Living Intentionally: Looking Back to Move Forward

As a new year begins, there’s often a sense of both possibility and pressure. Plans to set, resolutions to consider, routines to re-establish, and the lingering weight of unfinished tasks from last year. In the busyness of life, it’s easy for everyone else’s needs to take priority before our own.

For me, this time of year invites reflection:

• How do I want to show up in life this year?

• What experiences do I want to create that I can look back on with joy?

I want to live life intentionally.

Sitting with this desire, I find myself asking: What does it actually mean to live intentionally? Why does it matter? Why do I care so much?

My thoughts turn to one of my favourite taboos, the things we tend to avoid speaking about: money, sex, and death. Recently, at a 50th birthday party, I met an old friend and his wife, who had helped my daughter with physiotherapy years ago. A few months earlier, he had told me they had received devastating news: she had been diagnosed with a form of lung cancer (not due to smoking, she never smoked in her life) and with treatment, they were told she might have around three years to live.

At the party, we talked. After some small talk, I asked, “And how are you doing with your health?” She seemed very willing to share her experience. She spoke about how hard it was to come to terms with the diagnosis. She had always experienced herself as healthy; this kind of thing happened to other people. She described waking up and thinking it had all been an ugly dream, only to realise again that it was real.

I felt deep compassion for her, especially knowing how little room there often is for people to be truly listened to and fully heard in their inner experience when their lives are turned upside down.

Arriving home, once again, my own mortality was stirred. I regularly think about my own impermanence, but notice how easily I slip into living as though time is unlimited, I move from task to task as if I’m on an endless conveyor belt.

I pulled a book from my shelf, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully by Frank Ostaseski, co-founder of the Zen Hospice Project. Drawing on his experience accompanying thousands of people at the end of life, he writes:

“It is the impermanence of life that gives us perspective. As we come in contact with life’s precarious nature, we also come to appreciate its preciousness. Then we don’t want to waste a minute. We want to enter our lives fully and use them in a responsible way. Death is a good companion on the road to living well and dying without regret.”

Dying without regret, or perhaps more accurately, living a fulfilled life. Isn’t that what we all want?

This reflection further reminded me of an article by Bronnie Ware, a nurse who spent years supporting people at the end of life and documented the regrets they most often shared. She found that the most common regret was not having lived a life true to oneself. Many people realised too late that their dreams had gone unfulfilled because of choices they didn’t make. Another frequent regret was working too much, often at the expense of time with children, partners, and meaningful relationships (Ware, 2012).

These insights from the bedside of dying people resonate strongly with decades of scientific research. You may have seen Robert Waldinger’s TED talk, and if not, I highly recommend it. Waldinger is a psychiatrist and director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest-running longitudinal studies of human life. His research shows that strong, nurturing relationships, with emotional warmth, trust, and mutual support, is the single biggest predictor of long-term well-being. It’s not the size of our social network, but the depth of connection that counts. Healthy relationships reduce stress, enhance immune function, and promote faster recovery from illness.

So if relationships matter this much, I find it helpful, before setting intentions for the future, to pause and look back on the year that has been. I find this worthwhile doing for my own life as well as for - and with - my family.

When we take time to fully sense the vitality of moments that nurtured us, it guides us how we show up in each choice we make. We strengthen the neural pathways associated with meaning, motivation, and choice. By first naming the experience in rich detail, so we can really see and feel it, and then naming the needs that were met, we support our ability to orient toward more of this in the future.

Equally, when we look back and notice experiences that were painful or out of alignment with our deeper values, there is learning available there too, if we are willing to stay present with what arises. Taking time to mourn allows us to process it rather than bury it, where it might later resurface as reactivity or numbness. As Dr. Marshall Rosenberg noted, mourning isn’t about getting stuck in the past. By honouring the sensations and emotions that arise while reflecting on a memory, we connect with the precious needs they reveal, gain clarity on what truly matters, and open ourselves to more conscious choice in how we move forward.