The meaning of life

To figure out the meaning of life, you first have to understand what life is.

Derek Sivers is a genius. I think so at least. He has a great article on the meaning of life over at: http://sivers.org/ml  He comes to the humanist conclusion that life doesn’t have any intrinsic meaning. You are free to project any meaning you want. In short, you are free to do with your life anything you want.

But it’s his analysis along the way that I think is so helpful.  He starts his article by asking – what is life?  And he tries out some answers.  Like life is time. Finite time, so perhaps you should strive to use it wisely. His advice on how to do this is to balance your future focused thinking with your present focused thinking.

• Life is also about choice. So choose wisely.  How, again, the answer is balance. Sometimes let your gut decide, sometimes stop at good enough, set ethical limits for yourself and work on what is important, not necessarily urgent.

• Life is about memories and reflection. If you don’t ever do anything, you won’t have anything worth remembering. On the other hand, reflection is important to. Once again, balance is key.

• Life is also about learning. We all learn throughout our lives. Be of the mindset that you can always learn more and always improve. 

My take away from his article is that while life has no intrinsic meaning, we still need a purpose in life. And if we are seeking to be self-fulfilled, and who isn’t, perhaps what we should seek is balance. Because that seems to be the key to everything.

Making wise choices about how to spend your life requires balance.

What Will Matter?

Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident. It happens by choice.

Michael Josephson of the Josephson Institute, an ethical organization, has a great statement about What Will Matter.  This is used to help teach children the importance of ethics (see:  http://charactercounts.org/pdf/WhatWillMatter.pdf)

The document talks about priorities and what matters most. Not how much money you made, but how much you gave to others. It’s not how successful you are, but how you actually act and whether your actions matter to others or not. That is what matters.

In order to live a life that matters, you have to choose to live such a life. You have to choose your actions so that they don’t just benefit you, but that they benefit others as well.

This is a central part of the humanist mindset. Yes, we want to be happy. But we recognize that to be truly happy, we can’t just focus on ourselves. Our words and our deeds must help others too.

To succeed, we have to consider the impact we have on others and we have to take care to make sure that impact is good. How can we help others. How can we share our happiness and ensure others are helps as well. How can we make life better.

It’s about choosing to live a life of service to others, to the extent that you can and are able to. Make helping others an integral part of your motivation in life and you will help ward off any pending midlife crisis, because you won’t wonder what it all is for. You will know.

The Power of Why

Why asking yourself these 3 questions will help you find meaning and purpose in your life. 

Emotive Brands had a blog post about 7 reasons why it’s time to transform your business through meaning. http://www.emotivebrand.com/2012/11/08/7-reasons-why-its-probably-time-to-transform-your-business-through-meaning/

I liked the post. I’m a big fan of being purpose and meaning driven. Having a purpose and meaning gives us a reason to get up in the morning. A reason to do the things we do.

The problem is that not just any reason will do. The best reasons are driven by deep emotions and motivations.  How do you find out what truly motivates you?  By asking yourself questions. We Humanists call this process of asking ourselves deep questions, critical thinking or alternately “freethought.”  The best question to start with is “why.”

This is why this post is titled the power of why.  If you want to know what is really driving you, you need to ask yourself 3 “why” questions.

For instance, if you are looking for meaning in your business.

• Why did you choose this business?
• Why is that needed?
• Why will this help people?

You can obviously use this for personal motivation as well.  When you have drilled down to the why this will help people question that is usually where your deep meaning resides.

As much as we might be motivated to be in business to make money so that we can eat and have things like shelter and transportation, it turns out that this is not a very good motivator.

What really motivates us to get up in the morning to work is to change the world and make it better. So instead of answering these why questions selfishly, focus on how what you do helps others. Once you understand how important your work is to others and how you impact others, your work becomes a calling and a mission. And that’s something that is truly motivating.