“Create with Intention – In Life, Business and Design”
“Over time, even the tiniest meaningful actions add up, each one bringing you closer to a life that is truer to your dreams and free of regret.”
– Jane McGonigal, author
A few years ago, I was unhappy in my career. I’d been running the same company for 20 years, and I felt stagnant and a little lost. The challenges just didn’t seem original anymore.
That’s when I decided to start taking small steps toward something else. I started asking people I knew who had made career changes how they came to that decision. I also asked people I trusted how they found happiness. From there, I began taking classes in floral design, purchased a small hard-goods floral company and finally ended up buying this magazine, which has completely changed my life in every way.
It all began with tiny steps. I set my intention on finding a new path and then began exploring that path with every step I took. Even now, I’m exploring how a media company can remain successful and relevant in our current digital environment.
That means taking small intentional steps toward figuring it out every single day. For all of us, it means identifying the problems in our creativity, personal lives or businesses and then taking small intentional steps toward a solution.
If you’re bored by doing the same design work over and over, perhaps creating a string of new designs and posting them online will bring you more of the work you’d like to be doing. Or if you’re frustrated with your business culture, perhaps an HR consultant or evening class would bring you closer to where you want your company culture to be. As our editorial team discovered in this issue, creating with intention doesn’t mean you have to take huge steps or overhaul something completely. It just means you need to take small steps forward with the intent of a positive outcome.
Where you end up might surprise you. If someone would have told me three years ago where I’d be right now, I never would have believed them. But those tiny steps mattered, and they all added up to where I am today.
The journey is all we have, so let’s not take that journey by default. Even if you feel stuck and lost right now, just take a few small steps forward. Read a book, talk to friends, take a class, talk to peers, challenge yourself in some small way. You’ll be surprised how quickly your life will change for the better just set your intentions on a positive outcome and take your first step. Perhaps your first step might be reading this issue of Florists’ Review and learning how your peers stepped up their creativity, improved their lives and built their businesses one tiny intentional step at a time. We all have to find our own paths; I hope this issue helps you find yours.
