Finding meaning

It’s painful to walk around without any purpose, to wake up and face your day without any sense of meaning, to look at your future feeling confused and worthless.

What’s fascinating about the struggle for meaning is the diversity of people who struggle to find it, and the diversity of people who hold it.  It’s like there’s no correlation or predicting factor...

But you know meaning when you see it and you know it when it’s not in you.

It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, famous or not famous, young or old, anyone can struggle with finding purpose, with any social status, career, or amount of money.

Which is why meaning doesn’t have anything to do with what you do... it’s about how you see, how you perceive yourself, and the narrative you tell yourself as you interact in the world and your job and your family.

I never knew this until I started working with so many of my clients on it, but possessing a sense of meaning is an actual ability that you have to develop and cultivate. 

So where does one start to form it?

By defining what in your life is meaningful to you and then planning your life around these things.

When you reflect on the past week or two, what moments were moving? What were the little things that you thankful that you were able to experience?

Write it down so you can see it, so you can aim for it, and then navigate your life around it.

I'm not talking generics like "hanging out with friends."  

Set distinct categories and assess what leads to the most moving experiences in specific areas of your life (with categories like your relationship with God, your friends, your career, alone time, etc.)

And it doesn’t have to be big, loud, or popular either, most likely it's something small, fleeting, easily overlooked, and quiet.  Like a cup of coffee warming your hands in the morning or reading your favorite book at the end of a productive day of work in the silence of your room.

Without meaning were empty, which is why it's so urgent that we lay out what is meaningful to us: because if you don't look for it, you won't find it.  If you’re off track, you won’t know.  If you don't chart it, you'll have nothing to navigate your life around or toward. And worst of all, if you don't have eyes to see what fulfills you, you'll miss it when it's right in front of you.

I promise you, the more meaningful experiences you look for and aim at, the more meaningful your life will become.

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A simple path for finding meaning:

1. Define and lay out what is meaningful to you (develop a list of the different aspects of your life- like career, health, God, and so on- and then be as detailed as possible about the little things in life that you believe are meaningful to you in these areas)

2. Aim for them (schedule your life around your list)

3. Enjoy your experiences, journey, and life. (there’s no point in aiming for meaningful experiences if you’re not going to take them in.) 

4. Ponder and assess and question with curiosity and wonder what is working and what isn't. Document it in your journal and talk about it with your friends.

5. Repeat.

Jesus' only step by step instructions

Knowing the truth is extremely different from knowing the right answers in every situation and having the right "godly" thoughts at all times.

We know that God loves us, but we certainly don’t always feel like it. And we know that God is proud of us, yet we still feel like a failure at times.

So understanding and right thinking isn't all we need to change. How then does God and the truth change from a thought and idea into something real? Something we can feel and experience? Something that will transform us when we feel lost and hurt?

The tension lies in the reality that you can’t remove the fact that if this truly is a relationship between you and God, there’s a responsibility on his end to show up in your relationship with him.

Our struggle though is that he never gave us a clear step-by-step list of instructions for how exactly to find him when we're lost and at our end.

All God ever promised was that if we search....we will find him.

Apparently, this is all we need to know. And it’s the most practical, clear, and strategic advice that we could receive when we're at our end.

If you search, you will find me.

...But what does that even look like?

Great question.

There’s only one way to find out.

You search.

Some things are dangerous to forget

Why is it that we don’t treat ourselves to the same degree that we want others to treat us?

Why is it that when we recognize that voice inside our head that starts to put us down, judge, critique, and condemn us, we don’t stand up for ourselves like we would if one our best friends was being belittled and threatened?

Well... try to next time.

When you recognize him speaking, step forward, look him in the eyes, and say no, I’m done taking this. And if you need something to hold onto while you say it, stand up and point at all the proud things that you’ve accomplished in your lifetime, over all the how effort you’ve put in to become who you are, and at all the pain you’ve overcome.....

You’ll likely catch him by surprise.

And yourself.

You’re stronger than you think. 

(We almost always are... 
We sadly just don’t hear it enough. 
But there you go.

Be wary not to forget it.)

You’re far stronger than you give yourself credit for.

Asking hard questions

Toddlers and teenagers hate it when you ask them hard questions that oppose their immediate desires.

"Are you sure that you want to eat that entire pack of sour skittles?"

"Are you sure that it's a good idea to spend hours playing video games all weekend?"

"Are you sure that you want to spend all your money on going to the movies and eating out rather than saving some of it?"

It also turns out that adults hate hard questions too... 

Are you sure you have enough money to buy that house?  Or that new car?

Are you sure that you don't have more self-work to do before you date or get married?

Are you sure that it's wise to focus on building a new business or chasing a new career opportunity (with more higher pay) if it will distract you from the self-work you were previously focusing on?

It's human to hate resisting our impulses and desires and to press into the long, difficult, and slow path...

But in the long run, it’s the only one that leads us somewhere meaningful. Because there is no such thing as fast money, dreams, or easy marriages. 

Which is why it’s best to embrace the difficulty as it comes, to ask yourself the hard questions by choice, and to make the wise decisions today rather than to procrastinate and wait until the repercussions of poor decisions create enough emotional pain to do the motivating for us.

Let it go

What do you find under your skin in the silence?

Pain? Fear? Anger? Shame?

Whatever emotion you feel:

Accept it. 
Fully feel it.
Breathe it in...

and let it go.