Living on Purpose with the Help of Audacious Intentions
An audacious intention starts with knowing what you want and why you want it.
I still remember the first time I reluctantly shared a passage from my work in progress. I was a stay-at-home mom, juggling the logistics of getting the kids to football practice and gymnastics while also managing the books for my husband’s business.
Writing was a new idea I’d just begun pursuing. I wanted some thing I could call my own. Everyone in my family seemed to have a full life with their own personal endeavors. I’d chosen to leave the classroom and the intervention trainings I was so passionate about offering, to stay home with my kids and help with my husband’s ever-growing business. I told myself that my presence at home would make our life more manageable, but I missed having my own pursuit that brought added meaning to my life. So, I started writing.
Sharing a short paragraph of my unpolished words with a trusted friend left me feeling vulnerable and open to criticism, but my friend liked the passage I shared. Her enthusiasm and interest in the blue-eyed antagonist in my second-chance love story, along with her request for more pages, fed my emptiness and pushed me to keep going until I typed THE END on that first draft a year later.
I’ve come so far since I penned that first draft 10+ years ago. I’ve taken numerous writing classes and attended conferences and workshops that not only deepened my understanding of the craft, but also gave me the opportunity to discuss my idea with fellow writers and industry professionals. This required me to practice fumbling over my words and ultimately helped me figure out what I was trying to say. I’ve paid for many, many, MANY sessions with book coach(es) and received feedback and support and encouragement that has helped my book idea evolve into the one I’m excited about and trying to bring to fruition today.
Because I, once again, was given the opportunity to figure out what I was trying to say and why I wanted to say it.
Being intentional requires uprooting and examining all of your shoulds.
My word for 2024 is intention. Intention is a powerful word I can use to guide me to finally achieving the unattained goals I’ve been carrying over from year to year to year – like publishing my book.
The Latin origin of the word intention is on purpose. Many times, we don’t live our lives on purpose, or at least not the purpose that lies buried deep within our souls. Instead, we brush aside our wants, desires, and needs and focus on what we believe we should do. These shoulds are conditioned thought patterns, ideals, even inherited beliefs we picked up from society or our caregivers – the stakeholders in our life.
These shoulds are often so engrained in our subconscious that they run on stealth mode, directing our actions and inactions, and taking away our autonomy to listen to ourselves and create our fullest lives.
How can you get beyond the shoulds and discern your biggest, boldest, most audacious intentions?
Like life, writing requires a lot of discernment and grace and grit. It’s the art of chasing an idea/a dream/a desire. It’s figuring out what a character and/or a set of characters want – and why they want it. It’s also digging deep into why you want to tell that story for them and why you’re afraid that you can’t or shouldn’t.
I have an absolutely fantastic book coach and editor. She gets story in a way I have never seen anyone understand story before. She’s also kind and enthusiastic and asks a ton of questions that push me to discern the story I’m trying to tell – and she believes that I have the ability to tell it.
Discernment is not only the work of crafting our dreams/goals. Discernment is pivotal in the work of achieving those dreams/goals.
Discernment is not something we make a lot of time for in our fast-paced world, but this act of figuring out what we want and why we want it over and over again is the act of living on purpose.
I’m often told as a writer that I should read widely. This is so I can learn to discern the possibilities of the craft: what resonates with my (genre) readers; what resonates with me (the writer); what kind of story I am trying to tell.
After years of reading, and writing, and rewriting, I have a vision for how I want this book to exist in the world. I want my book to be the trifecta of Jodi Picoult’s LEAVING TIME, Liane Moriarty’s THE HUSBAND’S SECRET, and Sarah Penner’s THE LOST APOTHECARY. These are big authors with some impressive writing chops. These are also big books with intriguing premises and complex structures, which is why this vision excites me and terrifies me all at the same time. These books and these authors are models I hold for my book and my career – for myself—moving forward.
I’m not using these books and these authors as models because I want to obtain fame or fortune or accolades – though I’m not going to write off the inner growth and satisfaction those external victories could bring. I’m using these books and these authors as models because their books resonate with some part of my deeply-layered and multifaceted why.
The spiritual thread in Picoult’s LEAVING TIME resonates with the heart of my main character’s dilemma, and my own fear of losing my husband of 20+ years to the unknown. The mystery surrounding Seth’s (the deceased husband of my main character) whereabouts during his final days has elements similar to Moriarty’s THE HUSBAND’S SECRET. And, a woman’s choices in a past timeline has repercussions for all of the characters in the present-day timeline of my novel, just like Penner’s THE LOST APOTHECARY.
It took a lot of discernment to come to the place where I could see my desires for this particular book, and my writing in general, with this much clarity. I can and do celebrate the work that brought me here, and still, I recognize there is and always will be more discernment required as I continue to define and refine my audacious intentions with the goal of living a life of purpose and meaning.
YOU have the power to claim what you want moving forward. Start asking: What do I want? What are my desires? What do I believe I can achieve? Why do I believe I can’t or shouldn’t or couldn’t do/achieve? What are my limits? What are my deal breakers? What do I need to do to make this the year I achieve some big audacious goals?
You’ll find all kinds of things will come up when you start asking yourself questions instead of solely relying on feedback from outside of you. Not only are your heart’s desires going to start to surface, but also your fears, your beliefs, and all of your shoulds and shouldn’ts. That is okay. That is actually more than okay. That is exactly what you want –> the whole picture of all that is going on beneath the surface. This is the work of creating your biggest, boldest, and fullest life. This is how you find meaning. And this is how you live your life on purpose.
