To mark the Day of Intentionality, author and entrepreneur Isa Watson shares her tips for living every day with happiness in mind.
September 18, 2024 is the second annual Day of Intentionality, a day that reminds and inspires us to center joy in our everyday lives. It was made official in 2023 and occurs on the third Wednesday of every September. From our mental & physical health, to friendships & relationships, and beyond, the Day of Intentionality continues to elevate awareness around the importance of living with intention and choosing joy. Here, some mindset and tactical ways we can elevate joy in our everyday lives.
Joy is a lifestyle.
Joy is a choice.
Joy is determined by you.
Joy doesn’t have a black or white definition; it’s literally a great feeling of happiness which can only be determined by you. It’s one of the choices that makes this hard life way more enjoyable. But how do we achieve it exactly?
Reaching a sustained state of joy requires a mindset of intentionality and small choices that compound over time.
You Deserve More Than a Second Thought
We live in a society where the more you “do,” the more you are rewarded. But the level of productivity in a given day is significantly more than it was 50 years ago due to advances in technology and infrastructure among other factors. Essentially, we’re responding to increased demands with increased outputs—but likely haven’t adjusted our inputs in a long while.
We collectively and habitually exhaust ourselves by trying to squeeze in as much as humanly possible in every day and every week. By the time all the minutes have passed, we either have very little left to give—sometimes nothing at all. A big part of joy is creating a life that makes you feel refueled, and that requires (1) discovering what those refueling elements are, and (2) proactively carving out time for them.
What refuels you? For me, it’s quiet moments in the morning, regular exercise, carving time out of my busy schedule to connect with friends, and adequate sleep. Very straightforward habits. Some other activities that require a little more effort include limiting my social media use to just 30 minutes per day, skydiving (yes, truly), traveling and immersing myself into other cultures, and making music. It’s okay to carve out time, and to preserve some energy for you. After all, you can’t pour from an empty tank. But even more, you deserve to be a priority too.
Find Your Refueling Tactics. Invest. Repeat.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon used to famously say “we can’t be everything to every customer, but we can be the right thing to the right customer.” That stuck with me for years, as it applies the same to human nature. We can’t be everything to everyone, all the time–but we can be the right thing, to the right person, at the right time. And that must include ourselves.
There is a trial and error nature to finding the tactics and activities that refuel you. It requires experimentation, and often changes throughout the course of your life. Once you’ve identified these, it’s important to incorporate them into your routine.
I mentioned some that work for me in the previous section–some small, some bigger–but it took a bit of discovery work to land on those for this period of my life. The harder part was incorporating them into a routine. My biggest piece of advice here is to start small. If you, like me, discover you like to meditate and reflect early in the morning, try it once a week on the same day, then move to two days–and then three. Be intentional, make small progressions, and then repeat.
Be Intentional. And Give Yourself Grace.
Intentionality is everything. I define it as using the potential of our minds, and power of our actions to live a life rooted in joy. The choices of how to spend every minute of every day are endless. The choices of how to spend every microforce of our energy is endless. But it’s up to us to make the best choices in order to achieve the productivity output levels we need to, as well as achieve joy.
I don’t respond to emails after 10 p.m. anymore, and hardly make any exceptions to that rule. Why? Because the work will be there tomorrow, and someone getting an email from me at 10 p.m. versus 8am the next morning is generally not the “end of the world.” My 10pm cutoff allows me to consistently prepare for bed at the same time, in order to get enough sleep, which has been game changing to my physical and mental health. I give myself grace for the emails I wanted to get out by 10pm, but didn’t. This exact tactic won’t work for everyone, but what are some elements of your ideal routine that also require grace?
Stretching ourselves too thin out of habit, and societal expectations often leaves us exhausted, burnt out, and depleted.
Be intentional in seeding your routine with joy-creating, and refueling tactics. Give yourself grace on some of those things you wanted to do, but didn’t get around to doing in a certain time frame. Learn to be at peace with not being everything to everyone at the same time–especially when it requires you not to be the right thing to yourself.
Isa Watson is a technology entrepreneur, author of Life Beyond Likes: Logging Off Your Screen and Into Your Life, and the creator of the Day of Intentionality.