TLDR: Life has its own momentum, so it takes intention to design your own life and avoid being shaped solely by the world around you.
CAVEAT: We don’t have control over many things, but the things we do have control over can be life-changing.
(As always, find your next step at the end!)
Have you ever looked at your life and felt a little … surprised?
It could be pleasant—the kind of surprise you feel when you realize that the major you randomly chose in college has somehow turned into a decent-paying career that you actually like.
It could be less than pleasant—the kind of existential disbelief you feel when having the same argument with the same person for the millionth time.
Whether the surprise is the positive kind or not, the key takeaway from these types of self-disconnected experiences is this:
You shouldn’t be.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing against enjoying unexpected wins in life. And I’m definitelynot arguing for a self-defeatist ‘I knew this was bound to happen again’ attitude.
I’m proposing something that is more neutral and completely undeniable:
We are shaped by momentum.
Life, that unfathomably complex swirl of nature, nurture, and the cards we’re dealt, is momentum.
And unless you consciously choose to be a part of your own shaping, Life will do the shaping for you.
More important than my proposal is my hope that you won’t spend a single second beating yourself up over this, even if today was the day you looked up and felt totally surprised at how Life has shaped you.
Even as ‘independent’ adults, it’s easy to get swept up in the ideas other people have about us.It’s easy to passively take their ideas about our identities and end up being influenced in everything from our daily routines to the expectations we have of ourselves and others.
Sometimes this makes sense, and can even be helpful.
Years ago I was struggling to figure out what I wanted to do with a large ‘gap’ that Life had presented to me. By coincidence, I ran into an old friend who made this offhanded comment: “You’ve always been a reader and a writer. That’s what you’re good at.”
Her idea of me sparked a four year journey of artistic creation that (while objectively filled with more valleys than peaks) gave me as much satisfaction as it did opportunities to learn and develop.
But sometimes, other people’s ideas about us make no sense, and can be extremely unhelpful.
Suffice it to say that we’ve probably all experienced the negative psychological ramifications that the opinions of Life’s bullies can have on us.
But even if you set aside the influence of other people’s opinions, there’s still an influencing factor that’s easy to miss:
The most powerful opinion of you, is yours.
And it takes intentional examination of your opinions to create an intentional life.
It wasn’t my friend’s words that did any of the work for me, although I’m grateful to have a friend with a positive opinion of my capabilities!
It was paying attention to her words, asking myself if those words were (still) true, and examining what they could mean in relation to the next steps I could take.
If you don’t stop to examine what you think of yourself, you’ll always be missing out on the opportunity to become More.
You’ll just keep moving in the direction that Life pushes you. And you’ll just keep feeling surprised every time you look up.
So let’s get to the good news.
Momentum IS NOT destiny.
There is nothing that says you have to accept your life’s current trajectory. You don’t have to keep doing what you’re doing, just because you’ve always done it.
I know, from personal experience, that we can be so inundated with who we think we are that the idea of changing doesn’t necessarily occur to us on its own.
So I’m asking you to start with this:
STEP 1. Create some reflection time.
And no, as a Toddler Mom, I’m not expecting you to have magical blocks of uninterrupted time to do this. I’ve actually learned that the more time I have to do anything, the longer it takes (this is known as Parkinson’s Law, and it is a fascinatingly useful concept!)
But once again from experience, I’m going to tell you what I’ve learned to be true:
You have more time than you think.
Whether your responsibilities extend beyond yourself right now or not, there’s always an excuse available if you’re looking for one.
But there is also always something you can do to create fifteen minutes of space in your day. The obvious examples are trading media time or getting up earlier, but with your natural ingenuity you can probably come up with other trade offs you could make to find the time! (And if you truly don’t get any time alone, go to bed fifteen minutes earlier, lay there with your eyes closed and retreat into the privacy of your own mind).
STEP 2. Ask yourself, If I continue living the way I’m living now, where am I naturally going to end up?
Even if you don’t know the exact answer to that question, you’ll intuitively be able to answer the next one:
STEP 3. Is that somewhere I want to go?
You don’t have to have everything about where you do want to go figured out. You really don’t. Because a lot of times the next step becomes clearer before the destination does.
You only need to break the momentum of the outside world enough to create some awareness of your inner world.
Just a little bit of self awareness can create so much clarity, and clarity is what you need to start figuring out where you might need an ‘Intention Intervention’.
Once you’ve given yourself the gift of reflection and a growing sense of clarity about what you want to change, there will be practical obstacles to overcome.
After all, our circumstances matter.
You might be living in a family situation you can’t just walk away from. You might be caring for someone who depends on you, or you might have very little control over where you live right now. On the other end of the spectrum, you might have very few external demands on your time. You might be discovering that having endless possibilities can be weirdly paralyzing, and makes it hard to create any kind of momentum at all.
So let’s not pretend that everyone has the same degree of control over their circumstances. We don’t.
But there are things we do have some control over.
Your home is one of those things.
And your home is the perfect practice ground for developing your personal agency.
Your home, no matter how big or small, gives you so many opportunities to practice being intentional.
You can rearrange furniture, simplify housework by decluttering, or redecorate by moving around decor you already own. You can change the way you do something at home. You can question a system that you’ve always used because … well, that’s just the way it’s done (isn’t it?).
These might seem like tiny decisions, but they’re actually everyday opportunities to become more flexible in your thinking. Your home gives you consistently available chances to learn something really important:
You are allowed to change things.
You can change your mind. You can try new things. You can decide that the way you've always done something isn't actually the way you want to do it anymore.
The ability to think flexibly and have enough confidence to do so affects how we look at our time, our priorities, and our future.
Flexibility and confidence aren’t just ‘traits that some people have’. They’re skills that can be built through practice.
Practicing them at home is one of the most doable ways to start improving your skills as your own Life’s Architect.
And remember: reinvention can happen without totally reinventing yourself. Architects don't have to to tear an entire house down to redesign it. You can renovate one room, rethink the floor plan, or start laying the plans now for something that will take a while to build.
You don't have to change everything. You just have to become willing to change something.
HERE’S YOUR NEXT STEP:
Find fifteen minutes today to ask yourself:
If I continue living the way I’m living now, where am I naturally going to end up?And is that somewhere I want to go?