An intentional life isn’t built in one big decision. It’s built in the small questions you ask yourself before you say yes to a job, a partner, a Tuesday, a meal. Most of us were taught to ask what will look good or what will keep the peace. Very few of us were taught to ask what actually matters to us underneath all that.
What is an intentional life?
Living intentionally means making conscious choices based on what matters to you, rather than simply following other people’s expectations, habits or definitions of success.
The questions you carry decide the life you end up living.
As a coach working with women in the middle of transitions, I keep noticing the same thing. The women who feel most lost aren’t lacking discipline or ambition. They’re lacking clarity, which comes from the right questions. They’re answering questions someone else handed them a long time ago, often before they even had language for what they wanted.
This blog walks through the questions I think are worth asking across the areas of life where we tend to default the hardest. Take what resonates, leave what doesn’t.
THE DEVIL IS IN THE QUESTIONS
Humans love to have answers, we love certainty. Answers feel like progress. They feel like we’ve decided, resolved, moved on. But an answer is only as useful as the question that produced it. My role as a coach is to ask questions, not just any questions, but questions that make you think more deeply and generate insights relevant to you and your situation.
If you ask: What will make me look successful?, you’ll build a life that photographs well and feels hollow. If you ask, “What will make me feel alive, you’ll build something different. Same person, same resources, completely different life.
Most of the women I work with have been answering the first question for years without realising it. The exhaustion they feel isn’t laziness. It’s the cost of living someone else’s answer.
So before we get into the specific questions, notice this: The point isn’t to swap one script for another. The point is to slow down enough to hear yourself think.
WHEN CHOOSING A CAREER, ASK BETTER
The default at early career is the question, “Will this pay well and look impressive?” and it’s a reasonable question. It’s just not the only one, and it shouldn’t be the first.
Try this instead: Do my values align with this company? Do the people at the top behave in a way I’d want to become? Is this a place where the version of me I’m trying to grow into can actually breathe?
A job isn’t just tasks, position and salary. It’s eight to ten hours a day inside a culture that will slowly shape how you think, how you speak, what you tolerate, and what you start to believe is normal. That’s a lot of influence to hand over without asking whether you want to be shaped that way.
The earlier you can ask the values question, the less rebuilding you have to do later.
WHEN PLANNING A HOLIDAY, ASK BETTER
Holidays are one of the sneakiest places we perform. We book what looks good, what other people will approve of, what looks great on the feed. Then we come home and wonder why we still feel tired.
Ask this instead: How can I make this time really matter to me? What kind of rest do I actually need right now, and what kind is just aesthetic? Yes, it can be both, but what matters more than aesthetics is how you will feel during and after the holiday. Am I going somewhere because I want to, or because I don’t want to explain why I didn’t?
Some women need silence and a book. Some need a city, noise, and strangers. Some need to be with their kids without also being the family logistics manager. There’s no universally right holiday. There’s only the kind of holiday that actually restores you, and that’s something you can plan for, on purpose.
WHEN MAKING A MEAL, ASK BETTER
This one sounds small. It isn’t.
Ask yourself: How can I nourish myself today so my future self will thank me? Not what’s fastest, not what’s cheapest, not what fits the current diet trend. What will my body feel grateful for in three hours, tomorrow morning, next week?
Women especially are trained to feed everyone else first and eat the leftovers, literally and metaphorically. Cooking with intention is a quiet act of self-respect. It says, I count too. My energy matters. My tomorrow matters. And how you serve yourself matters too. A snacky bit in front of the fridge will not cut it!
You don’t have to become someone who meal-preps on Sundays in matching containers. You just have to stop treating your own body like an afterthought and give it some thought and attention.
WHEN CHOOSING A PARTNER, ASK BETTER
This is a big one because who you choose will be the same person you spend your holiday with, deal with big life changes, and, at the same time, have at your regular Tuesday at home. And the default partnership question is: Do they love me? It’s the wrong starting point.
Ask instead: How do I want and need to be loved? What does love look like day-to-day, not in grand gestures? Do I feel more myself around this person, or less? Do I feel safe to disagree, to be tired, to be unimpressive? Can I be fully myself and vulnerable without feeling judged? Do we share the same values and communication style?
Many women were taught to be chosen, and very few were taught to choose. There’s a huge difference between being wanted and being well-loved, and you can only tell the difference if you know what you’re actually looking for.
This isn’t about a checklist. It’s about knowing yourself well enough to recognise the real thing when it shows up, and to walk away from the “good enough” thing that would slowly cost you your identity and years of unfulfilment.
WHEN PLANNING YOUR WEEK, ASK BETTER
Most of us plan our weeks around what other people need from us: meetings, school runs, deadlines, family logistics. Then we squeeze ourselves into whatever’s left, which is usually nothing. We end up on a never-ending side list, which slowly leads to burnout.
My invitation is to try this: What would make this week feel like a win? Not a productive week. Not a “wow, you smashed it” week. A week that, when Sunday night comes around, you’d look back on and think with a smile, yes, that was mine.
Maybe it’s one long walk with a cup of coffee from your favourite place. Maybe it’s a proper conversation with a friend you’ve been putting off. Maybe it’s finishing a piece of work you’re actually proud of, or protecting one evening where nobody needs anything from you and reading a chapter of that novel you bought a few months ago.
Put that thing in the diary first. Everything else can arrange itself around it, I promise. This sounds selfish until you notice that the weeks you feel most resentful are the weeks you didn’t do this.
WHEN STARTING YOUR DAY, ASK BETTER
The first question of the day sets the tone for everything after it. Most of us open our phones and let algorithms ask the questions for us. Who’s angry? Who’s ahead? Who’s succeeding? Who should I compare myself to before I’ve even left my bed?
Ask something else first: How do I want to feel by the end of today? Calm, focused, warm, confident, connected, joyful. Name it, and then let that answer quietly influence the small choices you make between now and bedtime.
This isn’t manifestation; it’s just giving yourself direction. You are far more likely to end the day feeling calm if calm was something you actually aimed at when you woke up. Be more intentional from the moment you open your eyes.
THE QUESTION UNDERNEATH ALL THE OTHERS
And then there’s the one question I think matters most.
What am I grateful for today?
Not as a performance or as a hashtag, but as an acknowledgement that even in hard times, something good is happening: your body that got you to this point, a great coffee on the way to work, a small gesture from your partner.
Gratitude isn’t a technique; it’s a perspective, and the more you adopt it, the more you will find to be grateful for.
WHAT INTENTIONAL LIVING ACTUALLY MEANS
An intentional life isn’t a curated life. It isn’t a life where everything is optimised, and nothing is messy.
An intentional life is one where you know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Where your choices, even the imperfect ones, are yours. Where you can say “I chose this”, and mean it. Not life when you drift, being pulled left, side and centre by other people’s opinions and expectations of you or how they think your life should look.
It’s about choosing more of what truly matters to you and slowly, honestly, letting go of the rest. Not by revolution but by evolution. In small daily questions that redirect the ship a few degrees at a time.
The biggest changes I observed while working with women happened when they found answers in everyday life, and the compound effect did the rest.
Sometimes the hardest part isn’t asking better questions, but it’s knowing what to do with the answers. That’s where coaching can help, especially when you’re navigating a transition and the life that worked before no longer feels quite right.