2-3-4 Friday

‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’

1 thought

For years, I was enamoured with this idea of purpose and one’s definition of success.

When I was studying abroad in the U.K., even though those were a precious 3 years of my life, and they were limited, I would still spend the first Sunday of every month seated in a room near the chaplaincy. It would be around noon, and the campus would be quiet.

There would hardly be anybody around, save for a few strangers who were walking around the lake.

Geese too.

And I would frantically trying to think through answers to these four questions:

1. What are my values?
2. What is my personal definition of success?
3. What would I want to be remembered for when I die?
4. What is my purpose in life?

Don’t get me wrong, I think these are great questions to ask yourself.

You may in fact be asking yourself those questions too. After all, after a while, you would be in the same routine.

1. Wake.
2. Go to work.
3. Have the weekend.
4. Rinse and repeat.

After a year, two, then you start wondering,

is there all there is to life?

Would there be ever, anything more?

Going through depression and a phase of suicidal ideation trying to answer these questions taught me two things.

Firstly, that we may be focused too often on the why, without realising that in some moments of our lives, there is not much why.

You just do it, for the sake of doing it.

And success is just getting through the day, and being able to wake up for the next.

Asking these existential questions, and attempting to answer them might yield greater anxieties than good.

Secondly, that whilst emotions such as meaninglessness, and the desire to get rid of those emotions is good, we may not realise that emotions are not everything.

Accepting these emotions as they are, rather than trying to change them, get rid of them, or do something with them may yield better answers.

Because when we anchor our decisions in our emotions, we tend to do what feels good, but may not lead to good.

We theoretically already know that. Why do we still do it?

Because we are not rational beings.

1 talk

Sometimes, simply getting through, is good enough.

1 tip

What might work better?

Recognise what you’re feeling and label it. Say,

I’m feeling meaningless.

And then what do you do to get rid of it?

Write about it. Some prompts:

1. What’s happening in my life right now?
2. How is this affecting me?
3. How’s my relationships like?

Leave it open.

It’s a concept from Henry Cloud, who talks about metabolising your emotions. Don’t just leave the emotions within you.

Treat it like excess energy within you. Exercise it.

Give it form and structure.

Perspire it out.

And ultimately, realise that whatever you do, we are humans. We adapt and adjust.

Even if you think that changing your job will give you a better ‘meaning’, slowly you would adapt to that too.

Of course changing to something that’s aligned to your strengths will help. But realise too that at the end of the day, as Scott M Peck says,

Life is difficult.

The sooner we accept that, the easier it will be.

Survival is success.

John

Live Young, Live Well - Work Your Love

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