time, talents, energy and resources.

Prioritizing Spiritual Pauses and Growth

During one of our retreats, we both expressed that we wanted and needed to take more time to connect with God.

We had to be intentional and remember that this was another way to pursue peace.

So we decided to start taking a spiritual pause every day. This shift has helped us:

• Intentionally set aside a sacred, consistent time to connect with our Creator, which is also peace giving!
• Leverage this as Scripture study time
• Grow toward God and each other

Curious? Here’s more about spiritual pauses.

Implementing Sustainable Day-To-Day Routines

Focusing on being intentional and pursuing peace helped us implement simple strategies (below) that helped me feel like less of a hot mess mom this year.

• Create sustainable rhythms for your family
• Design spaces in your home to be a “yes” space
• Implement independent play into the daily rhythm
• Incorporate your child into daily tasks
• Prioritize cup fillers during naptime and independent play
• Re-learn how to play from your child

Weekly Planning + Monthly Planning + Marriage Retreats

Prior to this year, I didn’t think that weekly planning would work for me.

As a new SAHM, I frequently felt like a hot mess mom.

I soon realized that I needed to intentionally create a flexible rhythm to create more peace and joy in my life.

Enter the strategizing and planning trifecta: Weekly Planning, Monthly Planning and Marriage Retreats.

I began by doing my own weekly planning. Over time, this has expanded to include family weekly planning, monthly planning and annual marriage retreats.

Don’t freak out! This is much simpler (and fun!) than it sounds!

Basically, taking the time to plan and dream has helped us:

• Prioritize what matters most
• Make time for fun 🙂
• Reduce decision fatigue
• Stay on top of tasks that tend to slip through the cracks
• Brainstorm what changes we can make to move closer to those big dreams
• Start making micro-changes to help us reach goals

Curious about all this planning? I’ve got your back!

6 Tips to Start Weekly Planning and Make Your Life More Awesome

Use Monthly Planning to Prioritize What Matters Most

How to DIY a Marriage Retreat (and chase your big dreams together!)

Using a Realistic, Sustainable Meal-Planning and Food Inventory System

Our focus on being intentional also helped us more effectively weekly meal plan and maintain a food inventory. This also has created more peace in our home!

Here’s some other articles that may help you:

• 11 Mealtime Hacks for People Who Want Stress-Free Meals
• 5 Best Mealtime Products for Babies through Toddlers
• 14 Easy Mealtime Hacks for Parents of Toddlers

Playing and Experimenting with My Wardrobe

As many of us probably realized, we wouldn’t be able to shop for clothes in-person “like normal.”

I decided to use this time to intentionally play and experiment with my wardrobe. This meant:

• Articulating my style recipe to assess current items, potential buys and possible outfits.
• Getting clear on what were my must-haves as a mom with a little kid
• Taking on Wear Your Wardrobe Challenge to wear every item in my wardrobe once
• Seriously assess the “I keep putting this back” items. The Stunning Style’s Free Masterclass helped me ask better questions. What specifically did I not like about the item? Neckline? Sleeves? Silhouette? Color?
• Tailor, cut up, and/or dye iffy items… because I CAN and why the heck not?
• Plan my outfits in advance and try unused combinations

It’s been a satisfying and empowering season of intentionally exploring my style.

Thoughtfully Investing in Our Marriage

During our retreats, we asked, “What would it look like to invest in our relationship? What could that look like? How will we make space to prioritize this?”

For us, investing in our relationship looked like:

• Prioritizing quality time with each other after Little Man’s bedtime. During our weekly planning, we decide what funtivity we’d like to prioritize in the evenings.
• Taking on a spiritual growth challenge – like reading the Bible in a year!
• Reading one marriage-oriented book each year
• Taking a marriage-related course focused on an area we want to grow in
• Participating in a church-hosted date night series
• Asking for grandparent coverage to have periodic day dates
• Lightening the “logistical load” in our life to create white space (enter weekly planning, meal planning, etc.)
• Experimenting with our bedroom’s ambiance – like putting sparkly lights behind our bed.

Prioritizing Connecting with Others

We also challenged ourselves this year to be more intentional about reaching out to loved ones.

During our monthly planning, we’d build in whitespace to reach out to the VIPs in our life.

I’m definitely a work in progress! For me, it was really helpful to put this on the calendar so I didn’t forget or de-prioritize these important people.

Setting Boundaries

As I sought to pursue peace, I realized that I needed to set boundaries with myself and with others.

People won’t know something is wrong unless you tell them. (Duh.)

They can’t honor boundaries you don’t give.

Perhaps, more importantly, you need to set boundaries for yourself.

Maybe it’s your cue to dis-engage from a discussion before you explode. (We’re not talking about stonewalling or avoiding conflict!)

Maybe it’s owning what’s your decision to make, and what’s not your decision to make.

Whatever it is – those boundaries are vital for your well-being and true growth. You’re worth it.

Here’s 10+ Excellent Resources for Setting Healthy Boundaries to help you get started!

Taking Positive Proactive Action

When you focus on being intentional and pursuing peace, you realize that this requires taking positive proactive action.

When I was feeling negative emotions, I started to ask myself, “Can I do something to help find peace in this situation? Can I take positive proactive action here?”

Sometimes it meant grabbing a piece of paper and just listing off what was stressing me out. It didn’t eliminate the problems, but it helped me name it. Naming it helps you claim it.

At other times, it meant getting up and doing the the thing that was bugging me.

Let’s say that I’m concerned that Little Man will try to eat our office supplies and choke on a paperclip? Okay, I can empty the desk in 10 minutes and find a new home for stuff. Way better than agonizing over it!

Occasionally, it meant writing a message that needed to be sent.

Here’s 10 Practical, Peace-Giving Positive Proactive Action Ideas You Can Use Today!

Taking positive proactive action helped me begin to worry less and not get as easily lost into black hole thoughts.

Two resources to help you start incorporating some of these ideas in your life

1. Download the FREE Embrace Your Potential Playbook

It’ll help you zoom in on your God-given personality and give you practical tips to be more intentional, passionate, and purposeful as God’s beloved.

2. Buy the Intentional Life Planning Toolkit

The Intentional Life Planning Toolkit is the perfect resource to help you move from being overwhelmed by your distractions and demands to living life on purpose.

You’ll determine what an intentional life would look like for you and learn how to leverage your God-given personality, so you can thrive in your life, including your faith, priorities, schedule, responsibilities, meals, relationships, adventures, and more.

The Intentional Life Planning Toolkit may be just what you’re looking for!

P.S. Coffee Chats and Yoga Mats email subscribers get a discounted price!

Recapping how being intentional and pursuing peace improved my life (and can improve your life, too!)

Choosing a word of the year (or phrases!) doesn’t guarantee that you’ll have big life changes. (Sorry!)

As you can see, though, from my story, it CAN be a catalyst to making healthy changes in your life.

My family’s focus on being intentional and pursuing peace resulted in lots of little changes that did create more peace and fun in our lives.

The changes discussed in this post included:

• Determining Coffee Chats and Yoga Mats’ focus
• Prioritizing Spiritual Pauses and Growth
• Implementing Sustainable Day-To-Day Routines
• Doing Weekly Planning + Monthly Planning + Marriage Retreats
• Using a Realistic, Sustainable Meal-Planning and Food Inventory System
• Playing and Experimenting with My Wardrobe
• Becoming more Strategic with our Finances
• Thoughtfully Investing in Our Marriage
• Prioritizing Connecting with Others
• Setting Boundaries
• Taking Positive Proactive Action

For us, this year happened to be a big year for positive growth. It may be different the next year.

That’s okay.

That’s okay for you, too. Don’t be too hard on yourself.

Lean into where you need to grow and enjoy it. You might be pleasantly surprised by the results!

Regardless of what season you’re in now, you can live intentionally with passion and purpose as God’s beloved.

You can live intentionally – in your own unique way.

So… tell me about you. Do you think you’ll try out any of the ideas above? Put your own spin on it? Tell me about it!

P.S. Want some crazy simple steps to start living intentionally? Grab the Embrace Your Potential Playbook. It’ll help you zoom in on your God-gifted personality and give you practical tips to be more intentional, passionate, and purposeful as God’s beloved so you can become the best version of yourself.

cort.k.loui

I’m Cortney, a recovering over-achiever and God’s beloved who loves helping fellow Christian women like you embrace your God-given gifts so you have the confidence to live authentically.

I’m also a full-time mama to two sweet little boys, wife to my best friend, motivational speaker, and part-time Christian life coach. Chai lattes, strong coffee, podcasts, yoga, dance, and fairy tales nourish my soul and add sweetness to life.

Discovering the joy of embracing my God-given gifts and who He created me to be was a game-changer—a journey that brought freedom, unexpected delights, and relief from guilt. Finally, I felt free to be myself and ditch the pressure of being someone I wasn’t.

Incorporating those gifts into my day—from weekly planning to deciding on commitments, nurturing my marriage, and parenting—transformed everything. Now, I can’t imagine life without the perspective of fully embracing who God created me to be. I was missing so much without it!