Everyone wants their life to have meaning, and to be more than just an endless routine of waking up, working an unfulfilling job, eating, sleeping, and repeating.
Of course, it’s one thing to know that you want to pursue a meaningful life, but it’s another thing altogether to actually set off down that path.
One way to pursue a sense of meaning in life might involve you getting involved in public health projects like Marc Effron Legacy Healing, while others might involve you starting up an art project, or training to become an architect.
The specifics of just what a “meaningful life” will mean to you will be highly personal. But here are some tips that are likely to help you find your way.
Pay more attention to the kind of person you want to be, rather than the kind of things you want to have
One of the major things that frequently prevents people from actively pursuing and living a meaningful life, is that they become distracted and confused by the desire to “have things” versus the desire to be a certain kind of person.
In life, we all need to balance both these dimensions of existence – but if you’re looking for meaning through the acquisition of more and more money, cutting-edge electronics, or a bigger house, you are bound to find yourself disappointed.
Ultimately, pursuing a meaningful life requires you to pay attention first and foremost to bigger picture concerns regarding the kind of person you want to be and become.
Look for ways to help and uplift others, rather than being totally focused on yourself
If you look at some of the bits of advice frequently shared by the great sages and influential figures of history, with regards to what it takes to live a meaningful life, one of the most common threads you will find is the idea of focusing on helping and uplifting others, rather than just being in it for yourself.
Almost by definition, striving to live a meaningful life involves aligning yourself with something higher than your own immediate interests.
Anything you can do that helps you to have a positive impact on those around you, is likely to feel pretty meaningful.
Listen to your conscience and your intuition in the here and now
It’s impossible to pursue a meaningful path through life purely by rationalistic planning.
Instead, pursuing a meaningful life always necessarily depends on listening to your own conscience and your own intuitions – both in a broad sense, and also specifically in the here and now.
Although it can be difficult to come up with a comprehensive plan for where you want to be in several years time, everyone is capable of paying some attention to their sense of what feels right and meaningful in the moment.
The more you can live in alignment with this sense of pursuing what’s meaningful in each moment, the higher likelihood is your life, as a whole, will become more meaningful.
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