Intentional Living, or The Inconvenience of Knowing Your Own Mind

At some point, taking responsibility for one’s own life requires more than just making decisions. It requires becoming willing to question some of the assumptions from which those decisions are supposed to follow, usually in circumstances far more ordinary than the language of independence would suggest. I ask a second question because the first answer does not make sense, read the information for myself rather than relying entirely on someone else’s interpretation of it, want to know what evidence supports a recommendation or discover that something presented as an established requirement owes more to convention, preference or convenience than to any immutable rule. Often the answer settles the matter immediately; sometimes it gives me information I had not understood and changes my position entirely. At other times, the question itself seems to become more troublesome than whatever prompted me to ask it. I have become increasingly interested in those moments because they reveal how differently personal responsibility can be received once it moves beyond choosing among the answers already available and begins asking how those answers were reached in the first place.

I have also become clearer about what I am prepared to entrust to other people and where I expect to remain actively involved. Much of life depends upon relying on knowledge we do not possess ourselves, and I have enormous respect for expertise earned through serious education, experience and sustained attention to a field. I seek it precisely because I understand its value. When a decision materially affects my health, my work, my finances or the direction of my life, however, expertise becomes most useful to me when I can understand enough of its reasoning to participate intelligently in what follows. Sometimes that reasoning exposes a gap in my own understanding and gives me a better one; sometimes it confirms that a question deserves further examination. What matters is the substance. I have little difficulty changing my mind when someone gives me a compelling reason to do so, and considerably more difficulty changing it merely because the person speaking occupies a position from which agreement is expected. Years of reading, study and professional experience have made me more appreciative of genuine knowledge while leaving me much less impressed by confidence attempting to stand in for it.

A recent virtual medical appointment offered a small and almost mundane example. I wanted routine follow-up blood work for health markers I had spent the previous year deliberately addressing and was interested in seeing whether anything had changed. Because the earlier results remained within the applicable reference ranges, I was initially told that repeating them was unnecessary. I eventually received the requisition, although only after explaining at considerably greater length than I had anticipated why information about direction can matter before a number crosses the threshold that transforms it into a diagnosis. The exchange itself was hardly remarkable within the larger pressures facing Canadian health care, but the logic stayed with me. Prevention depends upon attention before disease becomes established enough to demand it, yet attempting to obtain information during that earlier period can require more justification than waiting until the problem has become unmistakable. The person trying to participate in her own health can, therefore, find herself occupying a curious position, encouraged to take responsibility for prevention while discovering that the practical exercise of that responsibility may make her unexpectedly inconvenient.

I recognize the same tension well beyond health care. Reading a contract closely can make an exchange longer than signing where indicated. Asking how a professional decision was reached can require someone to explain reasoning that would otherwise have passed without discussion. Correcting an error can create more immediate work than quietly compensating for it. In a personal relationship, acknowledging that interest, consideration or reciprocity has become uneven can disturb a familiarity that allowed the imbalance to remain comfortably unnamed. The common thread is participation. Each person who asks the additional question, reads the document, notices the inconsistency or gives language to something previously left unspoken changes the course that events would have taken without her involvement. The change may be entirely appropriate and still create inconvenience, because many interactions run most smoothly when everyone behaves more or less as expected.

That last point has become increasingly relevant to me. I know what I think about many of the things that matter to me, I know where I am going with my life, and I have enough confidence in my own intellectual abilities to recognize when an explanation deserves another question. I am intelligent, and at this point in my life I find the cultural awkwardness surrounding that statement more interesting than the statement itself. Intelligence confers neither universal knowledge nor superior judgment; what it gives me is a particular way of encountering information. I notice inconsistencies, retain detail, connect ideas across subjects and have an almost instinctive need to understand the reasoning that joins one proposition to another. Those characteristics have shaped my education, my professional life and much of what I continue to study simply because learning remains one of the things I enjoy most. They also make it increasingly difficult for me to pretend that an explanation satisfies me when I can see that the reasoning beneath it does not hold. I would rather encounter better evidence and revise my position than preserve a conclusion whose foundations have become doubtful, which is why being questioned by someone knowledgeable has never struck me as threatening. Good information improves what I know.

The more interesting question is what changes when a person becomes harder to move by assumption alone. Answers that once might have been accepted are examined; decisions that would have been made by default acquire reasons; familiar expectations lose some of their authority simply because they have been made visible. I have experienced that change gradually, through the accumulation of knowledge, experience and a much clearer understanding of what I value. It has made me more selective about the authority I grant to other people, but also more demanding of my own reasoning. If I expect evidence from someone else, I have to be prepared to examine the evidence supporting my own conclusions. If I question expertise, I need enough understanding to know what I am questioning and enough humility to recognize where my competence ends. If I want greater authority over decisions affecting my life, I also inherit greater responsibility for the quality of those decisions. Taking charge of oneself is considerably more demanding than simply resisting what comes from elsewhere; it requires becoming accountable for the thought that replaces it.

That accountability is what separates self-direction from contrariness. I have no interest in opposing something merely because somebody else proposed it, and I find reflexive distrust every bit as intellectually limiting as reflexive deference. Both relieve us of the harder work of evaluating what is actually in front of us. Genuine expertise remains enormously valuable precisely because no individual can know enough to navigate every consequential question alone, but expertise becomes more useful when I can engage with it rather than disappear in its presence. I want the physician who knows what I cannot know, the lawyer who sees implications I would miss, the accountant who understands rules I have never studied and the specialist whose years of experience allow her to recognize what I cannot. What I bring to those encounters is a different responsibility: enough attention to understand what affects me, enough curiosity to ask when I do not and enough judgment to recognize when the answer deserves confidence. Respect for expertise becomes stronger, rather than weaker, when it rests on something more substantial than the assumption that a title has settled the matter.

Living that way inevitably changes the amount of friction one encounters, because much of ordinary life is designed around reasonable degrees of acceptance. Every explanation cannot become an inquiry, every inconvenience a principle and every decision an exhaustive investigation; we would accomplish very little and become unbearable in the process. Judgment lies partly in deciding what deserves our attention. Some things can pass because their consequences are negligible, while others touch enough of our health, finances, work, relationships or future that remaining passive carries its own cost. The threshold will differ from one person to another, but once something crosses mine, I find it increasingly difficult to disengage simply because pursuing it would be inconvenient. That may require another appointment, another question, a difficult conversation, more reading, a change of direction or the admission that something I once believed no longer withstands what I now know. The inconvenience belongs to me as much as anyone else, which is perhaps why I have become less persuaded by the suggestion that ease should determine whether the effort is worthwhile.

Autopilot becomes relevant here in a much more consequential sense than routine. It allows assumptions to retain authority after we have forgotten that they were ever choices. We continue doing something because it is what we do, accept a professional answer because that is what one does in the presence of professional authority, maintain a relationship according to patterns established years earlier, or allow an institution to define the limits of our participation because those limits existed before we arrived. None of these choices necessarily leads us badly. The problem is that we cannot know which ones still serve us until we occasionally bring them back into conscious examination. A life can remain remarkably coherent while being directed by decisions its owner has never revisited.

Once that examination begins, the changes are often less dramatic than the language of transformation suggests. We simply become more difficult to carry along with momentum. We ask why before agreeing. We recognize when convenience is masquerading as necessity. We notice when an explanation describes how something has always been done rather than why it should continue. We become more willing to leave a question open until we understand it properly and more comfortable saying that the available answer is insufficient. Sometimes we discover that the established answer was sound all along, which is valuable in itself because confidence then rests on understanding rather than habit. At other times, we discover that what seemed fixed was sustained largely by the absence of anyone asking whether it still made sense.

Being a woman inevitably forms part of this experience for me, although perhaps in a less tidy way than the familiar language of assertiveness and expectations can capture. I belong to a generation of women who were told, with increasing conviction, that we could become educated, build careers, earn our own money, occupy positions of responsibility and make consequential decisions about our own lives. I took that seriously. What interests me now is the occasional surprise that seems to accompany the finished product: a woman who has accumulated decades of knowledge and experience, knows her own mind and expects to use all three when something matters. The freedom to become that woman is widely accepted; living as her can still create friction. I have felt it in the subtle change that occurs when confidence ceases to be an attractive personal quality and begins to affect the outcome of a conversation, when knowing what I am talking about makes it harder to dismiss a concern, or when I continue asking because the answer still does not address the question. Perhaps some of those encounters would unfold exactly the same way if I were a man, and I have little interest in sorting every interaction into a gendered category after the fact. What I do know is that I spent too many years acquiring judgment to abandon it whenever its exercise makes me less agreeable to someone else. At this point, the crucial issue is whether my stance is valid, whether I have properly interpreted the data, and whether I am willing to modify it when new knowledge emerges. If those conditions are satisfied, being perceived as difficult tells me something about the interaction, but it does not tell me what to think.

Taking greater responsibility for a life demands more than confidence in our own judgment. It challenges us to acquire enough knowledge to discern the quality of the options available, maintain a healthy curiosity to continue learning when the answer is incomplete, and exhibit adaptability to modify our path when new insights shift our perspective. There is considerably more work in that than in either obedience or rebellion. Both offer the seductive simplicity of deciding in advance where authority resides; thoughtful participation requires us to keep deciding according to the circumstances. I may trust one professional completely within the limits of her expertise and question another whose explanation fails to account for information I consider important. I may follow a recommendation because its reasoning is compelling, but challenge another because I understand enough to see a problem and remain uncertain about a third until I have learned more. The responsibility remains mine because I am the person who eventually has to decide what to do with what I have been told.

Information has made that responsibility simultaneously easier and more complicated. Access to knowledge can support meaningful participation, but volume is a poor substitute for quality, and the ability to find an answer within seconds tells us very little about whether the answer deserves to influence a decision. I am far more interested in learning how to evaluate information than in accumulating it: who produced it, what evidence supports it, whether the conclusion extends beyond what the evidence can reasonably establish, what remains uncertain and whether another credible source reaches the same conclusion. Those habits matter in health, but they matter equally when considering finances, public policy, products, professional advice and the countless claims presented to us every day with enough confidence to resemble facts. Becoming informed is therefore less about knowing everything than about developing a better sense of what deserves to be believed, what deserves further investigation and when our own knowledge has reached the point to which someone else’s expertise becomes essential.

The scrutiny we bring to outside information eventually has to reach our own thinking as well. We carry forward decisions made under circumstances that no longer exist, continue pursuing goals whose original importance has faded and defend habits because they have become entwined with our idea of who we are. We can become attached to explanations that once helped us understand ourselves even after they cease to explain very much, or continue investing in something because of the years already invested rather than the value it still holds. Taking charge of ourselves therefore includes questions capable of inconveniencing us far more than anyone else: whether something we continue to defend still deserves our loyalty, whether a decision still reflects the person making it today and whether the reasons we give for continuing along a familiar path would persuade us if we were encountering that path for the first time.

Greater authorship also changes the language available to us for explaining our own choices. Once I recognize that I have a meaningful choice, continuing along the same path becomes a choice as well. Circumstances impose real limits, opportunities are distributed unevenly and entire chapters of a life can be redirected by events over which we have very little influence, but within the territory where choice exists, awareness changes our relationship with what follows. I can decide that changing something would cost more than I am willing to pay, that the timing is wrong or that an imperfect situation remains preferable to the alternatives available to me. Those can be thoughtful decisions. They are also different from allowing momentum to make the decision while continuing to describe the outcome as inevitable. One of the less glamorous consequences of living deliberately is having to acknowledge how often “this is simply how things are” actually means “this is what I have decided, for now, to continue.”

That recognition has altered my understanding of living on autopilot. I once thought of it mainly as a habit: the routines that allow days to proceed without requiring conscious attention to every detail. Its more consequential form appears when familiarity begins to acquire the authority of inevitability. Something has existed for a long time, therefore, it continues. A professional has spoken, therefore, the question is settled. A relationship has always functioned in a particular way, therefore, its terms remain beyond examination. A goal once mattered, therefore, it must still be pursued. An institution follows a process, therefore, the process must make sense. A person can be extremely busy, responsible and accomplished while much of her life continues according to premises she has never recently reconsidered. Autopilot can look remarkably productive from the outside.

Becoming more deliberate can then begin long before anything visible changes. The first change may simply be that an old explanation stops working. I notice that I am accepting something for reasons that no longer persuade me, or that a decision I have treated as settled rests on information I have never examined. Nothing has yet been changed, refused or abandoned, but the unquestioned status of the thing has disappeared. Awareness creates a pause where momentum once operated uninterrupted, and within that pause lies the possibility of continuing for better reasons, modifying what no longer fits or choosing something else entirely. The eventual decision may look identical from the outside; the important difference is that I have returned to it consciously rather than inheriting it from yesterday.

That kind of attention creates obligations of its own. Sometimes I am the person whose life would be easier if I stopped asking. It is easier to accept a reassuring answer than to discover that the question remains unresolved, easier to continue a familiar pattern than to decide whether it still deserves a place, easier to attribute dissatisfaction entirely to circumstances than to identify the choices available within them. Once I know that something matters, however, I have to decide what I am going to do with that knowledge, including the perfectly legitimate possibility that I will consciously do nothing. I may still choose the convenient option, but I know why I have chosen it. Convenience then becomes one factor in the decision rather than the invisible force making it for me.

Personal responsibility becomes meaningful when I can identify where my own judgment and actions can genuinely influence what happens next. In many situations, much of the outcome will remain beyond my reach: professional competence belongs to the professional, biology will not necessarily respond as I hope, and another person’s behaviour remains theirs to determine. My responsibility lies in what I do with the information those circumstances provide. I can recognize when an explanation remains inadequate and pursue a better one, follow changes in my health closely enough to respond when they warrant attention, or allow another person’s repeated behaviour to inform what I am prepared to expect from a relationship. That requires discernment rather than an exaggerated belief in personal control. Taking responsibility for ourselves means neither claiming ownership of every outcome nor surrendering our influence because some elements remain beyond us; it means understanding where our participation can make a difference and being prepared to act accordingly.

Self-knowledge becomes similarly practical once it has to survive contact with actual decisions. Knowing who I am means knowing what compromises I can make without resentment, what uncertainties I can tolerate, what kind of evidence changes my mind, what I value enough to protect with time or effort, and where my competence ends. It also requires allowing those answers to evolve. A decision that represented me accurately ten years ago is entitled to no permanent authority merely because I once made it with conviction. Knowledge changes, circumstances change and so do people. The purpose of knowing ourselves is not to construct an identity so fixed that it begins making future decisions on our behalf. It is to understand ourselves accurately enough to recognize when the life we are living and the person living it have begun to diverge.

That understanding sits close to what I mean by self-health at TRIVENA. Health literacy, preventive attention and informed participation give us a stronger basis from which to engage with the professionals, evidence and decisions that shape our care. We can know our history, keep information that may matter later, understand the broad significance of relevant results, ask better questions and recognize when the question in front of us requires expertise beyond our own. There will be times when the most intelligent decision is to place ourselves confidently in the hands of someone who knows vastly more than we do, and times when participation requires another question because something important remains unresolved. Knowing enough to recognize which situation we are in is part of taking responsibility for health long before illness forces the question upon us.

Intentional living asks for the same kind of participation on a larger scale. Habit, convention, authority and other people’s expectations will inevitably shape parts of our lives; they are among the forces from which human lives are built. What matters is whether they have acquired authority over something consequential simply because we stopped noticing their influence. We cannot make every decision deliberate, and the attempt would turn ordinary existence into an exhausting exercise in self-analysis. We can become more discerning about the moments when our presence matters: when the decision will affect our health, our future, our integrity, our relationships or the use of time we cannot recover. Those are the places where allowing default to decide carries a cost of its own.

For me, taking greater charge of my life has meant becoming more deliberate about decisions that will materially affect it. Complete information is rarely available, competing priorities complicate even apparently straightforward choices, and waiting for certainty can become its own way of avoiding a decision. I have become more comfortable making the best judgment I can from credible information, remaining attentive to what I may have missed and revising my position when new evidence warrants it. An informed decision can still prove wrong, just as an unexamined assumption can occasionally produce the right result, but the quality of the reasoning matters because it determines how intelligently I can respond to what follows. When someone possesses knowledge or expertise beyond my own, I want that knowledge to improve my understanding; when what I already know exposes a legitimate question, I expect to pursue it. Taking responsibility for a decision therefore depends less on achieving certainty than on remaining sufficiently engaged to understand what is known, recognize what remains unresolved and exercise judgment within the space between them.

Being perceived as difficult may occasionally be one of the consequences, although I have little use for difficulty as an identity. What matters far more is becoming difficult to dismiss from my own life. Sometimes that means persisting when an answer remains inadequate; sometimes it means listening closely enough to recognize that the answer is better than the one I arrived with. Sometimes it means changing something familiar, and sometimes understanding it properly gives me every reason to choose it again. The quality I want to retain through all of those possibilities is the ability to notice, question, learn, decide and revise without allowing either authority or resistance to do the thinking for me.

A life lived with that degree of participation will contain some friction. Questions take time, changing direction can be inconvenient and people who knew what to expect from us may occasionally prefer the predictability of an earlier version. I find that cost increasingly modest beside the alternative: years accumulating around assumptions that were never revisited, explanations that stopped making sense long before we stopped accepting them and choices that ceased to feel like choices because they had been repeated for so long. Taking charge of ourselves asks something more exacting than constant analysis and something more useful than defiance. It asks us to recognize the decisions that deserve our attention, to bring the best of our knowledge and judgment to them and to accept that living deliberately will occasionally make us less convenient to those who preferred our agreement. I have spent enough of my life learning how to think, what I value and which questions are worth asking to surrender any of them merely for the comfort of being easily accommodating. If knowing my own mind sometimes makes me difficult, the greater loss would be allowing someone else’s preference for an easier version of me to determine what I do with it.