What Matters to You? How to Determine What Is Meaningful in Life.

What matters to you? This is a question that everyone should ask themselves on a regular basis. It can be tough to determine what is truly meaningful in life, but it’s worth taking the time to figure it out. Once you know what is important to you, you can start living a more fulfilling life. In this blog post, we will discuss some tips for determining what matters most to you.

Understanding Meaning:

The first question anyone asks on this subject is, “Well what is the meaning of my life?”

And the truth is that your meaning of life is up to you. There is no higher cause that determines what our meaning is or should be.

The best definition I have ever found came from Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl who states that:

Finding your meaning is: finding a purpose and taking responsibility for ourselves and other human beings.

So with this in mind how do we go about finding our own meanings in life.

Before delving into the questions that you should be looking to answer on this in order to gain clarity, I do want to throw out a disclaimer.

Your purpose does not have to be some noble mission to better mankind. Working as a cleaner is purposeful if you make it that way. Working in a factory that makes cars is meaningful if you make it purposeful.

Starting a small business can be purposeful. I am not saying that you have to teach others, or create the next Amazon, to find purpose in life.

What is purposeful to you is good enough. No one else has to agree with you or even understand you.

Your purpose is defined by you & you alone.

With that being said. Let us now look deeper into how you can find your purpose.

Firstly, let us look at your current situation. Are you finding purpose in what you are doing now?

Enthusiasm:

Is what you are doing now, in your work make you enthusiastic? Does getting up going into work every day feel like a calling or is it just something you have to do to pay all of your bills?

When we are enthusiastic about what we are doing then we can find joy and pride in the work. We have the motivation to continue to work, even when the task seems tough or difficult, the work itself keeps pulling us along because we know that what we are doing has a purpose.

Example:

When I get up in the morning to go to the gym 300 days of the year I will not want to go. I will lack the motivation to crawl out of a warm bed to go to the gym to work out knowing that I am going to be putting my body through some pain.

But by the time I get to the car I am no longer feeling that way. I am no longer focused on trying to keep my eyes open my focus has shifted to what I am going to be doing. How quickly I am going to run a mile, how much I am going to lift. What workout I will be doing.

My motivational fire is stoked. Why is this? How can I go from wanting to stay in bed to just ten minutes later being psyched up for the gym?

Well to me going to the gym is purposeful to me. It allows me to push my limits and helps me both physically and mentally prepare for my day. I know that by pushing my boundaries I am getting healthier. But I am also overcoming my limitations.

I am enthused to beat what I did the day before, to see the progress on the screen in front of me.

On Tuesday just gone, in the thirty minutes I was on the treadmill I beat my PB by 0.5km. Now that may not sound impressive. But I went into that session fired up, thinking about how I could get closer to 4km in thirty minutes.

That 0.5 meant that I needed to improve by 0.5 the next day. I had a challenge that I could be excited about.

When we become enthusiastic about our work, it is meaningful to us, and we are more likely to continue pushing and challenging ourselves so that we can grow even further.

Which in turn allows us to help more people.

Connection:

When we become socially isolated, we lose our meaning. Human beings are social creatures, we in our history depended on each other for our survival, which is why human beings are great storytellers.

But this also applies to our work. When we are left to ourselves, our peers do not want to help us or only have their self-interest at heart. Our bosses do not offer guidance but just expect us to meet our quotas, then we lose meaning quickly.

But when we are challenged, within our peer group, this is when we tend to see growth, this is when work becomes meaningful.

Now if you work by yourself, and are like “Well this cannot apply to me because I have no employees…” Then get yourself a coach, or get yourself someone who will hold you accountable for your actions.

This is how we need to grow.

Example:

For me being self-employed and being the ‘boss’ I had to find ways of challenging myself, I did this by hiring coaches to firstly aid me in the areas in which I needed to learn, but secondly in pushing me to grow.

For example, my Instagram Coach (yes I have one of those) is always pushing me to create better content. Not one piece of content cannot be improved. This makes the idea of finding better content easier. It allows me to be able to continually challenge myself.

As I have grown on Instagram (in terms of understanding) my content has become better, and stronger.

We all need someone who will give us that push that we need in order to properly grow.

Satisfaction:

We all wish that our jobs satisfied us. That way they would not feel like such a drag.

But when we do find satisfaction in our jobs, whether that be the hours we work, the activities we do, the goals of the company, we find ourselves happier, and therefore more motivated.

We also identify the job or activities with meaning. We begin to feel more meaningful.

Example:

For me, this is my job. I start my workday at seven in the morning and usually finish around five or six at night.

Now for a lot of people, this would be a nightmare and some of us live that. But for me, the work that I get done within that time is satisfying to me and therefore has meaning.

When our work has meaning, time leaves the equation.

The Equation For Personal Satisfaction:

So how do we become satisfied, well this can be broken down into this equation.

Passion + Growth + Contribution= Satisfaction.

Questions To Ask Yourself:

1 What Activities Are You Doing Currently Which Bring You The Most Meaning?

Make a list of the activities that you are currently doing that bring you satisfaction, enthusiasm, and connection.

After doing this you need to double down on these activities and projects because they are what will lead to you doing a better job. If you can not do that in your work, then maybe it is time to start looking for other job opportunities that will allow you to do this.

2 What Activities Or Projects Should You Stop Doing?

Make a list! Score every activity you are currently doing from one to ten on the above criteria, then any that do not score highly enough try to get rid of.

If you can not delegate that work, then lump it all together to equate for forty percent of your workload, so you can spend sixty percent of your time doing work that brings you meaning.

3 What New Activities/Projects Should You Add?

Look for the opportunities that will enrich your life, that will enrich your soul and make you overall better. That will give you more meaning.

Ask those above you if there are any projects you could jump on and look to form connections that way as well.

Conclusion:

Finding your meaning is not as difficult as it may look at the outset. In truth, people find meaning in places that you would not expect.

All the criteria as discussed above are heavily subjective, which makes finding meaning amazing, as it puts the ball in your hands.

You can either continue through your life, searching for some all-knowing meaning, or you can decide that your meaning will be all yours, and you will be able to look at life differently and for the better.

Either way, the choice is square with you and only you.

Until tomorrow this has been your coach Andy.