There’s a particular sense of interconnection that comes from meeting someone whose life has been running parallel to yours without either of you knowing it.

That’s what happened when I met Noeyoni.

Parallel Pathways to Poetry

We’d crossed paths before, years earlier, and reconnected only recently. When we did, we discovered that around the same time, in the same stretch of upheaval, we had each written a book of poetry. Neither of us knew the other was writing. Neither of us knew the other’s book existed until we sat down together and opened them side by side. There we noticed the same themes. Courage. Joy. Abundance. Written a world of experience apart, yet somehow saying the same things.

Subscribe now

I don’t have a neat explanation for it, and I’m not sure I want one.

What I do have is Noeyoni’s words resonating with me long after we met — she shared the difference between living with intentions and intentional living.

They sound like the same phrase, but they are not.

Living a Checklist Life

Living with intentions is a checklist life. You set the goal. You track the goal. You measure your every day against whether it’s moving you toward the goal. It’s regimental — you’re always on your toes, always auditing yourself against the plan. We’ve all watched people build entire lives this way and arrive somewhere in their advanced age having done everything right, but still asking whether it was enough.

Thanks for reading Mindful Leadership with Anu Arora! This post is public, so feel free to share it with someone who could benefit from reading it.

Share

Intentional living, as she puts it, is different in one crucial way: you set the intention, then you let go of the timeline.

You don’t control when it arrives. It might take years. Decades even. It might take a form you don’t recognize until it hits you. But you stop trying to control the outcome, and you stop believing the path you’ve mapped out is the only one that gets you there.

I’ve spent a long time as a recovering checklist-doer. Most of the leaders I coach have too. We were trained to believe that control is competence — that if we plan hard enough, track closely enough, grip the KPIs tightly enough, the outcome is guaranteed. Noeyoni’s own body, it turns out, helped to teach her otherwise. Seven accidents over six years and every single one impacted the same vertebra — one she later learned corresponds to the communication chakra.

She calls this experience a blessing now. At the time, I imagine it felt like anything but.

Turning Adversity into Blessings

What she did with that forced stillness from these injuries suffered over time, was to write. Every morning she awoke and from 4-6am, for six months, she wrote. No rough drafts, no do-overs. She just wrote what showed up when she let it. The book that came out of it, As You Be, reads less like something she wrote and more like something she took dictation for.

There’s one line she said in our talk — almost in passing: where do we actually have control? Genuine control? Because the checklist life is an illusion of control laid over the same uncertainty everyone else is living in. The only real choice, Noeyoni suggested, is whether you spend your energy gripping the wheel or if you notice where the road is already taking you.

Some of what Noeyoni and I talked about — the anger she carried toward the divine, her becoming an unwitting therapist to a therapist, and the years it took her to stop mistaking control for care — these things really resonated with me.

If any of this is landing the way it landed for me, I encourage you to listen to the full interview. When you’re ready for more, Noeyoni’s collection As You Be is a great place to explore. It’s currently available in digital form — the limited edition print run sold out — it’s the kind of book you don’t read in one sitting, so much as return to over and over again.

Leave a comment

CORRECTION: Around minute 23:30, Noeyoni references Vinyasa Yoga when she was referring to Vipassana Yoga.

Mindful Moment: Are there ways you have learned to let go of control? Are there timelines you have released? What steps are you taking to live more intentionally? I’d love to hear them!

Poetry Collections: Check out the two poetry collections that we read from in this podcast. Both have inspired so many people. I hope you enjoy!

A quick note: This piece touches on bodily injuries and spiritual struggle as part of someone’s story. If any of it stirs something up for you, you don’t have to sit with it alone. I encourage you to find a trusted advisor who can help.

Mindful Leadership with Anu Arora

Intentional Living & The Two Beliefs She Gave…