Lesson 18: Intentional

What does it really mean to live with intention?

In this episode, we step beyond routine, beyond reaction, and into deliberate living. Being intentional isn’t just about making plans—it’s about aligning your thoughts, your actions, and your purpose with something deeper.

Most people drift. They move based on habit, emotion, or circumstance. But there comes a point where you have to decide: are you living on autopilot, or are you choosing your path?

This episode breaks down:

• The difference between reacting and responding
• How small, intentional decisions shape your future
• The discipline it takes to stay aligned when life pulls you off course
• Why clarity and purpose must be built daily—not discovered overnight

Intentional living is not loud. It’s not rushed. It’s precise, steady, and rooted.

If you’ve been feeling scattered, stuck, or disconnected—this is your reset point.

Be still. Be aware. Be intentional.

Transcript

Have you ever been lost in your thoughts? Randomness. A thought pops into your head and you don't know where it came from. Many times it's your past. Things that have happened that have not let you go. Why have they hung up? Let's talk about that. Hi, I'm the Time Smith, and welcome back. I hope you've had time to listen to the last lesson triggered and that it helped you work through those feelings. Today would be the last lesson of this season. Originally, I had decided that season two would only be six lessons. I'm still maneuvering through what I want this podcast to be, but I don't want to get stuck on not doing it. So here I am, recording my thoughts, and I hope that you get something from my knowledge and my experiences. But today I want to talk about intentional, intentional living and intent. But I'll just title this one intentional. I hope you've had time to look around the forge. If not, feel free to look around. You might have to go back and listen to the previous lessons to get a better picture of this layout. But as always, there's a staircase to the right and an elevator to the left. And there's a counter right in front of us. This is a forge, and this is a place that I think. A place that I gather my thoughts. I've said this before. My mind was a mess. I couldn't process information well. A person could tell me what needed to be done, but there was no way for me to do that. It was just too messy. Some might call it an organized mess, but even so, it's still a mess. Eventually, you have to go through it and clean it up to make sense. But if your mind is a mess, there's a chance that your life might be also. In my case, it was on the outside. Appearances can be portrayed as to whatever you want others to see. It's very simple. In your mind, you could be thinking about loss. You could be thinking about work, distractions. But that sensory. That tells you. Just keep smiling and you look around and you try to put as much light in your eyes. So that you might confuse those around you to think that you're happy, but inside you're not. Well, let's stay in the forge. So you must be intentional. What do you intend to do? Do you intend to just confuse those around you today? I don't want to go down into a memory. I do want to just close out this last lesson and the season. I know the intent that I have, and that's just to help people, to give them information. And so this is why I record my podcasts, the Time Smith and you can see that I'm being intentional to want to help. There is no ulterior motive here other than to just relay information. So what is your intent? But let's start with cleaning up. I have explained to you in previous lessons what the floors look like. Some of those floors down below were once dark and are now lit up. They were once full of trash in the hallways with doors wide open. And what that looks like is that those thoughts can run wild within you with no control. And that's not very good. A person can be seen as wild on the outside. We must take captive those thoughts. Those thoughts belong to you. As my thoughts belong to me. Those thoughts shouldn't overrun me. That recklessness. This is why we have the moral law and we have rules. And those same rules apply within ourselves of how we process information. Again, I'm talking about being intentional. So what is the intent? I can only share with you my perspective as I really don't know who all the listeners are. Yes, I do believe that one day I will open up this podcast to get to know people and share with them sides of themselves that they might not know they have. Well, that's what a distraction is. Let me paint a picture. Picture a house. And this is again why I set up the forge the way I did. Now picture a house with a hallway, a long hallway with many rooms and the doors being wide open, that the clutter from those rooms is so messy that it goes into the hallway. But the room you really want to get to is at the end of the hall. How will you get there? Well, you don't want to just climb over things because all it will take is two seconds for you to look down and see something that might spark your interest, something shiny, something memorable, something traumatic, and that causes you to pause and to look. It'll even take your time. And when it takes your time, it distracts you from where you want to go. You might end up not even moving forward with it because you spent so much time on the thing that distracted you. But that doesn't change that. Whatever that topic at the end of that hallway is still calling you. Whatever that may be. I have to say that I did have something at the end of that hallway that kept calling me. In my case, it was healing. I had always wondered, is there healing from the trauma that I've been through? After doing all the work and cleaning, I have to say that I am still on the journey of healing. But I do have less triggers. I do enjoy life more. I'm not as distracted. I went through the process of cleaning up that hallway, including spending time of cleaning out those distractions. This forge is a place of thought in my daily life. This is the type of work that I do. I don't do as much blacksmithing as I would want to, but I am a welder. I am a mechanic. I am a tinkerer in the same respect. I am a blacksmith. I do like hammering on steel. I do like shaping it in the way that I need it. And one of the things I've learned with being a blacksmith is that it takes finesse. It takes smooth movements. Even though there's excessive force being put on the steel, you still have to be smooth. You can't be a jerk. The metal can't be jerked around and moved. Those shapes won't look good. I applied that to myself and I tell myself, you cannot be a jerk. Time Smith. You need to do things smoothly. You need to slow down. Let it take the time that it needs to. So let's apply this. If I have a thought that I want to change my life, maybe it doesn't have to be drastic. If I have a thought that I want to improve my life. I might go out and buy a book, begin to do exercises, writing, journaling, including shutting down my phone and allow myself to think, to observe, to assess and not be quick, to judge, to look. Maybe you like where you're standing. It's become comfortable. And at the end of the day, there might be a complaint within you, something that tells you. I think I should be doing more. I think I want to improve that thought right there is enough to change your life. The perspective that I speak of from though, is anger. It's addiction. It's violence. Attributes that I had as a child, as a teenager, as a young twenty year old. I don't want to date myself too much, but improving those things, those characteristics, those traits take time and some might be quicker than others. If you say, I no longer want to dress this way, it's just very simple to grab your clothes and just throw it away. And that matter is resolved. Maybe you want to stop cursing. People do simple things like swear jars. And for another, it might be something very easy. But once we start tapping into the emotions of sadness, depression, anger, to name a few, it becomes a little more difficult. You might see yourself as very calm until you get yourself behind the wheel of a car and you become irrational. Sides of you are seen differently. Or maybe when you end up alone, you could be smiling at work. at your church. Around family. But the moment you are alone, there are tears. And I don't want to exploit that except help you maneuver through it. What is driving us to have those traits? Traits that we have deemed unacceptable? That's what the time msmith is. That's what these lessons have been. So we intend to change our lives. We intend to improve our lives. We intend to have a different perspective on the matters that we are dealing with, our circumstances, and what exactly do we want to do with that? And to intend is to desire. Sometimes it looks like when we tell a friend or we tell a family member someone close, hey, I decided I no longer want to be depressed. And then we move on to the next person and make a phone call. Hey, I decided I'm no longer going to be an addict. And we begin to tell people, which is fine. At times it's encouraging and we might get nice words back of how they overcame, or maybe just an encouraging word to push you along. And what I've seen is that that conversation can go on and on and on where no actions are produced. It's just a conversation. It looks good. What you intend to do is noble, but that part isn't what completes the cycle within your life. To clean up the messes that distract us from the main thing we want to do. That mess covering the point are distractions. Ways that we've coped. Ways that we have avoided to handle what needs to be completed. When it comes to life, when we become intentional, some might go to a doctor to say, hey, I have a problem. They might get medication, some might already know what to do, and they might say things. As you know, I just need to deal with it already. I just need to begin to write. I just need to start running. I just need to go outside. I just need to get away from fill in the blank. And we begin to see that intentional living is taking the desire of our what we intend. It's important. This is why people write books, and this is why people speak to help others. Because even when you don't feel it, this is still proven to change your life. Feelings are funny. One day you could feel excited about what you want to do. And the next day you're just down in the dumps. Well, your feelings shouldn't control you. Your commitment should. You should commit to being intentional that you take that good desire and live it out. Start off with something simple from my perspective. I began to clean. There actually wasn't that much interaction and there wasn't a lot of conversation between myself and people. I was already going to church and I was already reading books. I was already having good conversations. But deep within me, I hadn't told anyone that I was specifically looking for healing. I wanted to be great. I wanted to be known for overcoming. But the matter at hand Was that I wanted healing. I wanted healing from the things that I've spoken about in these lessons. But you know what? It took me to pick up the small trash in my thoughts. What type of person are you when you're in public and you see a clean street and a wrapper on the floor? Do you just step over it or do you pick it up? What if that was your mind? Well, this isn't too big of a problem. And maybe that's what we tell ourselves. I will say that no. I pick up the trash in my thoughts. Now it's become easier because I can maintain floors. Some of the simpler thoughts. Again, that's what the forge is floors, doors and rooms that have been cleaned out. Places that have been lit up. I intended to improve my life. I intended not to be overran. And now I can live intentionally. Not just portraying myself as someone. But knowing to myself that I am. That someone. That this, in fact, is who God made. Took a long time. Clearly, I'm not a child. And I'm not entirely a young man. But it's taken decades. Let me leave you with this. Examine yourself from the era that I was raised in. Check yourself. Scan yourself and see if there's any bad way within you that can help you improve the quality of your life. It's to be intentional. I know you can do it. You just have to step forward and not look back. It becomes painful and at times it becomes lonely because your thoughts are your own. And sometimes it takes silence for you to accomplish that and not just be telling everybody about the next thing you're gonna do. There's moments for that in this life. I'm going to visit this place, or I'm going to visit that place, and that's fine. But matters that are close to the heart, keep them there, close to the heart. Process them the way you would. Don't be so fast to just go get advice, write it down. And if you do, go get advice. Talk with somebody that you closely trust. Someone who won't sabotage what you want to do. Someone who can encourage you. I guess I'll stop there. Thank you for visiting the forge today. I don't know who all my listeners are, but I will continue to pray and pray that you understand what I'm saying. To me, it's encouraging because all I see is numbers of people listening. That's it. Some locations, and at times I see that we reach pretty far places of this world. Melbourne and South Korea, England and France, the US, Mexico, Canada. It encourages me because I don't know you, but I do know the parts of you that hurt. I understand that and I want to speak to that. So if you are lost, you can be found. And if you fell in love, you are loved by me. I am the time. Smith. This concludes season two.