The Importance Of Finding Meaning In Life
Let’s re-visit the idea of a conscious life once more.
If you find meaning in your life, you’ll be able to learn your purpose in this world. Experts believe that you can live your life in two ways. The first says that if you’re conscious, you’ll live along the same lines as others. Yet, you’ll experience the same things differently.
The second way to live is to live unconsciously. Broadly speaking, if you live like that, life will just happen to you. Think of it as a giant wave that keeps pushing you forward. You have no control over where you’re going or why you’re going there. In fact the only thing certain about this situation is that you’re just going with the flow. This kind of life isn’t exactly ideal since you don’t have much say in it. Yet, many of us live this way.
When you learn the meaning of life, you have a better sense of purpose. You tend to understand why you’re in this world. Just like that, you will have a clearer view of how you can contribute to the world.
If you don’t know your purpose, you’ll hate getting out of bed. Your motivation to last through the week would be looking forward to the weekend. Put you in a challenging situation and you’ll feel burnout even before trying. On the other hand, if you lead a meaningful life, you’ll love the grind.
Here are some tips on why it’s important to find meaning in life:
Gives Clarity and Focus
Look around yourself and you’ll see so many people running after a host of popular things. Common offenders include earning more money, getting a house, and then getting an even bigger house. Goals also include getting a car, the latest technology, and everything along those lines. Incidentally, all these are also material gains and rewards.
And while they may seem very important to you right now, do they really matter that much in the long run? How about looking for something that you’re passionate about instead? Something that you thoroughly enjoy doing? Something that brings out the best in you?
It isn’t uncommon that while running after money and luxuries, you become side-tracked from your real purpose. Finding your life purpose will help you become aware of things that are important.
Once you learn to look past these common needs, you’ll see what’s important. It’ll help you set your goals and eliminate unimportant things from your life.
If you keep pursuing things you don’t need, knowingly or unknowingly, you’ll end up nowhere. By distinguishing between the important and unimportant, you won’t feel lost and unaccomplished in 20 years’ time.
You can also achieve success by finding the meaning in your life. Remember this one thing: Your success will be different from others. For you, success might be becoming the next Newton. For someone else, it might be owning the latest Audi.
But worry not. This is exactly what meaning brings in your life. Uniqueness and contentment. Every day, you have to become a better version of yourself. You have to get up and conquer the world. To achieve, succeed or excel, you have to first find the meaning in your life.
Teaches What Defines You
Have you ever felt that external factors are defining who you are? That you’re being told what works for you, instead of you figuring it out for yourself? Why does this happen? Probably because you don’t have a life purpose or haven’t figured it out yet.
When you lead a meaningless life, society starts to define you and the people around you shape you. If you keep living by others’ definition of you, you’ll find yourself in unfulfilling jobs and situations.
Being humans, we all need a means of sustenance. However, you may be stuck in a job that you hate. You needed a job so you got whatever was out there. The only reason you may have landed this job is because someone else recommended you for the position.
The result is that you end up going to your workplace tired and bored, surrounded by people you have nothing in common with, all because you had no direction in life- you just need a job.
But as soon as you find some life purpose, you can work towards a career that better fits your purpose.
If you’re leading a meaningful life, your means of sustenance can also become your passion. You can find yourself in a workplace that you enjoy, and coworkers who are compatible with you. Once you have a meaning and a purpose, you’ll clearly see the people you need. In addition, you’ll also be able to cut out people who are toxic.
It’s important to find compatibility in people and surround yourself with those who support your meaning. Being around likeminded individuals who can help you become your best self can add even more to your life purpose.
Keeps You Connected With The Present
The more you engage in a purposeful life, the more it grows with you. At the same time it also makes you happier.
Remember how we talked about the important vs the unimportant? Well, a purposeful life will be no doubt very different from the pleasurable (unimportant) life that is transient, current and illusory.
In contrast, a meaningful life can become demanding and quite often a stressful one. More than worldly goods and luxuries, it requires planning, patience, ownership of actions, and the responsibility of the consequences of choices made. It’s definitely not as accommodating as a pleasurable life because purpose requires you to be patient, delay gratification and think for the long term.
When you do all this, it keeps you connected to the present. What this means is that you learn to live the best that you can in the present. Your purpose keeps you grounded to your present rather than postponing it into the future.
Say you’re working on a book and need to get it done by a specific time. Now you also have a family, kids and other responsibilities to see. Your purpose, in this case is to get the book written so despite other commitments, you make your best effort to give time to your book.
At the end of the day, you’ll know that you were able to squeeze time for what you love to do and fulfill your purpose, even though in a small way. It’s one small step forward towards completing a project which means something to you.
A connection to the present also helps you stay more focused, passionate and gratified with what you have.
Focused, because you know how to stay away from distractions; Passionate, because it urges you to reach your full potential; and Gratified, because you’re living a value-based life.
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