Being Intentional With Yourself

When you live with OCD working to be intentional can be a chore in itself. But this chore-like feeling can often be explained by the menial task of explaining one’s own thoughts to one’s self. In the eyes of an OCD sufferer, this makes sense. Internalised thinking in an effort to reduce the manifestation of concerns or worries is exhausting and a reason why laymen to the condition will often poke fun at you, sometimes stating “well, you seem normal”. This is the point when thinking becomes manifestation and you just want to punch that person flat in the face. Only you won’t because then you worry you’ll be covered in nose blood and have to wash yourself a million times. (I’m kidding obviously).

The struggle to resist this type of thinking is often rooted in a perceived lack of control of environment or life. Intentional living can help with that, but it’s not as easy as it sounds to most, and believe me, I know because I think of myself as an intentionalist, minimalist, whatever you want to call it. And it helps, but it’s not a cure all.

Mastering intentional living may slightly alleviate symptoms of not only OCD but other debilitating mental health conditions. By thinking twice and creating structure for why we make certain choices we can truly question our motives and prevent bad habits/thought processes from accelerating and trickle mild relief from difficult thoughts and emotions. But as I said, it’s difficult.

On the flip side, I believe living intentionally can assist reversing our, what feels like, boundless environmental problems. There is a correlation between what we do, our minds and the effect it has on the environment. And it’s true, we are what we eat/consume.

Just think of the trash we can stop stuffing our refuse centres with who already collect household bins overflowing with bags of trash chock full of unintentional waste. We may like to think we’re in control, but we really aren’t and our trash paints a better picture of us than any psychologist ever will.

Well, that’s obvious – to live intentionally is how we should all live/are living? At the end of your next day review the things you did, the choices you made and ask yourself – what inspired your decisions? You may discover the better part of your time was on autopilot.