Compared to your grandparents and their grandparents, life in the 21st century is luxurious and filled with everything we need to make life easy.
Yet, so many of us suffer from depression, anxiety and the mind-boggling quest to find meaning to our existence.
Despite all the advances we have made as human beings, we are amid a ‘search for meaning’ crisis.
Walk down the street of any big city and you will find people with creases in their brow, with worry following them like a dark cloud, unhappy with their life experience as they think ‘this cannot be all life is. I thought I was destined to more than this.’.
Yet, like no other time in our history has there been so many tools and resources to help us be the best we can be. Why is it so hard to find meaning in life?
For many of us, we get distracted by things – the boxes we drive, watch and eat from. We get side tracked by keeping up with the Jones. We get swayed by the next biggest and best thing. Instead of trusting ourselves.
Finding meaning in life is as simple as finding your purpose. When you have found that, anxiety, depression and other things that ail you fall away as you are infused with excitement as you follow your path.
It all sounds so easy. And it is once you clear the clutter. That is the more challenging part and what stops so many from finding their purpose – the baggage we hold onto. We are all out here searching in the cold night for the truth, together like children with a dim torchlight wondering how many more are out here, also searching – some confused, some frightened, but not knowing of what.
We come to Earth to serve a purpose. These purposes are as wide and varied as we all are. There is no “right purpose” and no “wrong purpose,” since there is no right or wrong, given an individual’s perspective of their own existence. This is why there is a search for meaning crisis. Too many of us listen to others telling us what is right and wrong for us.
To find your meaning in life, your purpose, there are two key things you need to discover first. Your Uniqueness and your Passion. Find your natural unique gifts and what you are passionate about.
That is it.
Find those two things and you will connect back to you true self. For me, it took me until I was in my 40s to work that out. Once I embraced the fact that I am here to help people because that is what I am passionate about everything became clearer. Then once I stopped focusing on what I did for a living, but how I did it …the search for my meaning in life, my purpose became crystal clear.
There is an exercise you can do to break down what you are good at. I call it The Path to Purpose. Ask yourself the questions – what am I good at and what am I passionate about? Every time you answer, ask yourself why. Then go deeper and explore the why futher. Once you can identify what you are good at, and why, and what you are passionate about and why, everything becomes clearer. Keep going deeper until you get to the core reasons behind each. You will know when you get there. Clarity is an unmistakable feeling.
Then explore what can be done with your passion and your particular set of skills. Soon you will see, opportunities start to become clearer, and this will start to highlight a path that will lead to finding the meaning in your life experience.
This search for meaning crisis is way out of control, it is at epidemic levels across the globe. Turn on the television or sign into your social media account and the evidence of this crisis is everywhere. From Wikileaks and whistleblowers, to Australia’s revolving door prime ministers and global political instability, to endless stories of corruption in business. People are standing in their power and refusing to let things like this go under the radar. People are waking up to what is wrong in the world and this means the search from meaning becomes more poignant. Our search for meaning is a struggle with a lack of relevance.
Our Ego wants to disconnect us to have us embrace what is going on in our heads as something that is real, making us think all of our problems are external. But they are internal and that is what makes the search for meaning crisis solvable. Not easy. Not simple. But solvable.
Because we can control what happens in our heads, not what happens outside of us. As you search for meaning, take the time to acknowledge where you are at, ask for help if sorting out what is in your head is too hard for you to deal with on your own and embrace that your life’s purpose is up to you. You have the power to create your life experience; in fact, you are the only one who does.
