Be An Intentional Person

“When I grow up I want to be a doctor. I like this job because it serves humanity in the most phenomenal way. Every day will be an opportunity for me to learn more about diseases and their cures. I see myself become so excellent at my job that people will refer each other to me for the best medical attention. Seeing my uncle parade the hospital in his white coat, stethoscope around his neck, and with a determined look on his face inspired me towards this dream. Seeing my dad recover and be discharged from the intensive care unit in a few days sealed it. I am going to study hard therefore to achieve this goal and then buy a big house in the suburbs and raise my beautiful, big, and happy family there.”

 

This is an extract from an essay I wrote at age eleven and I must say this was the style for most of my peers at that time. Some wanted to be accountants, teachers, soldiers, nurses, and so forth but the common ground for all of us was that we were made to imagine ourselves years into the future. That insight of oneself in the future was in no doubt a good thing, there is only one problem that I got to realize when I was older and that was the fact that this exercise which we repeated almost every year always only focused distant future. What if we had been asked to write about our future in the next five, two or one year? What would have been different had I been made to create an image of myself in a year or a school term? If the topic had been, “This coming month” instead of “When I grow up”?

 

The major goals of self in the next ten years are exciting, they show you that indeed you can create anything you want in this life. They revive hope for a future far ahead of the present but if they are not accompanied by smaller ones aiming at the nearer future, they are of no use. Most of those kids who said they wanted to become doctors including myself never became so. It all stayed put in our composition books. 

A few days ago, I listened with sadness as a grown woman who was soon to be evicted from a rented apartment said that she was waiting in hope for a solution concerning where she would go next. The more I tried to question her plan the greater the stress I seemed to put her under so I gave up. It was right then that it struck me how important it is to be an intentional person. I quickly realized the importance of a plan, not just a fantasy about the future in the next five or ten years but a plan that affects one’s choices and actions today.

 

Intentional people don’t collide with their destiny, they create it; block by block. They are strong-willed and determined to get the best out of life. These are the people who wait for nobody to help them, they strategically gather the help they need and use it. This is the breed of winners that train their emotions to follow their actions and not the other way round. Rarely are these people surprised by the turnout of events because every day they take calculated moves towards their clear goals. 

 

Be that person who is intentional. Become that person today who has plans for today, tomorrow, the week, and the month in an effort to reach your epitome in the next three, five, or ten years. Refuse to let life constantly take you by surprise, fight to sit on the driver seat of yours every day, and head towards your most excellent self. Have answers for the whys around your behavior and circumstances. If you are on a job you dislike, let it be because it pays your bills now as you strategize on how to get the one that resonates with your soul.

 

Permission and validation from someone else may never come, give it to yourself today. What if you started by commanding joy into your day and your life as a whole? Let me assure you that you would lose your temper less often if you did. You would be less confused, less discouraged, and less frustrated. Intentionally smile at that person who gets on your nerves and watch as your relationship evolves into something pleasant. Deliberately give to the poor even while you feel that you are also going through a rough patch in your financial life. The law of giving and receiving will not let you down.

 

In all this, set out to be fruitful and progressive. Make false starts, run out of breath, and then pause to take a break, head in the wrong direction sometimes and then bring yourself back to your lane. The adventure involved in doing all this is worth it. Just because you have structure doesn’t mean you will get it right all the time. Be willing to make the moves, all the same, if you have a clear intention of where you are going you will definitely reach there. 

 

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