Day 7: Focusing on What Brings You Meaning and Purpose in Life
7 Cups has an exciting online therapy update to share this month. To celebrate, we’re doing 25 days of Gratitude, Self-Care, and Personal Growth and please keep checking each day for updates!
Hi everyone! I hope you are well. Today we will be talking about meaning and purposefulness in life. We all talk about wanting to feel fulfilled and trying to make sense of what is the purpose of life and we have different answers to it, some people rely on religion, others on philosophy, and some of us are still looking.
The good news is that we know of some techniques that can help you understand how one can feel fulfilled and how to make sense of life especially if you feel lost on this front. This is such an important topic that there is a whole therapy technique on it called ‘Logotherapy’. It is a therapeutic approach that helps people find personal meaning in life. If that interests you, a good place to start is the book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ by Viktor Frankl (found of logotherapy). You can find a summary of the book here but I recommend you read the book too.
The essence of logotherapy can be found in this quote by, Friedrich Nietzsche ‘Man can suffer anyhow, as long as he knows why. Many exercises and techniques that aim to help you find fulfillment or purpose are aimed at helping you find your ‘why’. The key takeaway is that we are not looking to reduce our troubles, nor are we hoping for a solution that helps remove all suffering from life, that is not realistic or possible but you do need goals/ambitions in life that are worth suffering for.
Another way of finding meaning is to find your ikigai. Oxford English Dictionary defines Ikigai as "a motivating force; something or someone that gives a person a sense of purpose or a reason for living". This diagram helps visualize what Ikigai can look like.
Well, this is all great but how do we apply these techniques?
1. Think of a picture you would like to have in your room, where you can always see it. You don’t get to take it down at any point and it must resonate with who you are and what you believe in.
- If comfortable tell us what that picture is.
- Then reflect on why chose that picture.
This is a way for you to get in touch with what matters to you which is a step closer to figuring out what will help you feel fulfilled.
Example: Alex wants a picture of his own family, smiling and eating happily around their dining table. This reminds Alex of how much he values his family and how good it would be to have those moments. This gave Alex the realization that he values his family deeply and should be spending more time building meaningful relationships with them.
2. To find your Ikigai, ask yourself the following questions:
What am I good at?
What does the world need more of?
What can I get paid for?
What do I love?
The answer should ideally fall under all these categories. The being good at part does not have to be that you are an expert but rather something you genuinely enjoy learning more about and find that you can apply if you put your mind to it.
You can either do both exercises and share results or choose one. The first is more helpful at figuring out what matters to you, it sends you in the right direction but the second one helps you narrow down your options.
Further resources