How becoming intentional changes everything & and how you can change to make it a reality for you too
I happened to go through life by checking in how others are viewing me, seeing me, judging me and valuing me. When they liked me, I felt good, when they disliked me, I tried to make sure that they like me again, and when when they were neutral, I was irritated and insecure of how I should behave around them. My life was focused on others, but not on myself.
It took me a long time to find my way out of the world of pleasing others instead of pleasing myself, of following others rather than following myself, to follow the dreams of others instead of my own dreams, to make decisions for others compared to for myself, to focus on the good feeling for others compared to my own.
It is exhausting to say the least, it feels like being the game ball others play with, like being the feather in the wind where the wind is managed and organized by the people around me. Like floating in the sea and the waves are pushing you in one direction or the other without any firm ground for you to stay on.
What does life do to you when you live your life that way?
Living without a firm ground and triggered and focused on how other’s perceive you changes you. You are changed by the people that you interact with, strangers, close friends, family. And you are a slightly different person with each of them. You adapt, you become the person they want you to become. For some of your friends you are the party goer, the one dancing till late into the night and loving it, for others you are the calm, shy person that says little and is often withdrawn, for again others you are the strong, assertive, smart business person that knows how to negotiate her way to the top. And often you are all of these things, don’t get me wrong, but it is also about the small moments in which you adapt to them and they often make all the difference.
Harry may tell you that he wants to eat Vietnamese food for dinner and even though you loathe it, you say yes as you don’t want him to feel bad and make sure he still likes you. Anna hurts you repeatedly, but because you don’t want to hurt her feelings, you meet her again and again, even as it hurts you. And Benjamin asks you to do him a favor over the weekend and you do so even though you had other plans, and instead you cancel your other plans to do him his favor.
Again, all these actions may be ok if you want to do the other person a favor, if you like helping them, but at the same time, all are a clear sign of you not taking into account yourself, but rather everyone else. And in Anna’s case, while failing to tell her that she hurts your feelings, you at the same time support her in doing what she is doing. Maybe she does not even know that she is hurting your feelings as you never told her.
All these small moments where you hide your true self, make your true self disappear in the floating waves of the wind shaped by the world of others, you are disappearing as well. You become invisible not only to others but to yourself as well. You start to make decisions that are not your own, you have feelings that are not your own, and you have values that are not your own. They are directed and shaped by others and their views of the world.
And then, whenever you make decisions, you say something, you value something, you show feelings, you have to consult others. Because how can you know yourself? You are not yourself anymore, you are a mixture of the likings of someone else. Your own true voice has disappeared. And so you go through life with asking others about the choices you should make. Shall I take that job or the other? What will they say? What will it look like on my resume? Will they like me? Shall I marry her? Would this be a good next move? Shall I move to a different country? Or better stay here? Will my friends here then still like me? Will people like me there? Can I make that party this week when I already did one last week? What if people don’t like it and then do not value me anymore after the party? And so on.
Again, all these questions can be valid when you intentionally think about them and make a decision for yourself. But if you ask those questions to hope that others make that decision for you because you are too freightened to make the “wrong” decision in the eyes of others, or the “wrong” decision because you could take someone aback, then this is not healthy. Then you act out of the fear of not being liked by a “wrong” decision, the you act because you do not want to take the responsibility to decide for yourself.
And what does it imply for our whole life?
The longer we let our being be floating around with the wishes, dreams and hopes of others as our goals, we are not within ourselves. We miss the basis on which we can make any form of intentional, own decisions. How shall we? We cannot know ourselves. We only know ourselves in the situations that shape us, in the pieces of information that others tell us, in the pieces of values that are given to us. We take on what others give us and we go with it. And that is ok. Again, we can do that, no one stops us from doing that. They will love it, it makes things easy, you have people valuing you, liking you and you are often a welcomed guest. You are pleasing others, why should you not be liked, right?
The funny and very sad thing is that this often does not work out. For a very simple reason. Over time, we feel that something is not working out for us. There is this itchy feeling within that says that something is not working out. We are smiling, we are friendly, we are often well-respected in our circles of friends and at work. But we feel that something is off. It may be exhausting, it may be make us being sick often, it may let us simmer in front of the TV unable to do anythigng else in the evening as we are too tired, it may make us eat much more than we need, it may make us withdraw, it may make us de-valuing others and more. And over time, we may realize that people are turning around, friends are disappearing and we are all alone. This is a bit of a sad and over-dramatic image drawn to describe what happens when we do not intentionally live our life but let us live it by the terms of everyone around us despite ourselves. The effects of our daily choices that we make won’t be immediately visible, but over time, they draw a line and make aware what is happening deep within. Being lonely. Feeling lonely. Feeling lonely among strangers, among friends and among family. Being insecure. Being sad. Living life just to live it, just to scroll through the phone screen and looking what others do, looking how others live their life, looking how others go along, looking how others are successful and achieve their dreams while oneself is staying in that job that is awful because someone suggested it as a next good move, or buying an apartment in an interational city, while prefering to live in the countryside, but someone suggested that the market value for the apartment in the city would be more valuable in the future.
And again, it is all fine, all ok, if these are choices that we make deliberately. But when we do them against better judgment, against better feelings, against an itchy feeling that tells us something is wrong, just to please others, to please what we think others will value, then we are missing the point and then they become problematic.
So what can you do to stop pleasing others for the sake of pleasing them and instead start to act intentionally?
Simply stopping to act according to what others wish, like and decide to do, is a great way to do it, but one that mostly only happens after a deliberate period of work beforehand. And so here I want to share some ideas on how you can work on becoming more intentionally in your actions and activities.
And the first of them all is awareness: Becoming aware of yourself.
Becoming aware of your own actions, your own feelings, your own inner voice and thoughts and sentiments. It is the inner listening and acknowledgement of what is going on. Let me give you an example. Imagine that you just had a conversation with someone from a company that offered you a new job. You have an itchy feelingwithin you when thinking about it that you already had along the interview process, but at the same time, you feel that great opportunity in front of you. You ask several friends to support you in your decision making. You discuss with them the various options, what it could mean for you, how it would look at your resume, how it benefit your future career. In the end, you have 10 different opinions from friends and you are lost. Some say you should take it, others say you should not, plus there are various conflicting perspectives on why that may or may not be a good idea. The company calls and wants to make a decision, your friends ask what you decided for, and you yourself are conflicted and unsure about it. You feel the conflicting voices in your head, like “I told my friend that this is a great opportunity and she congratulated me for it, would it not be weird to say no now after what she said? How does it change my relationship with her?”, “The company invested so much time and money for the hiring process, saying no now, would mean that is burned money for them”, “the hiring manager will be pissed because I already said I like the opportunity and saying no would be not fair”, “the opportunity is great, it has great market chances, it seems like amazing”, “I can see myself being all that successful with that role, it is soo cool and then I am part of that cool crowd” and so on. In the end you say yes.
If that is a decision that let’s you being happy there and it is the style that you need, that is all great. But, what if that is not the case. Instead, you have been the play ball of many people involved and you lost the key element of making an aware, intentional choice? Yourself. You had an itchy feeling, something was off from the start, but instead of listening to yourself, you listened to everyone else. Your friends, the company, the hiring manager, the market. Their opinions decided for you to take that new career position. And the itchy feeling was buried within.
So one of the best ways to act intentionally is to become aware of yourself. What are the moments, where you ask others to decide for you, what are the moments where you have an itchy feeling that says no but but you say yes nonetheless, what are the moments where something feels off and you withdraw and scroll through your phone instead of heads-on address it? What are moments where you want to do something, but you don’t because some external factors, an opinion, a word from someone let’s you stop taking your original path?
Start to look at these moments. What happens, how do you act, how do you behave? Look at it realistically, open-minded and just acknowledge them for yourself to better understand you. Don’t judge you for it, don’t pain for it, don’t hide from it, just plainly, easily, simply have a look and then do your normal work again. The more you do it, the more you become aware of yourself, your actions, the moments when you fall into saying yes when you meant no, the moments when you disagreed, but verbally agreed, the moments when you stayed calm, but wished to say something. You become aware, but also about all the beautiful moments that shpe your life.
And then it is about changing what you don’t like
The next step is to not only look, but to change your way of acting. When you don’t like how you acted, then the next time you find yourself in a similar situation, you can try to change how you acted beforehand and take on a new behaviour. For that, there are several pre-practices you can do:
Practice a conversation in front of a mirror, do it as often as it takes you to feel you ingrained what you want to say
Practice a specific body movement over and over again (like moving towards someone, looking in their eyes, holding your arm out etc)
Search for groups or people or books to see how they are doing it and copy-paste their behavior
Bring yourself in a calm, relaxed state and try to spark the excitement and proudness within you when you achieved that change of actions and decisions
These are all practices. And sorry to disappoint you, but they take time. And they won’t happen overnight, but with practice, you will find that you do these change actions automatically and they make it easier for you to change your beahviour and your way of making decisions step by step. Sometimes you run in circles and realize you have to start over, sometimes you sink deep down and have to catch yourself before hitting your head on the ground. These are normal aspects of changing what you did before, so don’t be discouraged, this happens and is totally normally. You will come back stronger afterwards, even stronger than before the circle or drop in between.
As with many things, the more we practice them, the more we improve upon them, so you may realize after practicing for some time, that you will enjoy the change itself and this will help you to act more intentionally faster as well.
And then, what happened afterwards?
Seeing the change within & feeling proud
I am conscious of sharing a result or an end point. Because there is none. But there is something else, which is much more rewarding than any end-goal ticked off. It is the inner belief that comes with the changes that you work on before. You will feel the change within you. You will be aware that you are the one that is able to change your own behaviour. You will be aware that the next time you have that meeting with Anna, who hurts your feelings, you haven an honest conversation with her about what hurts you. And the next time, you are getting a job offer, you listen to that inner voice within you and decide in a split-second that this is not for you and let it go. And you do not stay in a job do not like, but you are actively working towards changing that and finding a new one that is more rewarding. And when Harry suggests Vietnamese food the next time you eat dinner together, you tell him that you do not like it and prefer something else and you are going to a different restaurant the first time after a year.
It will be the moments within your day, that will make the difference. You will feel more calm, more in tune with what you do. It is you that decides and it is you that says no, and you that says yes, and you that follows what you set yourself to do. with the ability to look at your own behavior with open eyes, the ability and willingness to change yourself and your own actions and to do so in a grounded self and intentional way, you are creating so much beauty in yourself, that you will feel that proudness within you that it is you you can trust to make those changes, and it is you you can trust to do that in the future.
Whereever you are on that journey. It does not matter. It is for you to decide whether you prefer to stay where you are or whether you wnat to move to a different place. Everyone can make that decision for us, but only we can deliberately act upon it. And for that reason, a true decision has to come from ourselves. Not only once, or twice, but consistently. In each moment, each day and each week. In the small moments, those that define bigger moments and those that define life directions.
Don’t be discouraged if it is not yet your time to make that leap of faith and work on it, if it does not feel right. You have to be ready for it. Trust the process. And if you deeply want to but do not get to a point where you are, try to choose a much smaller action, decision or behavior you want to change about what you do or did, and start there. Maybe you always wanted to go out and run. Why not go out for 5 mins a day. Do this consistently, and after a while you will be ready to tackle another thing you want to change in a way that you do not say yes when you wnat to say no.
I wish you all the best on this path to becoming more intentionally in your actions and feeling proud of what you have been and will achieve along the way.
You like what I write about and what to share your story or view, then I would be delighted to hear from you. :)