Developing an Intentional Life
With deepest gratitude to my parents, Reza “Ray” & Nazila, & to my brother Arian, who together showed me the hidden language of love. It has made all the difference.
If I am deceiving you, though, I am deceiving myself first of all. These are the stories I tell myself. This is the story of how I went down the wrong path, & managed to find my way back before it was too late thanks to my loved ones.
THIS IS A MEMOIR, a highly biased & unreliable memoir of the stories I tell myself. It is filled with exaggerations, faulty recollections, omissions, chagrins & qualms. It also contains a lot of truth about my demise, more truth than falsehoods, I believe.
I was very introverted in high school & was looking for an outlet to break out of my shell. My priority shifted from earning a diploma to learning about myself. My demise started when I joined a fraternity, which I lost all sense of time management & accountability with my academics. While working full time, I consistently made the wrong decisions & undervalued the consequences.
I hit rock bottom when my family’s health was unstable. My father suffered a quadruple bypass surgery due to a severe heart attack. I lost all desire to follow commitment & was living in fear & loathing. I had a quarter-life crisis in September of 2015. Overweight, overworked, & miserable, I knew I needed a drastic change & I thought that change could be found through self-employment.
A problem arose almost immediately. Self-employment can be very similar to the regular 9 to 5 “rat race”, especially when you’re a workaholic with perfectionistic tendencies. Being a slave to your clients or to social media is not much different from the obligations at a “normal” job.
Therefore com.abtinbidgoli was developed in 2020 as a vessel that stripped away the bureaucracy & unneeded complexity I personally experienced within my past employment opportunities. A year into running my own business, I started to crash again. My fear, bitterness, & shame derived from running away from all my problems. I bit off more than I could chew. As they say, when it rains it pours.
“What a blessing it is to have a second chance”
With Covid being the most important, I have learned to replace weaknesses with the strengths by imitating risks. Recognizing the major factors that were hindering my definition of success helped me create greater personal accountability & ownership for my results.
I have to own it, solve it, & do it, all starting with my attitude & behavior. Meaning recognizing & acknowledging reality, accepting responsibility for the situation, implementing situations that I had not envisioned before, avoiding falling below the line, having the commitment & courage to follow through.
What began as a move towards self-employment turned into a five year journey towards something different. A totally different life. A life developed with intention.
What is your definition of developing an intentional life?
After two years of working towards one, here’s what I’ve landed on:
- A life spending my time on what I want, when I want, & with whom I want.
- A life where I do very little of what I don’t like & a lot of what I do.
- A life with limited obligations & as much freedom as possible.
- A life free of traditional full-time employment.
When you read those statements, your first reaction might be that it sounds ambitious or fantastical. I’ve made peace with the potential judgement & prejudice.
I believe it’s a more natural way to live than the assembly-line, 8-hour workday life we’ve inherited from the 1860’s. Today, the internet provides us a better solution for building income online & spending more of our time with loved ones.
Albeit developing an intentional life is difficult, it’s also achievable. It requires a combination of proper planning & habit formation, mixed with a bias for action & an eye for opportunity.
I looked back on 2 years worth of notes & experiences, & grouped together nine key life-changing drivers into three groups. Many of them won’t be surprising. None of them are new discoveries. There are no magic “hacks”.
These are well known, well appreciated drivers. But most of us fail so often at getting them right. I believe it’s because we attempt to improve each driver or group, but often in isolation from the others.
It’s only when we understand & improve all nine drivers & three groups over time, that we can come closer to the intended outcome: an intentional life.
Purpose
The foundational group of three drivers makes up your purpose: time, motivation, & environment.
Time
We all know that time is our most finite resource. Non-renewable. The ultimate currency of life. But we tend to forget when faced with the day-to-day of work, family, & obligations.
Understanding that time is the ultimate currency is the fundamental driver of intentional life development.
Motivation
Motivation is what drives you. Why are you creating time freedom? If you’re creating that freedom without a specific motivation, there’s a high likelihood that you will be unfulfilled. The goal isn't to do nothing. The goal is to avoid what you dislike, & do more of what you love. Your motivation.
Environment
Your environment is what & whom you surround yourself with. Family, friends, peers, & influences.
Time & purpose are like a seed, & your environment like soil & water. It’s tough to grow surrounded by pessimists or complainers, those who are unreliable, or worse yet, untrustworthy.
It’s difficult to focus & prosper when addicted to the 24-hour news circus, or the politicians who thrive on your valuable time currency. Curating the proper environment creates the ecosystem in which you can thrive.
Discipline
Discipline is the group of behavioral drivers that create the proper accountability to grow your purpose: Ownership, change, & habits.
Ownership
Ownership is the understanding that you are completely in control of your own life. Nobody is coming to save you. Yes, some people have it tougher, while others have it much easier. This is factual. But you cannot develop an intentional life if you believe you do not control it. This fundamentally destroys the concept of developing your own life.
Change
Change means breaking away from the routine & false comfort of the traditional system. It means doing new & interesting things with new & interesting people. Only when we extend our comfort zone can we truly find unique opportunities & outcomes. The fishing is often best where the fewest go.
Habits
As people we have our own internal business systems & processes called habits. Habits are the things we do routinely, often without noticing. If the statement, “how we spend our days is how we spend our lives” is true, then habits are how we spend our days. Because better habits mean better days, then it’s not a stretch to believe they are a core driver of a better life.
Action
Action is the group of drivers moving us from the old way of living to a newly developed, intentional life. To create freedom, we must have a larger share of automated income. That income comes from owning a piece of the modern world ~ capturing your own small corner of the internet. We do this through: creation, opportunity, & momentum.
Creation
The most common form of failure is a failure to start. Creation, on the other hand, is the act of getting started. We can understand our motivation, become more disciplined, & take accountability for our lives. But without action, we’re simply dreamers. When we create, we share our opinions & our work openly & at scale, online. It’s up to you to create a portfolio of unique work & opinions.
Opportunity
Opportunity is the outcome of sharing your ideas online. Any opinions or work shared freely will attract a group of interesting thinkers. Remember: do interesting things with interesting people. Doing so will help you develop skills. Use those skills to build assets, & those assets to create income. With that income, you create more time. The cycle continues.
Momentum
Momentum in intentional life development is no different than momentum in business or investing. Creating & seizing opportunity compounds over time, & compound attention & work wins over short-term hacks or virality. When something works, double down. When something fails, use those failures to eliminate or iterate & try again.
Two outta three ain’t bad. But it’s also not enough.
When I speak with people who are attempting to develop (or redevelop) their life with more intention, they generally fall into the “two outta three” camp.
The most common combination is purpose & discipline: The “passionate dreamer”.
The Passionate Dreamer
The passionate dreamer is someone who understands their purpose, & has started to put in place their discipline.
They talk about making a change, starting over, & recreating their lives. The challenge? They never start.
They can’t pull the trigger, & they never move forward. Developing an intentional life becomes what many of our ideas become. Just a dream.
For years, this was me. I was afraid to put myself out there for the world to read or watch. Only when I started developing in 2019, did this go away. It was, & still is, one of the best choices of my life.
The Aimless Producer
The aimless producer is someone who has discipline & is executing on taking action, but they lack an overarching purpose.
They are heads down looking for progress, & measuring their engagement. They are in competition with others & moving full speed ahead.
This was me when I first developed my first Static Bespoke Web Development client deliverable in 2019. Working to make money & not considering my purpose or my environment. It’s an unfulfilling hamster wheel with no end in sight.
The Undisciplined Creator
The undisciplined creator is someone who understands their motivation & has started taking action, but lacks discipline.
They share their thoughts freely, & shine a spotlight on their best work. They make interesting connections & come across wonderful opportunities. The problem? The success they imagine isn’t immediate.
When success isn’t immediate, they often crumble. The world isn’t fair. It works for everyone else. Why should I have to change? I want to keep doing things my way.
Today, I find myself in this camp. Struggling to improve habits, often convinced that it’s my way or the highway. It used to work ~ why doesn’t it still? It’s a constant battle to test & iterate. To find a new path.
In 2021, I’m working on improving this aspect of my life through reading, exercise, quiet time & perspective.
Abstract
The journey towards developing my life with intention will likely never end, but I feel excited to continue learning & growing.
If you're interested in developing or redeveloping your life with more intention, here are the three groups & nine key drivers to always be improving, in the form of simple questions you can ask yourself.
Your Purpose:
- Do you truly appreciate time as currency?
- What is your motivation for freedom of time?
- How have you curated an environment that supports your goal?
Your Discipline:
- Do you assume full responsibility for your life?
- What changes have you made to help develop a life with more intention?
- What system(s) have you built for creating strong habits?
Your Action:
- How often are you sharing your opinions & work freely online?
- When interesting opportunities come your way, are you seizing them?
- Are you staying consistent & creating compound momentum?
“These considerations all work to assure some dissent & coverage of inconvenient facts. The beauty of the system, however, is that such dissent & inconvenient information are kept within bounds & at the margins, so that while their presence shows that the system is not monolithic, they are not large enough to interfere unduly with the domination of the official agenda. It should also be noted that we are talking about media structure & performance, not the effects of the media on the public.” ~ Curated Excerpt From: Edward S. Herman. “Manufacturing Consent.” Apple Books.
Curated via Justin Welsh. Thanks for reading, cheers! (with a glass of wine & book of course)
2018 Carter Cellars Weitz Cabernet Sauvignon
Producer: Carter Cellars Weitz Vineyard, Napa Valley, Napa County, North Coast, California, USA
"Perched above the Silverado Trail on the eastern Oakville Bench and renown for its red volcanic soil, this vineyard continues to thrill us year after year. This translucent purple wine opens with signature scents of red and black berry fruits, cassis and crushed violets. A fruit forward wine with notably plush tannins and natural acidity give this wine both concentration and a multi-dimensional quality. Considerable depth and fruit will continue to develop as the structure starts to integrate with bottle age and bring tremendous purity and allure. Decanting a few hours will benefit this wine for early drinking; cellar for 5-10 years to enjoy this wine in its prime." ~ Carter Cellars Weitz Vineyard Winery
"The 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Weitz Vineyard comes from a site in the northern part of the valley and more red, volcanic soils. It reminds me of the 2016 with its iron/iodine-like character as well as beautiful mulled red and black fruits, Asian spices, chocolate, and loamy earthy aromas and flavors. This big, rich, opulent beauty has sweet tannins, a rocking mid-palate, and a great finish. It’s already impossible to resist yet has two decades of longevity ahead of it." ~ 96 Points ~ Jeb Dunnuck
"Long considered one of the gems in Turnbull’s Vineyard portfolio, the Weitz Vineyard sits on 62 glorious acres high on the Oakville Bench above some of the most famous vineyards in the world. Characterized by fractured volcanic rocks and degraded boulders, the scarcity of soil forces the vines to struggle and naturally controls fruit production. The fruit itself is renowned for its profound structure, elegant rich texture and lingering acidity and minerality. We are proud to join such notable wineries like the Maybach Family to source fruit out of this remarkable vineyard." ~ Carter Cellars Weitz Vineyard Winery
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
By: Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky
In this pathbreaking work, now with a new introduction, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order.
Based on a series of case studiesincluding the medias dichotomous treatment of worthy versus unworthy victims, legitimizing and meaningless Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against IndochinaHerman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the medias behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the medias handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the medias treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.
"An absolutely brilliant analysis of the ways in which individuals and organizations of the media are influenced to shape the social agendas of knowledge and, therefore, belief. Contrary to the popular conception of members of the press as hard-bitten realists doggedly pursuing unpopular truths, Herman and Chomsky prove conclusively that the free-market economics model of media leads inevitably to normative and narrow reporting. Whether or not you've seen the eye-opening movie, buy this book, and you will be a far more knowledgeable person and much less prone to having your beliefs manipulated as easily as the press." ~ Amazon Review
"Herman of Wharton and Chomsky of MIT lucidly document their argument that America's government and its corporate giants exercise control over what we read, see and hear. The authors identify the forces that they contend make the national media propagandisticthe major three being the motivation for profit through ad revenue, the media's close links to and often ownership by corporations, and their acceptance of information from biased sources. In five case studies, the writers show how TV, newspapers and radio distort world events. For example, the authors maintain that "it would have been very difficult for the Guatemalan government to murder tens of thousands over the past decade if the U.S. press had provided the kind of coverage they gave to the difficulties of Andrei Sakharov or the murder of Jerzy Popieluszko in Poland." Such allegations would be routine were it not for the excellent research behind this book's controversial charges. Extensive evidence is calmly presented, and in the end an indictment against the guardians of our freedoms is substantiated. A disturbing picture emerges of a news system that panders to the interests of America's privileged and neglects its duties when the concerns of minority groups and the underclass are at stake. First serial to the Progressive." ~ Publishers Weekly
