We all know the feeling of friction or resistance in our life. It’s those things or people that grate on us over and over. Recurring events or ongoing relationships in our personal lives or work that continuously drain our energy. We start to dread those things, and that has an emotional and energetic effect on the quality of our entire existence. The first step is to become attuned to the aspects of your life that are causing the friction and try to work out why. Then figure out how you can actively create change in the situation to lessen the friction. These solutions are often evolutions in the system of systems that make up our lives. Too often, we approach these elements in the same way again and again, expecting a different result. But in order to break the cycle, there needs to be a deep understanding of the core problem, and a proactive solution devised and implemented in order to take that energy back and enhance the quality of your existence. In this episode, Rob shares the ways in which he goes about this process in his own life and work.

Changing with intention is all about taking control of inevitable change, doing so actively with a goal in mind, as opposed to waiting until it’s too late and change is forced upon you. Forced change is typically unexpected, and that puts you in a state of being reactive, which, depending on the scale of the change, can be incredibly disruptive to your life. If you can assess your life and decide where to make proactive changes, you maintain control and can guide that change into contributing to your goal of creating a better, more harmonious future-present state. You will never be able to control all change, especially in the world around you, but if you constantly assess the systems that make up your life and evolve them with intention on an ongoing basis, you will be in a better position to react when forced change comes. Going through that process of assessing and creating positive change will ultimately build a higher-quality existence.

Habits get a bad rap. They’re often seen and expressed in terms of things you do on an ongoing basis that you shouldn’t. But Rob is here to tell you that we need to rebrand habits into things you do as an initial stepping stone to a much more profound way of living. The definition of a habit is: a regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up. If those habits are additive to your life and overall goals, and they’re hard to give up because they give you energy or improve your life, then those are good habits to have. Now there are still the bad ones, both ingrained from an early age and developed over time, and those can be dealt with. But the important thing to understand is that your system of habits make up your lifestyle. The more intuitive and second nature you can make your best habits, while eliminating the bad ones, the better lifestyle you will achieve. Make your best habits effortless, and they will simply comprise the way you live.