Sometimes we just need to put our heads down and power through. It is something that the intentional life design community often doesn’t talk about.

Put Your Head Down and Power Through! – Photo Credit: Public Domain via Pixabay

But we would be foolish to believe that living intentionally would be a breeze all the the time. In fact, sometimes the best life is the harder path. The sense of purpose and meaning is rarely realised by coasting on default or taking the easy road.

Put your head down and power through

Do I believe that there will be more joy on the journey when we design our lives intentionally? Yes I do! That we will gain a passion for life we would miss otherwise? Absolutely! That we will achieve more great things in life? Yep, that too!

I do not believe that the best life is the easy road though. Some guru’s have made it sound like the best life is achieved by sitting in a pleasant dreamy place and imagining the perfect future. It is packaged as attraction of good things. Only problem is, it doesn’t work.

Well, at least not without actually putting your head down and working through the tough spots. Faith without works is dead. And if you know what dead means, it means that horse ain’t pulling your chariot where you want it to go. Real faith, takes the time to align the goals with purpose. Real faith is able to imagine that successful outcome, and to believe it is possible in spite of the challenges. And real faith goes to work.

Perseverance is character

It puts its head down and powers through. Perseverance is character. Dreaming is not. It is valuable, but it falls short of character. So providing you have taken the time to align your activities and goals with the purpose of your design, put your head down and power through.

Expect those moments. Those that get off their lazy boys and dare to live intentionally will face more hard work than those choosing to sit through a life of default. But hard work isn’t hardship. It is rewarding. Those that avoid hard work, and continue flipping channels from their lazy boys may avoid the extra hard work. But they won’t avoid hardship any more than the intentional, purpose driven folk.

Write down your goals

I find that it helps keeping a written life map of where I am going. Then when I go through times of grunt and hard work, I can remind myself of my purpose and my hope for a future. Then I can put my head down and power through. My life map isn’t written in stone. God is allowed to change if and when He chooses. And it will change as I grow.

But it takes into consideration what I have learned so far in life, about wisdom, my design, my purpose and my weaknesses and limits. It gives me direction. East, west, south or north. We get more of the specifics when God reveals more, or when I learn more, grow more, and in general become wiser.

Till then, it gives me the persistence, the patience and the faith to put my head down and power through.