What’s the difference between a paper boat and a canoe? A paper boat drifts with the current, while a canoe allows you to reach a specific destination—even if that destination is upstream. Sometimes drifting with the current is fine, but it’s not the way to have a satisfying and meaningful life. To live with purpose, we must stop drifting through life. This post tells you how.
Living intentionally takes effort. Drifting through life doesn’t.
We rarely reach a specific location by drifting. We need the paddles and steering capability of canoe if we want to reach our desired destination. Likewise, mindlessly drifting through life won’t help us achieve a purposeful and satisfying life.
I don’t want a paper boat life, following the whims of other’s opinions and drifting on the current of society’s values whether I agree with them or not. That means I need to pick up my paddle and do some work. I need to stop drifting and make daily intentional decisions to keep heading in the direction I’ve chosen.
5 areas where I must be intentional if I want to stop drifting through life and remain on course
Each of us faces a variety of currents that regularly try to push us off course. You may not struggle with all the currents I’ve listed, but I bet at least some of them hit home.
As you read through the list, identify which areas you most often find yourself adrift. Those are the areas where a dose of daily intention will matter the most in your life.
Maintaining my boundaries and priorities.
Life is full of distractions, obstacles, and demanding people who can get us off track. It’s easy to drift into old habits of allowing others ignore our boundaries or overrule our priorities. But let’s face it, nobody else is going to enforce our boundaries for us. If we’re not intentional about maintaining our boundaries and priorities, we’ll soon find ourselves drifting away from the satisfying, authentic, purposeful life we want.
Overcoming the inertia of making positive changes
Establishing new habits, taking risks at work, trying to patch up a relationship—these kinds of activities are like paddling upstream. If we don’t set our intentions daily to accomplish hard goals, we’ll quickly find ourselves drifting back into those old bad habits, or into playing it safe, or falling into apathy over troubled relationships.
Positive change doesn’t happen in a paper boat life.
Curating my mental playlist
This area is like a stretch of rapids we must navigate. We’re all swimming in a constant flow of negative messages. When we allow any old soundtrack to play over and over in our heads, we’re drifting with that dangerous flow, letting ourselves be battered by unhelpful messages and getting ourselves stuck in eddies of self-condemnation.
We must combat that negative current by intentionally deciding which thoughts to entertain and which to reject. Science and the Bible both tell us we can renew our minds by intentionally replacing negative thoughts with better ones.
Seeking a wide variety of free-time inputs
This is the still pool in our river, where we’re tempted to lay back and drift—defaulting to the same leisure activities over and over. Unfortunately, those few free hours are often our only time for indulging in fill-your-soul kinds of activities. And yet, how often do we fritter those hours away on mindless media consumption instead? To get out of our rut, we must be intentional about not wasting our free time. Make the effort to work on hobbies and find new activities to try now and then.
Remaining positive and encouraging
The internet and airwaves are filled with tragic events, complaints, scathing gossip, and incorrect grammar. We can easily drift into adopting a cynical, critical mindset, adding our own rants and finger-pointing to the pile. As we drift by on our paper boats, we have plenty of time to notice all that is wrong with the world.
Instead, we can set an intention to be a positive voice. To seek out beauty, kindness and hope in our world instead of complaining about what’s wrong. It’s not easy to maintain a positive attitude when faced with grumpy coworkers, sullen children, or lackluster customer service, but when we manage it, we bring light into the world.
Where have you been drifting through life? What can you do this week to be more intentional in that area?
