About Me
My name is Daniel Willis, and when I was 16 years old, my mother passed away after a long battle with breast cancer. Every day, every hour, since she passed, she has been on my mind. Whether it be inspiration to excel and achieve or the resilience to continue when I don’t, my thoughts of her are constant and the experience changed my life forever. In her passing I read the book “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl and was deeply moved by it. A quote that stood out to me was a paraphrase of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche which said:
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
What I internalized from this quote, along with many others, was that I was not in need of a change in circumstance - I stood in need of meaning. Years of searching for this meaning in my job, relationships, religion, and education has brought me to where I am today. Here, with you.
I will be the first one to tell you that I am not professionally qualified to make suggestions as to how another should live their life, but I have spent years desperately seeking personal meaning, sifting through scientific material, and putting principles into practice. With an intentional use of the principles and activities included within the Living Intentionally program, I believe anyone can find what they are looking for - no matter the circumstances.
Why do this?
As a neuroscience student, I find perception incredibly interesting. Though we have the ability to be present in the same, unanimous moment, we can experience it differently. When my mother passed, my family and I lost the same person. We all lost a mother, a friend, a #1 fan, and a priceless counselor. However, how we each experienced the loss is remarkably unique.
This same idea can be translated into our perception of the world and the circumstances of our lives. The laws of physics, thermodynamics, and science demand that our environment behave uniformly no matter who we are and no matter where we are. However, just as it was with the loss of my mother, that environment can be perceived and experienced an infinite number of ways.
What I hope to do is to help people experience it better. My goal is not for everyone to experience life in a certain way because it’s the “right” way or the “normal” way, but I want their experience of it to improve.
This world, this life, is more fantastic than we often see it as being. Those who pursue the challenge to live life more intentionally will feel as if their circumstances are changing without them ever having to. This movement is about helping restore that sense of wonder to our experience.
What We Do
Living Intentionally is a company with one sole purpose in mind: helping people live lives with a deeper sense of purpose. Purpose that drives and inspires you is not something I believe is found on accident but is the result of an intentional search for personal meaning.
The time that I spent working on a Behavioral Health Unit further opened my eyes to the struggles of people in the community around me - struggles that I don’t believe entirely come from altered brain chemistry or traumatic life experiences.
I do believe that there are struggles that lay beyond finding meaning that need to be addressed, and I am a HUGE advocate for receiving proper and professional mental health treatment. However, I do not believe that the depth of a sense of purpose should be easily dismissed as not playing a factor in a person’s recovery.
What we offer is an all-encompassing program that primarily aims to help four groups of people:
Those transitioning from Inpatient to Outpatient Behavioral Health
Those wishing to engage regularly with content designed to improve skills of emotional regulation,
Those looking for an extensive collection of local and national mental health resources, medication breakdowns, and research-based behavioral health activities.
Outpatient counselors wishing to interact more with their patients and better understand their response to crisis.
Living your life with intention is not always about the circumstances of your life, but about the way you experience them. This program doesn’t aim to directly change these circumstances, but to help improve your experience of them.