Are you struggling to find meaning in our life? Perhaps you have seen others talk about a meaningful life and you aren’t sure how you can implement this? Or maybe you are curious and want to know more? Whatever your reason might be, we have the answer for you!
Humans have always tried to find meaning in life. Different people find their meaning in different ways, for example, one person may find meaning in their career, whereas another may find it in their family.
One may find meaning in spirituality, and another in the little things like their morning coffee or watching the sunset. The complex triangle of coherence, purpose, and happiness make up the fundamental elements of a meaningful life, and for some people need to exist in unison, but for others can exist separately.
Coherence refers to our understanding of our life, our purpose is the goals we have and happiness is how we feel about our life.
But how do we find out our individual meaning in life?
This guide will help you to practice the way to a meaningful life. It’s worth remembering that we are all different and will find meaning in life in different ways and places. However, this guide is an excellent starting point to helping you live a more meaningful life!
5 Ways To Practice A Meaningful Life
Below we have five ways that you can practice a meaningful life. Why not try and incorporate some or all of these and see if that makes a difference to your life? Let’s get into it and look at how we can practice a meaningful life today!
1. Find A Passion
Passion or motivation is the driver for our interest in specific activities. Passion is the main driver because the activity is something that has strong meaning or value to us. Motivation is the thing that keeps us doing even the monotonous aspects of something because we see the bigger picture due to passion.
This is why people who are passionate about their vocation enjoy their jobs more. It’s why some doctors stay late doing paperwork, or why an artist spends hours after work painting to fulfill his or her hobby.
Having a passion makes life enjoyable, it enables people to develop talents and gain intrinsic motivation for their efforts. Fostering a passion, or multiple passions is the key to a meaningful life.
2. Put Significance On Social Relationships
Connecting with others and obtaining and maintaining positive mutual relationships are the best ways to inject consistent meaning into your life. Individuals who have fewer social connections, experience loneliness or ostracism, and who are isolated are known to experience less meaningfulness in their lives.
Discussing passions with a group of similar people helps to develop new collective passions, which increase the sense of meaningfulness even more. As humans, we are social creatures who need positive relationships with others to thrive. Having good friends and good relationships with family members is one reliable way to live a happy and meaningful life.
3. Focus On Positive Relationships That Foster Your Sense Of Belonging
Social relationships with others are not all equal. You can have negative relationships or relationships that aren’t very fulfilling. To increase your sense of meaningfulness in life, it’s important to focus on and nurture the relationships that foster a sense of belonging, where you have similar interests and feel that you fit well as a group member.
Social connections that provide you with support and happiness, and high social value, provide you with a stronger feeling of meaning, and the relationships tend to last longer too, which means your sense of meaning will be more consistent throughout life rather than if you put the effort into nurturing a friendship that made you feel negative or ostracized.
4. Keep An Eye On Your Mood To Maintain Coherence
Research shows a connection between a good, stable mood and meaningfulness. Positive emotions are associated with a stronger sense of meaning, and keeping your mood positive as much as possible is important in ensuring your sense of meaning also remains stable.
There are lots of different ways you can ensure that your mood stays stable, such as by practicing mindfulness, exercising and eating well, sleeping properly, engaging in hobbies and social pursuits, journaling, and talking through any problems that arise.
5. Have Control Over Your Environment To Maintain Coherence
Clean, tidy environments where there’s a place for everything can help people to make more sense of their environment and increase meaningfulness. Having specific routines and patterns in your daily schedule can make things easier to predict and deal with, giving you a sense of control over your environment which leads to good coherence.
Scheduling times to tidy your environment is a great way to maintain control. After all, a messy environment, messy mind!
What About As You Age?
Sometimes, as people get older, they struggle to find the same meaning in life as they did when they were younger. Often, this is because we pass through various changing life stages and can find difficulty making sense at the beginning of each stage.
Also, as we grow older, we may experience loss which challenges our sense of meaning. Some elderly people may believe they have less meaning in life as they get older, or, they may find more meaning as they have more time to enjoy their hobbies and social connections.
No matter what age you are, the five steps above will always stay as reliable, stable methods to incorporate meaning into every day.
Summary
Finding meaning in life is probably the most central aspect of being human. Meaning tends to be formed of the following three concepts: coherence, purpose, and happiness. These concepts can be achieved in many different ways, and how someone finds meaning is unique to them.
Practicing the five mantras above will help to increase your sense of meaning no matter how old you are or what has happened in your life. Our sense of meaning may fluctuate throughout our lives, but by keeping in mind that there are so many different things that give our lives meaning, we should be able to enjoy life to the fullest.
